Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
10:06:55pm
Edit: My album has 13 pages of W's and F's and only two are partial pages and of the ones shown I'm only missing 16 stamps and most of those are very expensive. Am I going to check the rest? Maybe later!!!
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@Poster
Good idea rechecking, good work, top drawer effort.
You said " I hate single line USPS watermarks with a passion!", yes, they can be difficult sometimes, but might I suggest (only a suggestion!!!) to stop the hate be more positive when watermarking. Do you have trouble with the other single line watermarks or only the Washington/Franklin head stamps of 1908-1921?
1898
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11:34:43am
The trouble with the single line watermarks is that they can almost miss the stamp and sometimes what is there is almost impossible to find. My eyes are not what they used to be!! I shouldn't say "hate", but I really do "dislike" them sometimes. I believe occasionally you find a stamp that has to be watermarked where the watermark actually misses the stamp - very annoying since you could have a rare unwatermarked version. But that's very unlikely!
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@Poster
Moving away from the Show Topic/Subject just a little.
I've never seen from the 1914 Revenues Series Proprietary RB32-RB43 Watermarked 190 any trouble with them as the stamps are black the watermarks show up real nice. These might help you to recognize the various positions and orientations for the right and proper 190 watermark (just a suggestion!)
OK back to the Show Topic/subject.
If you wanted to try another page try the 1917-1919 flat press printed stamps 498-518, I've seen various misidentified stamps in collections and or unrecognized errors/plate variety's in this series.
If you respond please address to "1898"
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I thought I might be at the same level of completeness on the Washington/Franklin's but I found 17 missing stamps in my original USA collection. I thought it might be interesting to compare omissions, mine are Scott #'s 389 - coil stamp from 1910-11 perf 12 vertically with single line watermark, blue experimental paper issues from 1909 include 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, and 366, Scott #'s 467 perf 10 flat plate 5 cent error in plate of 20, Scott #485 imperf 5 cent flat plate printing error in 2 cent plate of 20, Scott #482A unwatermarked imperforate issue of 1916-17, Scott #539 rotary press perf 11x10 Type II from 1919-21, Scott #544 rotary press printing perf 11 from 1919-21, Scott #534B imperforate offset Type VII from 1918-20, and Scott #'s 594 and 596 rotary presss printing perf 11 from 1923-26 with sizes 19 3/4x22 1/2 and 19 1/4x22 3/4, respectively.
In re-checking catalog values I have new reinforcement on just how expensive it could be to complete this grouping! This collection has relatively few of the Scott pages for pairs with any items presence. Most Washington/Franklin items are used although there is a healthy sprinkling of stamps that are mint.
In other posts I have mentioned progress on a separate USA Lighthouse album and there I have been including only mint (and mostly MNH) stamps and recently I have been concentrating on the coil pair issues since the Lighthouse album doesn't have spaces for coil singles. Any coil pairs that I had in the Scott National hingeless album that were mint were moved into the Lighthouse album to give it a bit of content. Most stamps acquired for the album in the last three to four months have been the Washington/Franklin issues. The search has been a lot of fun. I acquired several additions at the GASS 2023 show. Given that I am only putting mint stamps in that album I suspect it will take a LONG time if ever to reach the same level of completeness as my almost 50 year Scott hingeless album collection.
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02:49:08pm
Actually Jerrel, you have me "all beat to Hell"!!! The ones you mention aren't even shown in my Harris, too rare!! The ones I am missing are 354, 356, 361, 364, 336, 369, 459, 449, 491, 467, 505, 519, 532, 534B, 539 and 545! If I now add in your 17 I end up with a much higher total of 29, still not bad though. If you have any spares of any of these please let me know and I'll take out a new mortgage on my house. I'm actually very proud of my US collection but I wish we lived closer, I'd love to see your's. I actually just finished my PG#1 of my album with a few added to the side but that only comprises #'s 10X1, 1, 2, 7, 8A, 9, 10, 10A, 11, 11A, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 17 - the rest are left out!! I read a story once about a person who traded his Inverted Jenny for the rare Franklin Z-grill, now called 85A, to give him a complete US collection. I wonder if it still exists not broken up somewhere. I'm not sure though what complete would mean in this situation since he had traded away his C3a! Thanks for the great response and maybe one of these days our collections will meet each other!!
