Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
01:35:52pm
Then I discovered a Nova Scotia stamp one day and decided to try to collect some of the Canadian Provinces. This is much the same way I started my German collection. I came across a Prussian stamp with a really cool postmark and decided, hey, this is what I want to get. So I started my Prussian collection which grew to other States and eventually to all of Germany.
I've also loved anything related to the British Royal Family (I remember getting up at 5am and watching "the wedding of the century" in 1981!)
So, I started picking up pieces here and there and that grew to a very nice sized Royalty collection.In my work on my German collection which really became my "focus" collection, I was drawn to the DDR, particularly because of the political significance displayed in the stamps. As I've researched more about each stamp or series, I realised that I was missing something really important. Russia!
Of course in my worldwide collection, I had bits and pieces of Russian stamps, so then I decided to bring the two together, side by side.
So that's my collection in a nutshell. I've got some other smaller interests and covet my Queen Victoria stamps - if it's got her face on it, I love it! LOL
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So, what about you guys? What do you collect and why? I'm interested in hearing from people who collect topicals. I suppose you could call my Royalty collection a topical, but I've always been intrigued as to what draws a person to collect something like butterflies or flowers or trains, etc. etc.
I'm looking forward to hearing from all you guys. And for those who read the discussion board but really don't feel they have anything to add, please step up and share your collecting interests. The world of stamp collecting and anything philatelic (FDCs, Covers, etc) is such a vast world, please, share with us. I personally am looking forward to learning from all of you.
Kelly
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Primarily, I am a U.S. collector. That's how I started out as a kid. Unfortunately, research for collecting back then was difficult for a kid and the hobby went to bed for quite some time.
When I got back into the hobby back in 2010, due to my father dying, I inherited a foreign collection as well. I've often talked about "The Garbage Bag Collection" which was as it's name describes, a bunch of stuff in books and loose in a garbage bag. I wanted to kindle an interest in the hobby for my kids so I took some advice from people here and showed them various topical that caught their eyes. Hence the posting I always use when people ask me the very same question you asked:
"Anything that peaks my kids interest... you know, cool boy stuff... like space, planes, trains, cars, boats, buildings, dinosaurs, wildlife, sports and things that go BOOM!!!"
As of now, I have all of the U.S. stuff from those collections processed and in the proper books. I am still sorting all the foreign stuff into countries, but luckily, the garbage bag has been replaced by a nice plastic tub full of marked plastic bags representing countries. The next step of course will be to ID all of that stuff. I'll probably loose my eye-sight from all the squinting over the next year, ha ha.
---Pat
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02:39:16pm
My collections are varied, I consider my self a general worldwide collector but I am starting to focus on the classical era of stamps and will probably narrow it down further from that. I also currently have a modest Canada, GB, Machin, German, Japanes and Russian collection.
From a thematic/topical standpoint I have airplanes, ships, paintings, rugby, soccer, militaria just starting chess and am looking at adding to and narrowing down some of my thematic interests. I collect my topicals because each of the topics is something I have an interest in. I love planes and actively flight sim, I was a Sea Cadet and love all things navy. I played competitive rugby and soccer as well as refereeing to soccer to a semi professional level. My BA is in history and I concentrated in military history, I enjoy playing chess and I appreciate I nice painting and can't afford thre really nice ones.
Where I design my own album pages, I try to provide a write-up of the individual stamps. This is part of the fun of the collection.
Great question Kelly.
Alyn
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08:22:12pm
Kelly,
As you know, for now I'm dabbling in the whole world of stamps....literally!! I find that science, medicine and nature interest me the most in terms of topicals but I'll be sitting with my stamps and see a train and think "Oh, I should collect trains!" I guess that makes me a scattered collector with no clear topic. I'm sure I'll have one some day, but for now, I'm a worldwide collector.
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I started out worldwide, and still pursue that, primarily pre-1940 (altho' I don't turn away more recent stamps--and the pre-1940 era means some pretty tight financial restrictions). However, I have gotten into postal history--specifically related to my hometown area, where I live now and my spouse's family's areas of history. (It all ties in to my interests in history and genealogy.) Right now I am sorting a huge accumulation of worldwide which runs from the late 19th century to the 1990's--and I'm really enjoying it. I guess my goal is to bring order from disorder (but then I am seriously Type A...).
Roger
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02:54:38am
" .... What do you collect and why? ...."
I have posted parts of this essay in other discussions here and there, but it does answer he question posed.
I started collecting stamps as a young boy probably at the age of eight or so. My parents collected stamps during the early years of their marriage which was during the Great Depression (1929-1939). During World War II they did not have the time to sit and collect things in the evenings but continued to accumulate any stamps that they came upon in the mails. Unlike today almost all the mail bore real stamps which could be saved by a collector.
After the War ended they continued their collection, moving stamps from old pages and binders into a New Scott Blue International Album which they had bought in the late '40s. Believe it or not, that one three inch wide album had spaces just about all the stamps of the world to the date of its printing.
