Welcome to my new stamp trading blog.  It will be a while before I get my stamp trading website up and running – I have lots of sorting to do before I get to the point where I can start trading stamps.

I expect to start cataloguing my stamps within a couple of years.  It will undoubtedly take multiple years before I have my initial catalogue work done, at which point I’ll be ready to start trading.  I have enough stamps that I’m sure I’ll die before they all get sorted, and that’s OK.  It will keep me busy in the meantime.

As a rough idea, I can point out the following brief stats (updated as of December 2023).  I have my piles of stuff roughly organized according to whether the stamps are on trimmed paper cutouts or whether they are already soaked off (or have never been on an envelope in the first place).  I still have 240 Kg of on-paper stamps to soak.  Another 175 Kg of off-paper stamps need to be sorted – I am picky about how clean the stamps are, so any with hinge or gum remnants get soaked again, even if they are already off paper.  About 95 Kg are already off paper and sorted according to country.  These are the stamps I will start cataloguing soon, and that will make up the initial batch of stamps for trading.

I have made a start on cataloguing some of the stamps which have already been sorted – take a look at my Colnect page for a listing of this modest beginning.  Once I have enough countries sorted I will be ready to start some limited trading.

Obviously, it’s not possible for me to know which stamps I have yet to soak & sort and which stamps I have ready to trade.  But that’s OK, because my stamp trading methods are probably different from those used by most people.  In short, I’ll trade for almost anything I have in one of my catalogues (and I have a LOT of catalogues).  So, even if I already have the stamp, I’ll still trade something to get another copy.  I’ll post again later to explain how that works.

I’ll also post about what you can expect to find among the stamps I have to trade.  I do have some expensive stamps in my collection, particularly in my Canada MNH collection, but I am more interested in trading relatively common stamps.  Of course, like most worldwide collectors I have lots of common postally used definitives from the usual major countries, but I have lots of interesting stuff too – I have large amounts of stamps from small countries like Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, etc., lots of mint stamps from Canada (my home country), Germany (including Berlin), Israel, Russia, etc., big piles of used commemoratives from Australia, Austria, Japan, Switzerland, etc.  I enjoy snooping through auction sites online to find stocks that will give me good stamps to trade, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff in this first batch I am now working on.  I have found some decent stocks of Netherlands Antilles, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Swaziland, etc etc etc.

In the meantime, it’s back to my real job.  This blog has been set up to give me a placeholder for future postings.  I won’t post much now, but I’ll get around to working on it more in the future.  Have a look occasionally to check on my progress, because as I get closer to being ready to set up my stamp trading website, I’ll be posting more about what I have to trade.  I look forward to trading stamps with you!

Ryan