ScottV Stamps

We had a table at the Sandipex show again, down in Poway.  We don't have a van, or whole shelves of red boxes to bring.  I do have a knack for knowing what will fit into any space, so we set aside exactly enough plastic bins and boxes to fill my Toyota Corolla, and it turned out to be the perfect amount to spread out and cover the three tables. Here's a look at it: Anne and Dory were there helping out. It's funny how many different ways there are to collect things, and at least as many different ways to buy them.  We had some binders and folders full of country collections.  I sold one of my Dad's old half-empty volumes of USA for $100, a big binder of Norway (1966-2005) for $50, and other collections of Belgian Congo, Senegal and others.  When I price these, I am not going to sit there for hours writing every catalog value on the margin of every page: they're almost all going to be under a buck anyway.  I save a lot of time by just doing a count and eyebal...

This weekend, the local SANDIPEX stamp show had a calendar collision with a show in Orange County, so there were some empty tables.  Bob called me and asked if I could come down and help fill in.  It was going to be a lot of work.  Over the last two months, in the 1-2 hours a week of "spare time", I have been filling a bin with covers, filling another bin with mixtures, and getting some stacks of album pages into country folders.  But we only have Saturday and Sunday, then I have to somehow be rested before another full work week.   But he posted a nice blurb about me in the group newsletter, so we figured out a way to get down there, moving bins to Anne's place on Saturday (morning trip & evening trip), then doing some last organization there. We have a regular car, not a van or pickup like the other dealers, but my usual sense of how objects fill spaces came in handy.  Those two trips were planned as (1) a trunk full, and (2) a back seat full, so the ...

4/15/2024: We stopped at the Postal History Foundation in Tucson.  I had not been there in about 12 years. They're still going strong, with a whole museum and educational area, tons to do, endless stamps to support and buy, and a world class research library with about 30,000 volumes.  They have many shelves of lots ready to buy, from pound mixes to individual stamps, bins of 10c covers, you name it.  For the rest of our 6-day trip, I had the urge to go back and help sort stamps, or buy more stamps to sort at home.

This weekend was the San Diego Stamp Show.  Saturday was another record-breaking storm so we just stayed home doing craft projects.  But we did get down to the show today, and the dealer's room was so packed with stuff to look at we totally forgot to check out the exhibits. Anne is just getting into stamps and has about 40 items listed on Hipstamp, so it was fun showing her what to look for at the show for her specific business focus (animal and nature topicals), how to not pay too much for an item, but also how not to worry so much you go home empty handed. For me, I unexpected got pulled into a little pile of USA covers.  I don't usually handle US stamps OR covers, but these were really interesting.  The seller pulled out a stack of beautifully curated covers that were priced at $25 each, but it was the end of the show and he reduced them to $10 each.  They were so expertly described, with notes on various postmarks that I had no catalogs for.  So I bough...