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@Poster
May I ask a question?
What is the 544B? 544 is listed in my cat., but the 544B is not listed?
Please respond to "1898"
I've collected Washington/Franklin Head stamps 1908-1921 for over 60 years, this 544B is a new one on me and I expect a lot of other collectors.
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04:35:37pm
Sorry @1898, my bad and I will fix it! I couldn't read my own writing - it's 534B!!
"a new one on me and I expect a lot of other collectors."
I really doubt if very many people would have bothered to actually check! Thanks for finding the mistake. That was incredibly fast!!
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I am fairly sure that the 544B is a misprint and should be 534B based on the order of the listing of items.
537 is not a Washington/Franklin but is actually the 3 cent Victory issue of 1919 which is one of my favorite stamps.
I think I like the Liberty album better as there are individual stamps in the Washington/Franklin series missing that have a higher catalog value, I think, than my entire USA collection! Plus I really like the additional details it provides about the stamps and their subjects. I do like the cream colored paper that the Scott National, Specialty, and International albums use.
I originally worked on all mint stamps for my USA collection starting from Scott #597 and up as I knew that finding a Scott #596 was likely impossible. It is not even listed as available in mint in the current catalog!
Regarding the Scott # 85A stamp, Bill Gross is reported to have traded a block of four of the C3a invert to Mystic Stamp Company for it which allowed him to complete his USA collection likely the only truly complete USA collection to be formed ever.
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05:08:34pm
I looked up the Bill Gross collection and it sold for over $10 million. I didn't go any further but my guess would be that it would have been broken up. It's a real shame that a billionaire who probably wouldn't even miss the odd $10 million here or there couldn't have donated the collection to a museum to display and keep it together. What a treat it would be to see something like that. I must check to see the extent of the collection, I doubt if he bothered with modern material!!
I also had to change my 537 to 539. The writing above the stamps is still my deceased wife's writing from the 1970's so some of it is a bit faded! It's easy to make a mistake. I like my Liberty album very much for many reasons even though the front cover is taped back on from gross over use and it suffers from a nasty case of album bulge. I can remember putting many of the stamps in and struggling with ID's. If my wife were still around she would be amazed at the progress with the collection. Actually, in a way, she is still buying much of the material since it is the RRSP, now a RRIF, that I originally set up for her that I use to buy a lot of the material!
I also like the descriptions added for the stamps. There's also lots of room in the margins and spare pages for additions not originally provided for!
As far as mint goes I'm actually starting at the same place exactly even though I don't really want to replace some of the Kansas/Nebraska overprints. I also don't want to replace the ones I have as precancels and if the postmarks are interesting I'll keep them there and put the mint next to them!
I get a great kick out of looking at my US and Canada collections since so much time was spent on them.
Sorry to ramble on so!!!!
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You definitely have me beat on page one of my album where I have Scott #'s 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, and 17. These stamps are all used.
Of course, the page one of my mint based stamps International 1840-1963 album set after moving the used stamps to page one to my International 1930 album is a bit woeful with only Scott #'s 1, 24, 26, and 65 being present and frankly not likely to significantly change. I am quite happy about the mint USA Scott #1 though (which was quite a fortuitous purchase) and feel that it starts the album set off nicely. 
Initially I thought I would work on the first page only with used and an occasional mint stamp but once I got the USA Scott #1 took that as a sign that I should be open to the entire album set being filled with mint only stamps. Not, of course, that I expect all of the albums to ever be truly completed.
The International Junior 1930 album has Scott #'s 1, 9, 11, 14, 24, 73, 65, 68, 94, and 112 on its page one with all stamps except 112 being used. Only page one of this album has used stamps.
My from under the stairs (where I found the albums which I thought I had sold off years ago during a recent cross country move) USA Lighthouse albums have no stamps at all until page 7 where Scott #133 marks the first appearance of a stamp in the album. These are the albums which are in reality my most active current USA collection although I occasionally pick up a stamp for one of the International based collections' USA pages.
Rambling is good and often provides the most entertaining content in our discourses about our collection efforts!
