I went to a local stamp bourse on sunday. That a dealer's room in fan terms. I hadn't been to one in quite a while. 5 years maybe. The local business sure has changed. Last I went, there were 10 to 12 dealers at these monthly shows. When I started going in the early 90's there was a second track of them run by another guy which had most of the same dealers and a few different ones. There were three guys selling stuff sunday.
Dan Lemke, who I remembered from years ago, remembered me. It's a very conversational hobby in many ways. People are always talking. I think because there are chairs involved. Dan said that most of the dealers had closed up or died. A lot of them were old. I did get some nice things for my Japanese album. There was not much stuff to look at. These guys can't generate a lot of revenue to change stock all that fast. It's sad to see what has become of the hobby. There is a big show coming up on July 21-23. There are two or three of the bigger shows each year. More dealers come from out of town. I thought I would take a walk through on saturday. See what's going on.
I've been looking at the stamp business on ebay. There seems to be quite a bit of activity. I got some nice things there the last three weeks. I have 6000 stamps still on-paper coming. I will have to soak those. I soaked stamps for 2 and a half hours on saturday. I got tired before I filled my 4th drying book. Maybe 700-750 stamps. 6000 will take a long time. It's just a time consuming process. Very water intensive. I'll take a picture next time.
The picture above is a scan on the color copier at work. I have been thinking of changing my album for Japan, and maybe Iceland. I even ordered paper. 1000 sheets. It's only a 22 dollar investment. It's nice paper. Ivory, 90 pound text. I forgot what brand. I need to try some test pages of Japan. The guy at Stampalbums.com lets you download and test print several sample countries. Classic Japan is one of them. Classic stamps are ones issued until about WWII, something like that. It's a natural stopping point. I stopped at 1949 when I went through all the German stamps I had. That's when they split the country up. Even Berlin gets it's own stamps. But I'm not collecting that.
Richard (DreamHaven guy) is also a stamp collector, and he too has some of everything but no specific collecting goal. I'm sticking with Japan, and maybe Iceland. China, Canada, Latvia, Luxembourg, Vietnam, Russia, Poland, these are still some contenders. The nice thing about stamps, is they are small. Mind you I have about 20 boxes worth of stamp stuff so I have a lot of other countries to get through and keep some stuff and get rid of the rest.
Richard's mother, she of the naughty emails, is also a stamp collector and Richard tells me she has a 6 or 8 volume hingless world album. That's big bucks. For comparison. A Japan album from Scotts is $400 list complete with binders and you can find it for 250-300 bucks. A hingless Japan from SAFE-Dual is 300 bucks before the 45 dollar binders and I can't tell if those pages would fit in two binders or would I need three. Still too much money. Add three slipcases and you're over 800 bucks with shipping etc. You can buy a lot of stamps, hell, any crap, for 800 bucks. I told one of the dealers and some guy sitting next to me that I didn't mind having a poor copy of an expensive stamp when the alternative is not to have it. That guy was looking at an early US stamp from the 1860's. It was 19 bucks but a good one could be a couple of hundred.
Holy shit, I just found Palo Albums, and their Japan album is about 875 bucks or $2020 if you want the hingless. They have thin binders and you need several more than the other albums. If I print my own, after paying the $20 yearly fee at Stampalbums.com I can get the cost down to 25 bucks, including my nice 90# paper. I love paper. There's a guy on line who prints those same Stampalbum.com pages and he charges about 20 cents a page to print them. It would cost about $115 with him. That's a better deal than the Scott or Palo, even if you paid someone to print them for you. Luckily I work in a print shop where I can get wholesale costs.
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