Austria

State of the Collection - July 2024

Almost a year. Almost a year since my last article. I've been busy! Should I feel guilty? I don't think so, it is my pet fun project after all. Life has been very busy and my stamps are now splitting time with collecting records and CDs, trying to learn a new sport, and a number of other things.

But not abandoned! I've been getting a LOT of work done on my stamps as well. Specifically, in offloading material I don't need anymore. Thank goodness for club auctions! I've also done a lot of rearranging, partly out of a desire for efficiency and partly because everything already had to be moved out of (and then back into) my office due to getting new flooring put down. That coupled with the reduction in mass due to getting rid of material means it made sense to have things arranged a bit differently.

What I've gotten rid of so far:

I decided to stop my US collection roughly at the end of WWII. (Scott #940 or so, as I recall). US stamps aren't my main focus, so I don't feel the need to complete a collection as I do with my Austrian material. I scoop stuff up if I find it at a good price, but it's not generally what I seek out. The exceptions to this include the Flag Over Porch series, which I collect, and any unused postage that is modern - which I actually use on mail. Roughly ten pounds of off-paper modern US material was offloaded at the most recent club auction!
I sifted through all my worldwide material - sorted and unsorted, on paper and off...for countries I don't specifically collect, I set aside everything that looked old or interesting, and offloaded the rest. So now my non-specialty worldwide stuff is all sorted and off-paper (with the exception of a new acquisition, which I will get to later). That was another 10 or so pounds to go to the club auction! (I had to use a hand truck last month!)

What I still need to get rid of:

I have two large plastic tubs filled with modern US FDCs. Thousands of them. Most have come out of box lots I've gotten at club auctions, lots I've bid on because there are other things in them...I don't collect FDCs in general (aside from scooping up Austrian FDCs occasionally). I haven't decided how I want to move these. I know I can get more money (not that I'm in this for that reason) by listing them on eBay, perhaps in lots of 10, 20, 25 FDCs at a time...but at what cost in terms of time making the listings and sending them out? Alternatively I can cart them into the next club meeting and put a $1 opening bid on them and see what happens. I've been back and forth on this for at least a year, who knows if and when I will get around to it. The bins are under my desk so somewhat out of sight and out of mind.
I also need to decide which of the "secondary" countries I'm collecting I still want to collect, and in what date range. France and Italy are two examples that come to mind first - I've been setting aside material from both those countries (among others) with the intent of cataloguing them. They might be a good example to pare down to a date range similar to what I've done with my US material.

Sounds like I'm getting rid of everything, doesn't it? I'm still acquiring though, I'm just being a little more intentional about it.

Here are some of my more notable acquisitions in the last year:

Got a nice box lot of Great Britain/British Area. Two thirds or so of the material is more modern than I'd like (like a small topical collection for Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee) but buried in there was a lot of early GB and colonial stuff. Two sets of SG#2 and #3 among them. I'll repackage the stuff I don't want and list it at an upcoming club auction. I think it was a nice buy overall.
A good friend reached out to me putting me in touch with a member of their family who wanted to pass along his collection to someone who would appreciate it. I was a little skeptical because I had no clue what he had, but boy oh boy was I pleasantly surprised. There was several boxes of loose material (which I've already ingested into my main collections) as well as 4 HUGE Minkus Global albums, a US plate block album (which I will pass along to someone else or use as postage), and a Scott US album with a few spicy little early stamps in it. I'm in the process of breaking down the Minkus albums now - he specialized in GB and British areas, so there's some wonderful material in there. I'm also trying to keep the pages largely intact so that I can bring the albums/pages to club auction in case anyone wants a more or less complete set of Minkus pages through 1970 or so. They'll have to be okay with a few hinge marks, but if it's cheap enough I'm sure there will be a few bites.

I finally got my hands on a 10 Schilling Dolfuß and it's beautiful. That was one of the most glaring holes in my main collection, and as of now holds the top price I've paid for a single stamp. There's a tiny bit of a grease visible in the gum on the back, but it's only noticeable if you're looking for it and it's imperceptible from the front. Good enough for me - especially at the price I got it for!

Other Projects

As I may have written before, I managed to score the entire print run of Austria, the journal of the Austrian Philatelic Society (UK) at one of their mail auctions. I've managed to get all of them digitized (the bulk of which, the first 126 issues, did not exist in digital form). Turns out a book scanner was a great investment! I've been working with the president of the society (who is also the current webmaster) to tackle getting the site updated and also trying to find a great way to make the back catalog of journals available to members in an easily searchable fashion.

I also plan to begin making album pages this year. My hope is to start with modern Austrian material and work my way back. My hope is that my album pages will be written in such a way that they will essentially be their own exhibit. The reason that I want to start modern and work my way back is because the earlier material still needs a lot of work - for instance translating information from German about the 1850 issue in terms of its multiple types and sub-types...I want to have all that ironed out before I make pages, so that I don't have to keep re-making pages as I learn more about them. I've decided that I'm going to use Scribus for this, so high up on my list is also...learning Scribus. I am choosing Scribus because it's open source and works perfectly on Linux, and it's also an application that I can use real measurements in. For instance if I know I want to make a square 15 by 18 mm, I can do that instead of guessing at it, printing it, realizing it's too small or large, etc. by trying to translate it into pixels or similar. I'm sure there's the possibility of an article or two in there somewhere, as it will be a huge learning experience for me.

Other Notes

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Bob Hole, from Bob Collects Stamps. I've interacted with him several times over the last few years, and he was a wonderful person. His videos are still on YouTube, look him up.
I'm on Facebook and Instagram, but I rarely interact there - things are posted there automatically. If you want a fast answer from me on anything, be sure to check out my Mastodon account - https://philately.social/@turngren_phila (and any collectors are welcome to make an account there as well - accounts still have to be manually approved, but it doesn't take me long to get to them, it's a spam prevention measure)

That's all for now...