The Collection, Back of the Book

I created my own customized album pages using SoftPro's AlbumGen software for my collection that spans from the first government issues in 1847 to the year 1950. This software is well worth the money because it allows me to layout an album page any which way I wish - try doing that with any commercially avaiable stamp album on the market at any price.

I started collecting as a kid with used stamps I cut from envelopes and what relatives sent me. I've only started seriously collecting stamps since the last half of the 1990's concentrating on the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century focusing mainly on the Washington/Franklin issues. I've acquired my stamps from a number of different sources, mainly from retail outlets, buying box lots at local auctions and ebay.

I was looking for something different to collect so on a whim I did a post office search on Jim Forte's Postal History website for towns named Girard. I had lived in Georgia for the better part of 10 years and knew of and visited a town named Girard in Burke Co Georgia so I was not expecting very many names to be returned. To my surprise the search returned 22 towns across the country that are named Girard. Some of the towns are historical as they do not exist anymore or were absorbed into larger near by cities while some still exist to this day. The two Girard & Joplin R.P.O. covers were lucky eBay finds as there were not listed in the original post office search.

I would love to hear from anyone who has a cover from a town named Girard and I'm always on the hunt for new govers to fill the empty spaces in my collection.

Click on the thumbnail images below to go each individual page that makes up my collection.