(Today a complete world wide collection requires thirty or forty similar large thick albums.)
I think it gave them some time to sit calmly and do something together and involve my brothers and me in a quiet family activity. Even when they were too busy to soak and mount stamps, they continued to accumulate anything that came their way on the corners of envelopes. I remember them also getting bundles of stamps that had been saved by friends and relatives from envelopes that they had received. Most were United States stamps but enough were from other countries to make it interesting for a young boy to search the 12" globe and a world atlas for their source.
By the time I was about eight years old I had my own small album and often received small packets as a birthday or X-mas gift. In those days you could buy an inexpensive packet of used worldwide stamps in the very common Woolworths or SS Kresge "Five and Ten Cent Stores" . Sometimes they had a cloth bag on sale with world wide mixtures for probably $0.25, so I am sure that that was where I actually bought stamps myself for the first time.
In those days there were many small stamp dealers with neighborhood stores everywhere. Schools had student stamp clubs as an after school activity. Dealers had boxes of penny stamps that a young collector could spend his allowance on.
Then about age ten or twelve I discovered that girls were for more than just pulling ponytails, or shooting spitballs at, and the stamp albums were eventually put aside, but as my parents had done, I continued to accumulate whatever I found in the mails.
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But after college and a four year stint in the US Coast Guard, I joined the Merchant Marine. One rainy afternoon, about 1963-4, I was home for a few days between trips to Germany, the UK and back to New York, when I noticed both my old albums and the Blue Scott's International on a nearby shelf. As I idly began to look through the albums and the piles of stamps that had been accumulated in a desk drawer something interesting caught my attention.
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There were spaces for three stamps from the Tokelau Islands on one page.
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Now, few people other than collectors have ever heard of the Tokelau Islands and even less have ever been there. However for about three years I had been stationed on the CGC Buttonwood (WAGL-306) a small 180' long US Coast Guard cutter home-ported in Honolulu, Hawaii. Most of the time this vessel sailed the Western and South Pacific on five and six month cruises, visiting many of the Trust Territory Islands, the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong, Okinawa and even American Samoa as well as many of the other atolls and islands in between, some that only got their names into the news during WW II when they were the site of some horrendous battles.
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On one trip after visiting Pago Pago, the main port in American Samoa and its capital city, for a couple of weeks, the Captain met some missionaries who were desirous of transport to the Tokelau Islands. Apparently there was only an occasional supply ship that would call there and they would have had to wait for several weeks for the next inter-island trader to arrive in Samoa and run that way.
So as a gesture of friendship or something, when we sailed for Honolulu we took them aboard and sailed north to the three atolls bearing that name, stopping for a short time at each one. If I remember correctly the trip to the Tokelaus took about two days as the CG cutter seldom exceeded 12 knots, unless the wind was behind us. These atolls were more or less on the route we were going to follow north anyway to other remote islands on our return leg to Hawaii.
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The Tokelaus are three small atolls about a day or two steaming north of Samoa, so isolated that they are not visible from one another and certainly removed from almost anywhere else. The three stamps each referred to one of the islands and showed some aspect of native life. There was no harbor to speak of so when we arrived we had to maintain power while the natives came out to the ship with shells and wooden poi bowls to sell or trade. They used small canoe-like boats and many, both children and young adults were either naked or nearly so. I am sure that the horrified missionaries put an end to that in short order.
After a brief stop at each island during which our passengers departed we went on our way to other equally remote islands such as Howland and Baker that after the loss of Amilia Earhart are seldom in the news.
In some ways the visit was prescient of the scenes in the blockbuster movie "Hawaii" that was produced four years later when the sailing vessel from New England paused at different Hawaiian Islands debarking a missionary whose goal was to do good, and, as the punch line of the Hawaiian joke goes, considering who wound up with the Island's wealth, "They did damm well !"
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Finding the spaces for the Tokelau stamps in the old album got me to delve further through the pages, looking at both the stamps we had and the intriguing open spaces. A day or so later I went into New York City to rejoin the USNS Geiger for its next trip across the pond and stopped at Macy's Department Store in New York City . Since this was some fifteen or more years after the date of the old blue Scott Album I had realized that a new album was needed. I bought a large new H.E. Harris Citation album for the envelopes that we had accumulated and were stuffed with the newer stamps that had been saved by my parents over the previous ten or fifteen years. An envelope of Dennison Hinges and a couple of World Wide packets found their way into my shopping bag also. On the trip back to my parents home on Long Island before we sailed I kept looking through the things I had bought and the thrill that stamp collectors often feel made the ride an adventure.
That is how the bug bit me and I have been collecting, sorting, soaking and eventually mounting stamps ever since.
