farouk
Well-Known Member
A real motorcycle man, huh? Yes, I've seen some of your pictures. I've never been there. I almost bought one once a few years before I met my wife. It did not happen or I might have a different story to tell...
Other than the tiny trickle that comes in out mail I don't gather in any new stamps. For many years I belonged to a local stamp club which met regularly. We had stamps auctions and I got some stamps that way. I also bought some from dealers and my mother, an antique collector for years would watch for stamps at the antique auctions and buy any that she saw. In the 1990's for about 10 years I was trading stamps with more than 50 collectors in other countries. I managed to get a lot of newer issues that way as they mostly wanted the U.S. stamps I could offer in trade. I was still working at my secular job full time and as much overtime as they would give me. The time of very heavy stamp trading overlapped extensively the time that I was backslid from God. I was working 50 hours or better per week on my job plus many hours on stamps. No time for God!!!
When I came back to God lots of things happened, which I won't detail here. I retired early from work in 2000 and when I came back to God in 2002 I drastically reduced my stamp collecting activities. No more trading or buying except through the local stamp club which met once a month. From 20 some members the club numbers dropped gradually until about 2010 when there were only 2 of us left and we disbanded the club. Then I became involved heavily in selling stamps by mail through regional club where I am a lifetime member. That is all I do with that club anymore. I have sold in excess of 10,000 stamps in the last 10 years, but I still have more than 100,000 stamps and many country collections I have not looked at in years. I am wading through them for sales.
I have more than 1,000 all different Canadian stamps and probably a couple of hundred all different early Dutch East Indies [prior it becoming Indonesia] stamps... with thousands of duplicates in both countries. I also have a few hundred different Netherlands stamps. I only work on a country's stamps now when I am getting them ready to sell, and I haven't touched sold any of those lately. They're both on my computer showing that I last worked on the Dutch Indies in 2008 and on Canada in 2013. The last time I worked on the Netherlands I was using a 1998 catalogue so the information on my computer on that country is very sketchy. Eventually I would get to them all, if my death doesn't come first.
I cannot give you even an estimate on my United States collection as I am just now in the process of preparing the worksheets to catalogue them. I am hoping to get it ready to sell some in 2021, but expect the sorting and identification process to take months. In the old days I did this all manually. Now with a computer the counting is faster, but first I have to finish setting up my program. I used to use Excel but now use Planmaker which is compatible with Excel. With countless thousands of U.S. stamps at the little bit of time I now work on it will take months to prepare... but you're interested you can have some of those as well.
If you are interested in receiving any of them gratis contact me by PM. Note that most of my stamps are used.
Hi @amadeus Sir.
Yes, stamp collecting can be an immensely absorbing subject.
I know a preacher who was once an avid stamp collector; he had gathered a big and costly collection.
Then a burglar stole it from his house.
In the end, the preacher was pleased it happened; he said he realized the stamp collection was using up a lot of his time which he said he should have been devoting to Bible study. (The burglar didn't steal his Bible study books...)
But yes, stamp collecting can be most interesting.