So we’re finally at the point where I know my exact numbers for 2021, after all of the books have been written and all of them have been edited, at least through the beta-stage and I have a good handle on what I actually accomplished last year.
Let’s go over it and I’ll let you in on a couple of things that are going on for 2022, for anyone who is interested.
I recently had an extended conversation with a couple of other philatelists and the subject was how we could get young kids interested in collecting stamps. A lot of things were suggested and eventually, the discussion rolled around to how we got involved, back in the day.
I told my story, but I admitted that my path in wasn’t one that anyone could ever follow today. It’s a shame but the world has changed to such a degree that people back when I got started, our stories can almost certainly never be repeated.
But I’ll pass it along anyhow, just in case anyone has any ideas.
This has come up in discussions a couple of times of late and I thought that I would put my thoughts down in one place, once and for all, because I’d rather have somewhere to point people to if they’re curious, rather than having to go over the same ground time and time again.
I’m really dissatisfied with modern social media when it comes to the things that I do. Here’s why and here’s what I’d like to see instead. If anyone has any ideas where I can go for these things, I’m all ears.
I love snakes and reptiles. I always have. I’ve had them for years, off and on, but I’ve long since recognized that there are some things that I just don’t care for when it comes to our cold-blooded pets. Mostly though, especially since recently, I started looking in on some reptile subreddits, there is one thing that I really, really actively dislike.
See you below the fold to see what it is.
There’s a sub over on Reddit called r/askastampcollector and the only thing it ever gets used for, virtually always in fact, is people just show up with stamps that they found or inherited or they were given, looking for a big paycheck.
It doesn’t work that way and a lot of them get positively upset when they receive the news that what they have is worthless, but honestly, can we just stop worrying about value when it comes to collectibles? You people are going about it all wrong!
This is one that just bugs me, mostly because amateur writers tend to be so absurdly touchy about just about everything. They will ask for advice and when you offer it, no matter how delicately you do so, they will freak out because they don’t want to do what you’ve suggested. They want to continue doing all of the “bad” things they’ve been doing, they just want a “good” outcome.
Reality doesn’t really work that way!
I tried. I really did. Then everything went wrong!
I said, back when I was tracking the last book, that I was planning on taking a well-deserved week-long vacation between Christmas and New Years. It seemed like the perfect time to do it. My wife would be home two of the five days anyhow (I was off the whole week) and I wasn’t going to get anything done regardless. Therefore, time to take it easy, right?
Yeah, not so much.
However, I hadn’t done anything with it because I was still rolling it around in my head and it hadn’t reached a point where I had a firm idea of the outline or the characters, just a vague idea that I thought sounded good.
All that changed this morning though and I finally pulled the trigger. So here’s why.
Okay, maybe complain isn’t the right word, but there’s one thing that I’ve noticed in poking around there, the overwhelming majority of videos made about stamp collecting over on YouTube, they all tend to be aimed at, shall we say, the beginners?
So let’s talk about that, please.
I’ve been kind of bored lately and I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos on stamps. A lot of them have been about kiloware, people getting big bags of used worldwide stamps and going through them and while I typically don’t collect like that, the overwhelming majority of my collections are mint, I figured heck, I haven’t done that for years so I went and bought a couple of packets online and I’m going to go through them, breaking it down as I go.