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The Harris Album accompanied me to sea from then on growing into two thick albums as I found stamp stores and dealer all over the world. I even had an extra lifejacket with a ten foot long lanyard, a roll of quality duct tape and two sealable plastic bags ready in my compartment for emergencies. Fortunately they were never needed.
That epiphany was about 1964 and I have been an active collector ever since. A few years later at a stamp bourse I met a dealer who had removed just about all the stamps from a 15 volume set of Minkus Supreme Global Stamp albums, so I bought them all for about $35.00. I still use the Minkus set today for my basic world wide albums although I have added four or five more binders to hold more pages, and have eight Scott's binders for a second Worldwide collection I started for the duplicates that seemed to gather almost by themselves.
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During those years I have never regretted becoming a stamper. I found stamp stores in Istanbul, Beirut, Aden, Calcutta and Bombay, Singapore, Manila and Kaoshung, Guam and Saigon as well as all over Europe and of course the USA ports where my ship stopped. I met even more stamp collectors and maintained a correspondence with some for years after I visited their country.
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Today, my child's Worldwide Stamp Album has grown into a room in the house set aside mostly for stamps, albums, shoeboxes, file drawers, stock books, catalogs and informational books about the hobby.
Over the years I have pulled several countries stamps from the World Wide Albums and began to put them on my own pages dedicated to that country.
My interest in Machins came from a deep interest in the earlier Wildings with their graphite lines, phosphor bands and revolving watermarks, then, like Topsey, "dey jes grew an' grew".
On a trip to the Far East I had become friends with another collector who showed me his Gibbons catalog and was able to explain the intricacies of the Wilding series, fortunately just before I tossed a bunch of seeming duplicates overboard. On another trip the ship's Radio Operator's passion was an extensive and quite valuable collection of Newfoundland as well as the classic US Air Mails both of which were ailing along with him.
At first the Machins with only Queen Elizabeth's profile and the value had seemed so plain and potentially boring. I had extensive collections built up of Norse Post Horns, Chinese Junks and Reapers, the ubiquitous Wildings and some other long definitive series. On a long trip to Ceylon and back I accumulated bundles of the Crown Agents Key Plate types from three dealers in Columbo, Beirut and Aden to study and sort. Then the Machins began to come fast and furious with their seeming infinite variations. Who could resist ?
I have often bought catalogs from other countries as they provide much more information that Scott does. Other books that explore some detailed aspect of philately including an almost complete set of Billigs handbooks have come my way. There is really no limit to where the hobby can take the collector.
My decision to collect postally used stamps was made almost fifty years ago and has not been regretted and it came with a companion decision. I plan to die before my collection comes up for resale and let someone else worry about what it is worth. I have left informational instruction sheets explaining some of the ins and outs as well as the common pitfalls of disposing of a family's legacy collection. I hope that one of my children or grandchildren will be able to do more than just hold a garage sale on a rainy Saturday morning.
I have had the pleasure of ownership.
I have had the excitement of the chase and the thrill of success as some interesting addition completes a page, or even better, a series of pages.
I have long benefited from the knowledge of other cultures, of the details of printing and production that even the most oblivious accumulator is exposed to in his collecting habits. And then there is the vicarious enjoyment of visiting faraway lands that I will never actually see, or of mentally returning to places that I have visited in my youth when I traveled extensively. And last but by no means least, I have found friendships and sometimes, companionship in the numerous friends whom I have met or corresponded with from all corners of this world. These things can neither be quantified nor taken away easily. They also cannot be sold in a box or an album to another person. But to me that is the true value of stamping.
Some years ago there was an article in the then current Life Magazine that told the story of several more or less wealthy (Translation: Filthy rich) stamp collectors and illustrated some of the gems in their possession. One very well known collector, in explaining why he traveled around the states and sometimes the world, purchasing rare and unusual stamps for his voluminous collections, said in response to a question as to why he was so motivated; "You do not know what stamps can do to a man." I remember reading that in 1954 and about ten years later came across a copy of the magazine so I bought it. I still have the beat up copy on a shelf in my stamp room.
Many times, especially after I resumed the hobby, I thought about the meaning of those words and their inherent truth. Most people do not understand why these little pieces of paper create such interest, and in truth, I cannot think of why, or how, they manages to mesmerize men and women so completely. But I do know that they do so.
For some stampers financial gain is as important as the less quantifiable benefits I mentioned.
I understand that. I suppose all of us have a secret hope that something that we collect will eventually have some value above and beyond what we paid for it or the value of the effort we spent looking for it.
I will state categorically from years of experience and observation that, in my opinion, the majority of stampers who seek stamps as an investment, (They actually are usually accumulators.) will gain comparatively far less than they hope to, while those who seek the simple pleasure of possession and completion of a theme or an album are quite likely to be pleasantly surprised. Or their heirs will.
