On 8/27/2012 2:58 PM, Roy wrote:

I have an inactive US collection started about age 10 thanks to an album given
to me by an uncle. I collected mint through 1978 when I got ticked off due to
the massive flood of stamps being issued each year. After adding about all the
material to this collection I can afford, I quit collecting for many years.

My wife is a collector though, and I saw an ad in her Linns for the Precancel
Stamp Society a dozen years ago or so, swapped a couple of emails with a dealer,
and before I knew it I was a precancel collector.

I have a bureau collection that is about as complete as it ever will be, Over
this past winter my wife printed out the free PSS album pages for Town and Type
(one example of each type of precancel used in a town) collections for all
states and territories, and I have begun migrating stamps from my hand made
albums to the new ones. The pages are issued by state and territory. All the
US is about 2800 pages.

I have general collections (like a T&T except you try to get a copy of each
precancel type on every face different stamp) for MS, OH, TX and eventually one
for TN. General collections are for the masochistic precancel collector. For
example, a complete Ohio T&T collection is about 1857 types. A complete Ohio
general collection is probably on the order of 30,000-40,000 stamps.

I also collect prepers (precanceled perfins), accumulate plain perfins thinking
that someday I'll buy an album and mount them, and have an accumulation of
precancels that show nail and screw heads used to repair the precancel devices.
Not sure where these are going to end up, but I keep accumulating them.

I collect covers commemorating US Bicentennial events that were issued by the
local historical society, historical site or stamp clubs back in the 70's and
80's. These do not have to be precanceled to interest me. 8^) I do not
collect any commercial or FDC versions of these events.

For several reasons I've been mostly inactive for the last 18 months outside of
buying some accumulations of precancels. Six more months and I hope things will
have straightened out enough to allow me to be an active collector again.

Sorry for the length, but there are few precancel collectors, and thought I
should explain some of the terms.

Good to hear about your precancel efforts. I've created some blank album
pages for precancels. It's very easy to do as almost all the stamps are
the same size. But I'm nowhere near 2800 pages...

Bill