Identifying a mountain of stamps of same denomination

Especially if you offer him a  !

Offer me case, and I'll drive up to Canada for on-site sorting! Philatarium is much better than me with Japan.

bethg, for countries I am not familiar with or have difficulty reading the script, but already have a reasonable time/denomination grouping, I tend to sort in stacks as follows:

-- small definitives (sub-stack people, topicals such as flowers/birds..., non-living things, other)
-- tall commemoratives (sub-stack people, events, living topicals, non-living topicals...)
-- wide commemoratives (...)
-- square/diamond commemoratives
-- odd-shape commemoratives
That basically gives you about a dozen stacks that are easily workable in batches of 100-500.

I then just go through the catalog and pull out the stamps in catalog order. You'll miss a few, but can catch them during the 2nd run.

For Japanese stamps, always pull out the prefecture stamps first! Otherwise you will end up pulling more hair than stamps. The prefectures can be quickly identified by a slight different font for the country name. I can't post a pic right now, but see the beginning of the Japan Prefecture section in Scott for a comparison of the fonts for national issues and prefecture issues.

Enjoy, and feel free to make simple camera pic post of any you can't find. The modern issues don't really have any varieties that require high resolution. Hope you feel better soom!