One important rule to consider is a general rule, not limited to stamps; "If it is made for collectors, it is not collectable." It refers to fancy ceremonial coins, plates, model cars and so on. It does not mean that an individual cannot enjoy owning some special souvenir that they personally find interesting, attractive or otherwise meaningful, but the things that are truly collectable are the common everyday items that even if made in vast numbers were discarded and lost to our culture. Then years later someone decided to accumulate similar items and a collection of some strange item is born. The annals of collections are full of those items. And today quite often they earn a premium that can be very significant in relation to the original value of the item. It’s a strange world.
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I'm not sure. 
Let me think about this. I will have to reach pretty deep and come up with something really profound.
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Charlie hopefully you put this story someplace for your kids to read before they decide to have that garage sale.
The most valuable gift I received from my great grandfather before he died was a letter he wrote about his life and immigration to the US.
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02:53:31pm
Oh yes, Michael, I have that and many other files telling of the things I've seen the places I've been and many thoughts that have popped into my mind over the years.
One of the benefits of writing a lot of letters and being wordy is eventually a large story develops that can be read by my children and grand children.
One of the things that bothers me is that neither of my grandfathers left much in the way of stories beyond what I can recall vaguely from some casual conversations. Yet my great grand father came from Ireland as a teen and joined the US Navy during the Civil War. He later married and raised eight or so children. But other than a letter from the War Department Veterans affairs in the late 1870s explaining that he had a pension of some kind due to injuries, there is simply nothing left but dust.
My other grandfather often told my cousins and me about his teen years when he sailed on a ship that carried supplies to remote lighthouses along the New England Coast, probably a vessel of, or chartered by, the US Lighthouse Service an organization that was absorbed by the US Coast Guard in 1939.
I do recall him speaking of the waves that swamped a longboat and a friend who drowned along the rocky shorelines. He explained that they had no motor launch so the boats had to be rowed by strong seamen through the surf. But I was too young to write things out and had no idea that what must have seemed so crystal clear sixty years ago would be shrouded on a mental fog today.
That is so very similar to the type ship and voyages about the Central Pacific that I referred to in the previous post. But I was young when he spun his stories and he was not inclined to write things down so I am left with a strong suspicion marinating in fanciful speculation.
So your advice is well taken and some of our friends here at SoR ought to take heed and type out what they recall of their adventures before it is too distant a memory.
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Charlie:
I have the same experience with my grandfather (and others in the family)related stories. I vaguely remember some of them, others are just faint tickles. Those frustrations plus not having a clue about asking questions that would fill in holes in my quest to compile a family genealogy. I have no letters from grandparents, but I do have one from an uncle written from Tokyo Bay 2 days after the signing of the surrender in Aug, 1945. I treasure that. Many other family letters were destroyed by my mother after my father died because she was angry at him for dying. I suppose we all have stories like this.
Roger
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CDJ,
Your replies are great, and very interesting reading. You say that we should put our memories in writing, which by the way I have done, but I think that you should write a book on your adventures.
I only have one correction to your writings, and that is her name is Amelia Earhart, not Emilia. This little bit of editing shows that I really read every thing you wrote.
Keep them coming.
Richaard
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01:21:42am
Its Amelia, not Emilia, of course. I knew that, but just had one of those brain gasps.
I am going to edit it and any other typos I see.
Thanks, Richaard
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During WWII my dad went off to war and left me his stamp collection to manage. Unfortunately my dad was not a true collector but saved every stamp he could buy from the local stamp dealer.....I never found one stamp of any value. I've always been an organizer so I took it upon myself to start with the US collection and make something of it. $10,000+ since I started I now have an impressive collection. Since my family is Canadian I started on this country next.....although not as complete as the US stuff it is well represented. Next came Japan, I had access to many of the stamps of the period and also acquired many of the older issues. Although I do not collect GB I do have many of the early issues as these were printed before US stamps, thus an interest. I really enjoy the back of the book stuff, it's fun and unusual. My US collection includes PB's of most of the stamps post 1920 except those $5,000 or more issues.
I'm losing interest in the modern era stamps as I find them most boring and too costly to justify the expense according to the way I collect and of course the current economy.
Perry
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I started collecting stamps when I was 8, now well over 50 years later I am still collecting, Australia, New Zealand, UK & Canada, my daughter took over my USA collection when she was 8, she is now 16.
The one thing that frustrated the hell out of me when I was young was the cost of stamp catalogues, when I first got involved with computers in the 70's I saw the possibilities, so it was only a matter of time before I produced the Australian Online Stamp Catalogue, currently all stamps and most booklets along with SESS Sheetlets are listed from 1913 to 2005, I am currently working on 2006
http://australianstrampcatalogue.com
Larry
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I started out as a kid with a collection Netherlands and a collection worldwide. Both were one stockbook. The worldwide collection grew and at a certain time I decided worldwide was a bit too much, so I concentrated on a few countries. These were mostly countries I already had the most stamps of, and/or found the most interesting. Countries such as Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand. Once I found out about stamp exchanges through the internet, with wantlists etc, I reached a point where I could not get any further with most countries. Not without large costs anyway because only the really expensive stamps were still missing.
