1. Find a source that details the printings. These included Potter & Shelton's listings, Study Papers from the King George VI Collectors Society; or other monographs from
writers who specialized in a specific country - like Bermuda, Jamaica, St. Kitts-Nevis, and a few others.
2. Accumulate as many stamps as possible over a long time period to compare. It is really easy to see the differences in both color and the paper & gum when you have a
number of stamps to compare. In some cases, I have managed to accumulate as many as 50 copies of the same value. This might explain how I became a part-time stamp
dealer.
3. Determine the various characteristics - like perforation, paper and gum and color changes. This was done either on the album pages that I created, or in an Excel
Spreadsheet. When I started making the spreadsheets, I put the Potter & Shelton information in several columns and then merged the Crown Agents report and if it was
available the description by Frank Saunders of the King George VI Collectors Society. The result gave me some idea of the traits to look for as I viewed the stamps.
4. Create some sort of holder for each of the stamps. Initially I created them by hand but later switched to Vario pages with a non-adhesive label for each stamp. The labels
were created in Excel using the information from the various sources.
5. Sort the stamps as closely to accurate as possible, and sometimes take notes as this is done for future use. I put the stamps on black paper and compare the high values first
to try to understand the make up of each set.
The result of this project can be found in the various web sites found in the index. Each page is devoted to a specific Colony and there are full page scans that were done at
high resolution (600 dpi) and compressed into 1200 dpi widths. You can view or download these pages to see what was collected.
One thing that is not shown is the back of the pages - the paper and gum. Although this is very important, it is the most difficult thing to scan usefully. So if you want to
understand the paper and gum, you need to figure it out for yourself. See each of the various scans with basic instructions below. Unfortunately this can be a little
complicated. See my page scans for each of the Colonies mentioned to see my collection of the stamps and the notes about some of them as they were sorted.
In the listings below, SG refers to the Stanley Gibbons Catalogue numbers, and ST is the Scott Catalog listing.
Combine lots to save on postage