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05:30:17pm
Jerrel, I have never heard of anyone working on several albums from the same country at the same time. It must get a bit confusing at times but it does sound like great fun. I'm waiting for #13, 10A and 11A to arrive and then will post a picture of my page 1, it'll be impressive. All of mine are used, but my #1 has a really nice red cancel. I posted a picture of the incomplete page in an earlier post that I'm pretty sure you probably saw, I just can't remember where it was! Great talking about our collections. This sight is the only place I can really do that since no one I see on a regular basis collects stamps. That's why this site is so precious to me and I hope it continues for at least as long as I do!!
Found it - the two black mounts will contain 10A and 11A and #13 will be there!
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Bill Gross donated $10 million plus to the National Postal Museum.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ...
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I had a bit of a mentor in Kirkland, WA who had six different worldwide albums from 1840 up to 1915 that he was working on all the time. The best of the albums was incredible but he explained that the repetition on the collections increased significantly his knowledge of the issues and often his access to new offerings of the stamps. He was the most enthusiastic stamp collector I have had the privilege to know.
I have four different collections that happen to cover stamps for the USA, two are USA only albums, one Scott and the other Lighthouse, and the other two collections are based on Scott International albums which fortunately represent abridgements of a complete USA collection and could potentially be completed although doing it with all mint stamps as I am doing with one of the albums is unlikely to be completed by me while I believe I have all stamps that would be required to complete the other International Junior 1930 album in my existing long term USA Scott National hingeless album with the possible exception of one or two stamps if I allow mint and used stamps in the album and those while expensive are not out of the question. Currently though I am only allowing used stamps on the first page of that album.
Your first page for the Liberty album is really looking great and the individual stamps are particularly well centered!
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
27 Aug 2023
10:06:55pm
With all the discussion about misidentifying stamps I thought what the heck? I picked a random page of W's and F's and decided to be real brave!! I checked every darn stamp on that page, all 18 of them. These are stamps I've had for a fairly long time, most of them had been checked by my wife and I about 20 years ago. I have no idea where we got them! And guess what, every one checked out!! If I had found even one mistake I was going to check out another page, and so on!! I must admit, I was really worried! Now I'm sure somewhere in my US book there must be a few stamps with the wrong ID, nobody's perfect!! It took about 2 hours to check that page, and I hate single line USPS watermarks with a passion! And we're not even going to mention perforations and colour shades!!
Edit: My album has 13 pages of W's and F's and only two are partial pages and of the ones shown I'm only missing 16 stamps and most of those are very expensive. Am I going to check the rest? Maybe later!!!
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10:31:13am
re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
@Poster
Good idea rechecking, good work, top drawer effort.
You said " I hate single line USPS watermarks with a passion!", yes, they can be difficult sometimes, but might I suggest (only a suggestion!!!) to stop the hate be more positive when watermarking. Do you have trouble with the other single line watermarks or only the Washington/Franklin head stamps of 1908-1921?
1898
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
28 Aug 2023
11:34:43am
re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
The trouble with the single line watermarks is that they can almost miss the stamp and sometimes what is there is almost impossible to find. My eyes are not what they used to be!! I shouldn't say "hate", but I really do "dislike" them sometimes. I believe occasionally you find a stamp that has to be watermarked where the watermark actually misses the stamp - very annoying since you could have a rare unwatermarked version. But that's very unlikely!
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12:58:58pm
re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
@Poster
Moving away from the Show Topic/Subject just a little.
I've never seen from the 1914 Revenues Series Proprietary RB32-RB43 Watermarked 190 any trouble with them as the stamps are black the watermarks show up real nice. These might help you to recognize the various positions and orientations for the right and proper 190 watermark (just a suggestion!)
OK back to the Show Topic/subject.
If you wanted to try another page try the 1917-1919 flat press printed stamps 498-518, I've seen various misidentified stamps in collections and or unrecognized errors/plate variety's in this series.