So I thought what to do next and I decided to go for less common countries (at least over here in the Netherlands), such as Japan, Nepal, Mauritius, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and finally Egypt. In most cases the choice was rather random: for some reason I liked the country or its stamps. An important factor was that these countries are not really in high demand here, so it is relatively easy get them in exchanges at stampshows, because most collectors are glad to get rid of them
For Egypt it was a bit different. When I started that collection I had a relation with an archaeologist specialized in ancient Egypt. It did not work out with her in the end, but the Egyptian stamps remained
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I started out collecting world wide, but soon I started concentrating solely on my own country, Denmark and Greenland. At a certain point I only lacked a dozen of stamps. Not the prettiest but definately the most expensive. As I love the engraved stamps of my country and I had all those, I suddenly found myself collecting recess pictorial definitive stamps of British Commonwealth. I still build on that collection and I also add commemorative sets of similar size and style. After working on that for around 10 years I discovered the Antarctic Territories AAT, BAT, South Georgia, Ross Dependency and FSAT along with Falkland Islands Dependencies. Only the latter and BAT and South Goergia has produced that type of definitive sets I collect, but I saw the rest of their productions and fell in love 
So now I collect the series I mentioned from Br. Commonwealth + Antarctic territories and Greenland. I particularly love the engraved stamps which are still issued by both Greenland and FSAT
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First, I joined the club this week, and look forward to being an "active" member starting with this entry. Up until the start of 2013, I was a thematic collector. Fourteen years with tall sailing ships on stamps (world wide) Always to be my first love! Being a disabled veteran and only 56 years old, I decided to add to my collecting interest because of the time I hope to have in this wonderful hobby. I'm adding all issues that have to do with the Universal Postal Union, world issues from 1956, and the 1937 Paris International Expo. I enjoy keeping very extensive records and belonging to a local stamp club. (my first one in fact) I enjoy the fellow collectors I've come to know along the way. Being my VA comp. payment is my only income, I find the hobby is easy to enjoy with very limited funds each month. After all, I'm a collector not an investor.
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Welcome Aboard Popeye56............We sincerely hope you enjoy our club and participate as often as you desire. We're here to help, as much as possible. We have some very knowledgable folks on deck who collect pretty much everything and I'm sure they are willing to answer any questions you may have. Thanks for entering the discussion board. Perry
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OK, Here's my deep thought....
I knew my mother had kept a few stamps here and there. But as I said here before when I first joined sor, I ended up with my mother's little stamp collection when she passed away this past summer. Her small stockbook was actually very well stocked, mostly u.s. stamps and blocks from the 30s and 70s. I had always thought about collecting stamps, well not always. But as I went through my mothers things and took a real good look at her meager stamp collection, I decided to do it. That's when I had come across and joined sor.
Now... Honestly, I am not too interested in "postal" history, or anything else "postal," for that matter, and collecting has not changed my view. OK, maybe just a bit. I am working small antique postal scales into my antique scale collection. And I love "Old,Old" like Old West Post offices/museums.
So after really thinking about the question here at hand, here's what I can honestly say...
I collect stamps, for the "art," the "pictorial" printed on the stamp, the "history" that the "picture" on the stamp conveys. This obviously has a lot to do with why I moved head first in to "Topical Collecting."
I do not need to collect 10 of the "same stamps" just because they have different "denominations" on them, nor would I go out of my way to buy multiples of the same stamp, just because they are a different color.
I acquire a stamp soley for the "picture" that is on it.
As to what topics I collect/buy for... it really does depend on what mood I'm in, and what "catches" my eye. A recent example, many of you may know I have been collecting "Vatican," stamps. Now although I am a religious person, I am not a church-going person, and I am not catholic, (although my wife and kids are) but when I saw the "art" in some vatican stamps that were up for auction, I decided to buy, and now I have a growing collection of Vatican stamps, along with my Christmas stamp collection.
I know many collect stamps with ships on them. Currently I don't, and have no interest in starting to, even though we used to own a '62 - 34ft Tollycraft with twin engines, it doesn't translate into an interest in stamps. Who knows why?? Don't know!
So in summation, I am a topical collector, collecting for the Art, the Photography, depicted ON the stamp and I can spend quite a bit of time, just perusing what I have collected, and think of it as just my own little art/history museum.
Clayton
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Just like Clayton, I love countries that issue engraved stamps with art on them. However, I don't just collect "art" stamps, or have the desire to try to truly collect world-wide stamps, so have been concentrating on just GB, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Italy and to about 1950 of the U. S. stamps. A lot of what I enter in the auction is from countries that I have collected at one time, or another, but decided to give them up and really concentrate on the countries listed above.
