Stamps of days gone by, wantlists, and rambling

I just heard the bell of our break cart tinkling, which means I have a few moments to spend with all of you. Trying to make good on my promise to keep up with this blog more frequently, I am typing with my right eye closed currently. I have also been using the writer's trick of carrying a small notebook around into which I can jot thoughts about what I'd like to write about here, as such thoughts invariably occur when one is as far away from a computer as possible.

Today I am thinking about my poor orphaned stamps that my ex-husband took in our divorce. He swore up and down that he wanted to continue collecting and couldn't bear to have me take all of the stamp collections, especially the ones we had worked on together. So I divided up the stamps, keeping the collections that he gave me and trying my best to retain the ones I had worked on since childhood. Now today, many years later, he has not worked on those collections one little bit, and the stamps are still in the boxes, albums and stockbooks where I left them, with a hefty layer of dust added on top of them. But he will not give them to me, and I am afraid that if I try to buy them from him I could never afford his price; after all, the more you want something, the more value it has, and that is the way he thinks. I am consider asking anyway, though.

He has my complete collection of partially plated Canadian Map Stamps (Scott #s 85 & 86), along with all the research tools to go along with them, and many stamps I was still working on plating. I had most of the major re-entries, and was considering making a competitive exhibit of them. There were around 500 map stamps the last I remember counting. I truly enjoyed learning about them and plating them. And that is just a little bit of what he has.

Anyway, sorry to whine to you all. I will stop now.

I am also pondering what to work on next. I think I need to sort the recent GB I have around, and finish soaking the last of it this week. I am probably getting the most caught up on my Australia and Great Britain collections, but still have a LOOOONG way to go. I may be forced to make want lists, one of my most HATED philatelic activities. I try to avoid want lists as much as possible.

Never did get to do much identifying of the classic stuff I was stripping out of the International Junior album, just a little bit. A lot of them are in a pile needing soaking, also, as I simply used my scissors to cut out the ones that were stuck to the page and started filling a box with them.
I found a lot of Iran, even a few with catalog values of a few dollars, but most very common, as you would expect from such an album. If anyone reading this is interested in some rather common but older stamps, give me a yell and I'll let you know if I have the countries you are interested in. Some countries only are represented by a few stamps, though. Or if you want me to write more about them....well, I may do that anyway, as I had some questions in mind as I was trying to identify those Iran stamps.

Well, time to get back to work. Sorry for rambling on this morning.

Rambling on and on,

Suzi

suziboyer@gmail.com