If you respond please address to "1898"
1898
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re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
I thought I might be at the same level of completeness on the Washington/Franklin's but I found 17 missing stamps in my original USA collection. I thought it might be interesting to compare omissions, mine are Scott #'s 389 - coil stamp from 1910-11 perf 12 vertically with single line watermark, blue experimental paper issues from 1909 include 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, and 366, Scott #'s 467 perf 10 flat plate 5 cent error in plate of 20, Scott #485 imperf 5 cent flat plate printing error in 2 cent plate of 20, Scott #482A unwatermarked imperforate issue of 1916-17, Scott #539 rotary press perf 11x10 Type II from 1919-21, Scott #544 rotary press printing perf 11 from 1919-21, Scott #534B imperforate offset Type VII from 1918-20, and Scott #'s 594 and 596 rotary presss printing perf 11 from 1923-26 with sizes 19 3/4x22 1/2 and 19 1/4x22 3/4, respectively.
In re-checking catalog values I have new reinforcement on just how expensive it could be to complete this grouping! This collection has relatively few of the Scott pages for pairs with any items presence. Most Washington/Franklin items are used although there is a healthy sprinkling of stamps that are mint.
In other posts I have mentioned progress on a separate USA Lighthouse album and there I have been including only mint (and mostly MNH) stamps and recently I have been concentrating on the coil pair issues since the Lighthouse album doesn't have spaces for coil singles. Any coil pairs that I had in the Scott National hingeless album that were mint were moved into the Lighthouse album to give it a bit of content. Most stamps acquired for the album in the last three to four months have been the Washington/Franklin issues. The search has been a lot of fun. I acquired several additions at the GASS 2023 show. Given that I am only putting mint stamps in that album I suspect it will take a LONG time if ever to reach the same level of completeness as my almost 50 year Scott hingeless album collection.
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
28 Aug 2023
02:49:08pm
re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
Actually Jerrel, you have me "all beat to Hell"!!! The ones you mention aren't even shown in my Harris, too rare!! The ones I am missing are 354, 356, 361, 364, 336, 369, 459, 449, 491, 467, 505, 519, 532, 534B, 539 and 545! If I now add in your 17 I end up with a much higher total of 29, still not bad though. If you have any spares of any of these please let me know and I'll take out a new mortgage on my house. I'm actually very proud of my US collection but I wish we lived closer, I'd love to see your's. I actually just finished my PG#1 of my album with a few added to the side but that only comprises #'s 10X1, 1, 2, 7, 8A, 9, 10, 10A, 11, 11A, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 17 - the rest are left out!! I read a story once about a person who traded his Inverted Jenny for the rare Franklin Z-grill, now called 85A, to give him a complete US collection. I wonder if it still exists not broken up somewhere. I'm not sure though what complete would mean in this situation since he had traded away his C3a! Thanks for the great response and maybe one of these days our collections will meet each other!!
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03:53:18pm
re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
@Poster
May I ask a question?
What is the 544B? 544 is listed in my cat., but the 544B is not listed?
Please respond to "1898"
I've collected Washington/Franklin Head stamps 1908-1921 for over 60 years, this 544B is a new one on me and I expect a lot of other collectors.
1898
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
28 Aug 2023
04:35:37pm
re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
Sorry @1898, my bad and I will fix it! I couldn't read my own writing - it's 534B!!
"a new one on me and I expect a lot of other collectors."
I really doubt if very many people would have bothered to actually check! Thanks for finding the mistake. That was incredibly fast!!
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re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
I am fairly sure that the 544B is a misprint and should be 534B based on the order of the listing of items.
537 is not a Washington/Franklin but is actually the 3 cent Victory issue of 1919 which is one of my favorite stamps.
I think I like the Liberty album better as there are individual stamps in the Washington/Franklin series missing that have a higher catalog value, I think, than my entire USA collection! Plus I really like the additional details it provides about the stamps and their subjects. I do like the cream colored paper that the Scott National, Specialty, and International albums use.
I originally worked on all mint stamps for my USA collection starting from Scott #597 and up as I knew that finding a Scott #596 was likely impossible. It is not even listed as available in mint in the current catalog!
Regarding the Scott # 85A stamp, Bill Gross is reported to have traded a block of four of the C3a invert to Mystic Stamp Company for it which allowed him to complete his USA collection likely the only truly complete USA collection to be formed ever.
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
28 Aug 2023
05:08:34pm
re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
I looked up the Bill Gross collection and it sold for over $10 million. I didn't go any further but my guess would be that it would have been broken up. It's a real shame that a billionaire who probably wouldn't even miss the odd $10 million here or there couldn't have donated the collection to a museum to display and keep it together. What a treat it would be to see something like that. I must check to see the extent of the collection, I doubt if he bothered with modern material!!