Mike
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04:21:58pm
When I read about collecting stamps for the art on them - i.e. famous paintings that one knows one will never acquire but can have a tiny replica on a beautiful 2" piece of paper, etc., I recall a discussion I had many years ago with a friend who was not a stamp collector. I was showing him a few of my previous ctos from the cereal boxes and the old five and dime style bags. He saw a group of nudes. His eyes lit up and said "hey, are there a lot of stamps with naked chicks on them?" I started to laugh and said "well, the catalogues are in black and white so you can't really tell how many are out there but from what I've seen, yup, I think there are. Why?" He said, "well, I can't hide playboys in my room anymore, Mum found my collection, so maybe I oughta look for miniature versions like these stamps and then I can just tell her that they are art!".
I think he may have taken a couple of my "art nudes" but I doubt he ever took an interest in stamp collecting.
Kelly
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05:59:23pm
That reminds me of being about ten years old and discussing the very confusing "La maja desnuda" from Spain with on of my cousins. Being brought up in a very repressed Irish Catholic family where even the word "SEX" was thought to be a four letter word we studied it with a magnifier in great detail trying to figure out what girls were all about.
The problem was, to our extremely naive inquiring minds, the image raised more questions than it answered.
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07:47:36pm
Welcome Popeye! I hope you enjoy SOR!
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I am new to this stamp collecting thing. I work at a small town post office in Nova Scotia. We are a very busy little office however as it is located in a University town. There are locals and students here from every corner of the globe. I am not much of a stamp collector however. My interest at the present time is merely to share with others and maybe send some nice Canadian stamps to people around the world that are interested in them. And maybe I will, at some point, begin my own personal collection.
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10:16:09am
Welcome karlmalone! Stay here for a bit and the collecting bug might just bite you like it bit the rest of us!
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and nothing we collectors like more than a postal clerk who's attuned to the way we want stuff: heavy on the commemoratives and light on the Sharpie
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I always had an interest in the U.S. space program since John Glenn's flight in 1962. I watched every launch on television when they were shown years ago. In 1972 I saw an article in Linn's about the Space Unit and found out information about them. This ignited my interest in collecting space covers and autographs. I started collecting with the Skylab space station in 1973. I also was interested in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. I have an exhibit that I show a few times a year. Check it out in the exhibits section. To this day, I follow the exploits on the International Space Station. I plan to write new articles for Stamporama.
P.S. I am also a postal clerk.
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I used to collect WW but soon found out that this was impossible.
Basically, I am down to about 10 countries now, those being: Canada, Belgium, GB, Germany, Iceland, Greenland, US airmails only, Hawaii, Australia and NZ. Why? I find these stamps interesting plus had an advanced collection on at least 4 of the countries mentioned.
I also collect postal history and my areas are for the Muskoka / Parry Sound districts plus Canadian military mail. I find the history of my area (Muskoka / Parry Sound)quite interesting. I collect the Canadian military mail only and that is because it gives me a better overview about what the Canadians did during the different wars.
Other postal history areas I like are Belgium, the Sabena airways covers, Royal Visit to North America (1939 only) and NYWF (1939 only)and no, it was NOT the year I was born lol.
Also, I collect the postcards from my area too, plus ocean liners and a special emphasis on the steamer "Noronic".
I know, I still collect too may things but, they all keep me happy. That is the main thing I think
Chimo / Bujutsu
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04:49:05pm
I became a member just a couple of days ago, and absolutely love this club!
I began my collection with a box of stamps my mother had put aside over the years, when I was but 9 years old (around 1957 - do the math). I fell in love with the stories of those little bits of paper from places I could only dream about visiting. Other than an hiatus from 1966 - 1980 to chase girls and drink too much, I have been collecting since then.
I still collect worldwide, although I have little or no interest in much after 1945 (other than some British Commonwealth stuff up to 1960). I am not obsessed with completeness, but I do have a representative collection housed in many albums.
I also collect USA, but focus on pre-1945 here as well. I do have a 99% complete collection of USA MNH from 1940-2000, but stopped at 2000 because the money I was spending on new issues was better aimed at the older stuff.
More later....
Bobby
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06:08:25pm
Welcome, Bobby! I hope you share as much as you can learn and have fun here at SOR!
Bujutsu - I'm a worldwide collector and so I'm interested many of the topics you listed. I would love to learn more about Muskoka and Parry Sound. If you're willing to write an article or put together an exhibit so we can all learn from their stamps about their history, I'm sure many members would be interested!
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Welcome Bobby!!! What is it about girls that just seems to put stamps aside? The same thing happened to me. :-)
As Liz said, I hope you really enjoy the club.
Best regards ... Tim.
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Welcome Bobby!
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For the most part, I collect US issues; everything from the beginning 'til now - postally used.
This includes the area I am most passionate about; federal, state and local revenues.
For me, revenues show a much more in-depth history of us as a nation. And with a great interest in the Civil War era, what better place to start than with the revenues that, arguably, kept the Union from losing the war.
