PhilosateleiaRandom ruminations on collecting and Philosateleia
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 (posted by Philatelius at 9:46 pm)
New United States stamps
We’re only a little more than a month into the new year, and already there are dozens of new stamps for those of us who collect modern U.S. material. As is the case with a great deal of modern material, however, finding some of those stamps used is probably going to be a challenge.
So far, I’ve acquired only three of the new stamps for my own collection. I have two of the weather vanes—one of which came on a piece of mail from my credit union, oddly enough—and one of the bonsai stamps. That’s it. I’m still seeing a lot of holiday baubles at work, but hopefully the newer issues will gradually replace those as time moves on.
In local news
A couple of projects are in progress here right now. First, I’m working on posting images of and write-ups about my landscape stamps. That’s not exactly a small undertaking, and I don’t know how long it might take me to get everything online, but I’m doing what I can.
Something else on my plate is the stamp gallery as a whole. I’m trying to bring the look of the oldest pages, some of which haven’t been updated since 2006, up to speed with the rest of Philosateleia. This is an “as time permits” sort of thing, but it would be really nice a uniform look across the entire site again one day.
New Post Horn, new album pages
The February issue of the Philosateleian Post Horn is just about ready to go. My current plan is to distribute that on Sunday. That newsletter is free, so if you’re not already receiving it, sign up.
After that’s done, I’ll need to turn my attention to putting together the Spring 2012 supplement for The Philosateleian U.S. Stamp Album. As I mentioned earlier, there are several dozen new stamps for which we’ll need spaces. Look for the new pages by the middle of March.
Show your support
I try not to spend a lot of time on this topic, as I like to think of Philosateleia as a public service of sorts. Nevertheless, I do appreciate your support, whether it’s a small donation to help cover expenses, a link from your website or blog, or even just an e-mail letting me know you’re using my stamp album pages. Finally, you can like The Philosateleian on Facebook, if that’s what floats your boat.
Philosateleian Post’s 2012 stamp program
Sunday, December 18, 2011 (posted by Philatelius at 8:32 pm)
Following in the footsteps of other stamp-issuing entities that announce new issues ahead of time, Philosateleian Post has released a preview of its upcoming 2012 commemorative stamp program.
Among the highlights of the Post’s planned new issues is a stamp honoring Aunt Donna, whose death I recently mentioned in this blog. This stamp will be issued on World Local Post Day (January 30, 2012).
You can read more about the Aunt Donna stamp and the other stamps planned for 2012, plus learn how to get copies of these stamps for your own collection in Philosateleian Post’s press release.
Milestones of stamp collecting
Monday, October 3, 2011 (posted by Philatelius at 10:13 pm)
The past month has been pretty quiet for Philosateleia, but that’s not because anything’s going wrong. Quite the contrary—the last few weeks have been very philatelically productive for me. I feel like rambling a bit about what I’ve been up to.
Since December 2009, I’ve been working off and on on the only thematic, or topical, collection in which I’ve ever taken an interest: landscapes on stamps. We’re talking mountains, rivers, forests, and so forth from all around the world. Think Yosemite Valley, Mount Everest, and the Amazon River, and you’ll know the kind of scenery we’re talking about.
It’s a funny sort of collection, in a way. The irony of trying to display huge chunks of the Eternal God’s creation on tiny scraps of paper is not lost on me. It’s amazing, though, the number of styles stamp designers have used to illustrate those marvelous works.
At any rate, I digress. I’ve been making a big push to “finish” this project, and last night I did just that: finished organizing my landscape stamp collection—or, more accurately, finished organizing the landscape stamps currently in my collection. For there’s always room for growth, is there not?
I ended up scanning one stamp depicting each site, then doing some image manipulation and using the results as the backgrounds of my album pages. Here’s an example of one of my Yosemite Valley pages at an intermediate stage; I added another stamp to it at a later date.
Thus, the page for each landscape has a different background.
The benefit of this approach? Not just the stamps, but the pages themselves, change as you leaf through my albums. My U.S. stamp album pages are formal, with the spaces for the stamps laid out in neat rows. The pages for my landscape stamps have some uniformity to them, too, in terms of font size and style, but there’s also a certain randomness, an unpredictability from one page to the next, that I’ve never encountered before in stamp collecting. And I’m not saying it would work for every collection, but for this particular grouping of stamps, it does. It does.
A negative of building my pages this way? The time involved. I estimate there are presently 350–400 stamps in my landscape collection. I haven’t counted them or even made a proper list just yet, but that’s my gut feeling. I designed, trimmed down to size, and three-hole punched 336 pages. As mentioned earlier, that did take the better part of two years. Was it fun? Yes, but there was a time investment, too, to the extent that I feel both a sense of accomplishment and a sense of relief to be “done.” So if you’re thinking of doing the same thing, count the costs in advance.
Now, to bring an end to this long-winded summary of my recent philatelic pursuits…I’m working on the October issue of the Post Horn, and then I have some commitments that will keep me busy over the next two or three weeks. Hopefully after that I’ll be able to get back to adding some new content to Philosateleia. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.