I also had to change my 537 to 539. The writing above the stamps is still my deceased wife's writing from the 1970's so some of it is a bit faded! It's easy to make a mistake. I like my Liberty album very much for many reasons even though the front cover is taped back on from gross over use and it suffers from a nasty case of album bulge. I can remember putting many of the stamps in and struggling with ID's. If my wife were still around she would be amazed at the progress with the collection. Actually, in a way, she is still buying much of the material since it is the RRSP, now a RRIF, that I originally set up for her that I use to buy a lot of the material!
I also like the descriptions added for the stamps. There's also lots of room in the margins and spare pages for additions not originally provided for!
As far as mint goes I'm actually starting at the same place exactly even though I don't really want to replace some of the Kansas/Nebraska overprints. I also don't want to replace the ones I have as precancels and if the postmarks are interesting I'll keep them there and put the mint next to them!
I get a great kick out of looking at my US and Canada collections since so much time was spent on them.
Sorry to ramble on so!!!!
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re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
You definitely have me beat on page one of my album where I have Scott #'s 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, and 17. These stamps are all used.
Of course, the page one of my mint based stamps International 1840-1963 album set after moving the used stamps to page one to my International 1930 album is a bit woeful with only Scott #'s 1, 24, 26, and 65 being present and frankly not likely to significantly change. I am quite happy about the mint USA Scott #1 though (which was quite a fortuitous purchase) and feel that it starts the album set off nicely. Initially I thought I would work on the first page only with used and an occasional mint stamp but once I got the USA Scott #1 took that as a sign that I should be open to the entire album set being filled with mint only stamps. Not, of course, that I expect all of the albums to ever be truly completed.
The International Junior 1930 album has Scott #'s 1, 9, 11, 14, 24, 73, 65, 68, 94, and 112 on its page one with all stamps except 112 being used. Only page one of this album has used stamps.
My from under the stairs (where I found the albums which I thought I had sold off years ago during a recent cross country move) USA Lighthouse albums have no stamps at all until page 7 where Scott #133 marks the first appearance of a stamp in the album. These are the albums which are in reality my most active current USA collection although I occasionally pick up a stamp for one of the International based collections' USA pages.
Rambling is good and often provides the most entertaining content in our discourses about our collection efforts!
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
28 Aug 2023
05:30:17pm
re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
Jerrel, I have never heard of anyone working on several albums from the same country at the same time. It must get a bit confusing at times but it does sound like great fun. I'm waiting for #13, 10A and 11A to arrive and then will post a picture of my page 1, it'll be impressive. All of mine are used, but my #1 has a really nice red cancel. I posted a picture of the incomplete page in an earlier post that I'm pretty sure you probably saw, I just can't remember where it was! Great talking about our collections. This sight is the only place I can really do that since no one I see on a regular basis collects stamps. That's why this site is so precious to me and I hope it continues for at least as long as I do!!
Found it - the two black mounts will contain 10A and 11A and #13 will be there!
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re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
Bill Gross donated $10 million plus to the National Postal Museum.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ...
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re: Checked a page of Washington's and Franklin's!
I had a bit of a mentor in Kirkland, WA who had six different worldwide albums from 1840 up to 1915 that he was working on all the time. The best of the albums was incredible but he explained that the repetition on the collections increased significantly his knowledge of the issues and often his access to new offerings of the stamps. He was the most enthusiastic stamp collector I have had the privilege to know.
I have four different collections that happen to cover stamps for the USA, two are USA only albums, one Scott and the other Lighthouse, and the other two collections are based on Scott International albums which fortunately represent abridgements of a complete USA collection and could potentially be completed although doing it with all mint stamps as I am doing with one of the albums is unlikely to be completed by me while I believe I have all stamps that would be required to complete the other International Junior 1930 album in my existing long term USA Scott National hingeless album with the possible exception of one or two stamps if I allow mint and used stamps in the album and those while expensive are not out of the question. Currently though I am only allowing used stamps on the first page of that album.
Your first page for the Liberty album is really looking great and the individual stamps are particularly well centered!
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