All US back-of-the-book stuff is a strong area for me as well, including -but not limited to- all US protectorates such as Ryukyu's, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc...
My other "minor" interests are;
Machins (they're just fun!)
Cheetahs (the most intelligent of all the big cats...and so beautiful!)
Early Great Britain ( I like the stamps!)
Pitcairn Islands (possibly the most remote pace on earth-2000 miles from anywhere!)
AMG's (Allied Military Government - confusing at times!!)
I do have a mint collection of US, but I don't actively pursue it very often - I'm more interested in stamps that have done what they were created to do.
I'm sure I could include something else, but this has been more than enough to go over for now...!
This is a fun thread - I enjoy hearing what the varied interests are in our members.
...and welcome newcomers! I am glad you saw fit to jump right in here - wonderful!
I've been a member since 2005, but its fun once in a while to tell others your collecting passions.... (like commemorative/signed baseballs!! But that's a DIFFERENT story!LOL)
Randy
Oh almost forgot! (GASP) BASEBALL on stamps, too! Live and love the game!!!
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Welcome aboard Bobby.....thanks for the kind words and the participation in our discussion board. It's a real perk in this club.............................Perry
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hi everyone, I'm pleased to meet you all... I'm Birdie the bird stamp collector,a true thematic collector which means it's more than stamps. I include all sorts of postal stationary, pictorial postmarks, postal history covers..anything interesting with a bird on it that's been thru the postal system. A collection of WW birds is far too broad so I'm narrowing it down to raptors and particularly Golden eagles, Imperial eagles, Bald eagles and birds for the sport of falconry. I would have loved to create an exhibit on falconry but there's just not enough material around, so I extended the theme to the hunting of wild animals and named the exhibit "Catch Them If You Can" which was shown in my home state of Queensland.
Collecting birds on stamps is an extension of my birding (twitching) activities. Having seen nearly all the birds in Australia and in several other countries I'm now happy to hunt for the birds on stamps which I will never see in the wild. As well as birds in MUH condition I also collect used birds with clear cancellations which I add to my http://g.co/maps/tpjra Traveling Birds Google Map.
Besides all these bird stamps I also collect Australia and errors and varieties of bird stamps. That's it for now, I'll end by sharing with you my favorite bird stamp of a carmine bee-eater.
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09:31:16am
Welcome, Vera! That is a beautiful stamp and of course, a gorgeous bird. I hope you find Stamporama as exciting and informative as the rest of us do.
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thanks Lisa. It will take me a while to find my way around, but I must say how easy it is to upload images here so I'm looking fwd to uploading and discussing my favorite stamps with you all
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Welcome aboard Vera
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nice to meet you, Vera. We have lots of topicalists here, but few who are pure topicalists.
Brian Hahn is also a bird collector (I just wrote him about a trade). Don't know who else.
I'm primarily a cover collector, specializing in tied seals and air mail special delivery, but i have lots of side lines including topical collections of bats, militaria, turtles, and, for my daughter, horses.
David
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I am down to 10 countries and still sometimes feel that I am collecting too much. The countries I still collect, I was formerly a WW collector, are now Canada, Belgium, Germany, GB, NZ, Australia, Greenland, Iceland, US airmails only, and Hawaii.
My specialist areas are the postal history of the Muskoka / Parry Sound districts, Belgium postal history, ocean liner postcards,steamers and specifically the steamer "Noronic" ,Canadian military mail and martial arts on stamps and postcards.
Why? Not really sure but I do know that these areas interest me the most and I really enjoy them.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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04:55:36pm
A warm welcome to you Vera. Glad to see you here.
Alyn
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You're airborne, Vera, really soaring and flying up there with the high and the mighty.
Welcome to Samporama. Hope you tolerate bottom-feeders such as yours truly,
John Derry
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Hello, I am an avid collector of ANYTHING from Guyana, stamps first of course, but also anything else such as belts, caps, t-shirts, postcards, tickets/stubs, maps, etc.
Went to Guyana in 1980 and met my then wife-to-be. Have been back twice since and love the place.
Next with stamps comes UK, any ex-british Caribbean, dutch Caribbean, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, USA.
Also a few bits and bobs that just grab my attention.
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11:18:05am
Martyn, you are an accumulator after my own heart!
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I have really enjoyed reading about what everyone collects. In the last 6 months,I have just begun to restart the small collection I had as a kid. I am working on a combination of used and mint US stamps. The used is what I had growing up and I decided to add mint stamps to that.
Really looking forward to learning more about collecting before I venture into new areas. Hope you all don't mind the most basic of questions.
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I collect Cinderellas.
It all started when I began a GB side collection of British Exhibition souvenir sheets and labels. Then it moved on to the USA Expos, then worldwide, then Poster and Advertising stamps, then.........
