A Delivery of Stamps

Had success at the online stamp auction and today there arrived a largish box with $22 of stamps on the outside just to post it. On the inside were thousands of stamps. My strategy was to bid on bulk. There were lots going for all types of amounts and quantities. The most expensive was over $5000 for one lot and there weren't many stamps in it.  In the end I paid $446 which includes postage, commission, insurance, packaging and taxes.  All in all an interesting exercise.  Many lots were passed in so it is now possible to revisit those and buy them for the reserve price. I received 5 albums, 2 shoe boxes and a cake tin crammed with stamps. 

I'm going to need more albums

Info on Coins

The packing has unveiled a coin horde.  I did not want to pack an extra few kilos in coin weight.  This tub of coins has been accumulating over some years including 248 now withdrawn 1c and 2c coins.  I read up on the internet that dealers were selling copper coins for up to 50c.  The commonwealth bank has a coin counting machine which totted up about $50.00 worth of coin minus the copper.  As for the copper, they said a dealer would give me more.  So I wandered across the road to my favorite secondhand book store who is also a coin dealer.  They sell copper coins for 10c each but they buy them at $3 per kilo which is roughly face value and what the bank would have paid me.  However the internet article suggested mint copper coins were going for $15.  So the main prize in the cache I found was a mint roll of 50 1c pieces still in their packaging.  This has to be worth more than 50c.

Rolled Gold?

Coin Counter

Stamp Database

I have purchased an Access Database for recording stamp inventory.  I am using the Microsoft file system to present a pictorial stamp database and now this Access method is primarily a text form with some mathematics for totaling values.  There is a visual component so, as I already have the images, they can be viewed here as well.  There is a link to a web page for each record which may allow for display of a google map if I can work this into it.  I have processed the first 21 stamps in the collection and they have a collective value of $213.60. 

King George V

Stamp Scanner

I have finished scanning the contents of my Australian Stamp Album.  I now have 1150 stamp images which took me about three weeks to scan, requiring around 3 hours per day.  I used a 600 dpi setting which produces a good result as seen below. Other settings like 1200 dpi were possible but I would have been at it for another 3 weeks.  As it is, there are still many stamps to go, I just don't have them yet.  In 1977 I had a catalog which shows there were 433 Australian stamps that had been issued up until that time.  Last week I received the latest 2017 catalog which says Australia has now issued 3459 stamps and that does not include the territories which is approximately an additional 1500 stamps. So if you collect one mint and one used copy of each stamp, I will need space for around 10,000 stamps.

First ever stamp issued by the AAT in 1957

Philately

I have a number of projects but they have been severely interrupted due to prepacking. Tonight I was given a stamp collection and some stamps are still required to be removed from their envelopes.  These stamps have been on the envelope for 20 and 30 yar.  Frank Ostenreid was a WWII German veteran who was captured and sent to Canada for the duration.  There are still envelopes here with stamps on them from Canada.  Now I just have to separate them.

The Official Photo

New home 

Warm Water Soak