I found myself selling off my collections of Postage stamps and buying the Non-postage variety instead !! It seemed to me to be full of surprises, not knowing what was out there and so it evolved. At the end of 2013 I decided to part with all my Postage stamps except the Flags and Machins and concentrate on, and enjoy the Cinderella collections.
But saying I collect Cinderellas is like saying I collect Postage stamps ! So let me elaborate.
British, USA and Worldwide Philatelic Exhibitions
Other Exhibitions worldwide
British Strike Mail labels
Reproductions,Forgeries and Non-postal reprints
Propaganda and Patriotic labels
Christmas, Easter and other Seals
Jewish National Fund labels and sheets
Other Israel and Palestine Labels
Ration Stamps
Post Office training stamps
Sample and Dummy Stamps
Savings stamps
Flags on Cinderellas (all Flags go into this collection first)
Revenues (General Worldwide)
Locals (Only certain types/places)
Air Mail Etiquettes
Registration Labels
Poster stamps and Advertising labels
Other (Test,Essays,Proofs,Unissued,Others)
Londonbus1
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What do I collect and why?
Is it too snarky to say: "I collect what I want because I can?"
I have changed the parameters of WHAT I collect several times as I have progressed in the hobby and in my knowledge. I just might change again tomorrow, who knows!
Lars
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I started as a 7 year old worldwide collector (Ambassador album from my parents - Merry Christmas!) In my 20s I somewhat specialized in Canada and Ireland (in the mistaken belief that my ancestors were from there - they actually came from Yorkshire as it turns out!) Subsequently I have developed a number of other "favorite" countries and areas including the Baltics and Scandinavia, Belgium, and Switzerland. And most recently (now in my 50s) I've shifted to topicals along with some holdover country collections (hockey, autos/auto racing mainly). This brought with it an interest in covers which seems to be growing like a bad weed at the moment. Unlike many, I've never really stopped collecting at any point, much to the consternation of various girlfriends and my one and only wife.
Hard to answer the "why" exactly - I just have a tendency to get interested in things for about 5 to 10 years or so and move on to the next thing. That's why it's such a great hobby, there's always something new to collect!
Eric
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...and stamp-collecting stories to tell. Thank you for yours, Eric.
John Derry
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Interesting read.
My story is much the same as many members. My brothers and I were introduced to collecting by my mother. My grandpa and to a larger degree my great grandpa were WW collectors. As a kid we messed around with stamps and hinged albums. We inherited various binders and binded albums and stockbooks. In the past 5 years or so I along with my brother and mother have taken up the hobby in a more active way.
We like to take kiloware soak it off paper and make stockbooks. So far I have stockbooks for in order from most detailed to least: Germany, Canada, USA, Austrailia, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Austria, Spain, Nederlands, Hungary, Swiss. I am at the point for the first 5 counties when a checklist is becoming needed. Canada and Germany I have albums (hingless mounts) in progress. I am buying kiloware and some stuff here and there always soaking and sorting accumulation.
The goal is to have a good album for a bunch of countries. For me a good album is with few stamps missing. At this point I am using Scott # system to sort but I would consider changing to a more detailed system at some point down the road. Also sorting away all the doubles and deciding whether to trade/sell or accumulate is a constant effort.
Why all this has and is happening you ask. That is a very difficult question and a question I often ponder. The answer involves metaphysics and psycoanalysis among many other rabbit holes. Please write me a letter if you wish to discuss further.
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The What's and the Why's change. I started collecting almost 50 years ago. At that point I was going to collect every stamp ever issued in the world. So, with the help of approval companies advertising on matchbooks and magazines I loaded up on worthless CTO's. Fortunately the 70's came around and girls, motorcycles, cars and girls slowed my collecting considerably. I never quit, but I broke free of approvals and for a while I just accumulated "stuff". Mostly the daily mail and box lots I got at estate sales, auctions and garage sales.
About 20 years ago I got back into actual collecting. At this point I had a four drawer file cabinet filled with stamps and a few covers. What interested me the most was those covers and the 19th century stamps. I joined a stamp club and found a whole new world of collecting. A bunch of collectors with many specialties and a ton of knowledge. Every time someone shared a story I went back to my hoard to see what I had. Sometimes a new collection was formed and my focus would be diverted to that for a while.
Then in 1994 I got a computer and I discovered the internet. The ability to research and find items exploded. My collecting is now many different collections. Mostly covers. I am now one of those guys I met 20 years ago. My file cabinet is gone and my collections fill my entire basement. I still collect 19th century worldwide, all years U.S., I still have the three albums I had as a kid, but they now share space with 100's of other albums.
My main focus for a while has been covers. I collect covers from my home state, Minnesota. I have about 2000 different cities from Minnesota on cover. I also collect Hawaii and Alaska. My other cover collections are, Special Delivery, Foreign Destinations, 19th Century U.S., 19th Century World, Flag Cancels, Machine Cancels, Territorials, really anything that I find interesting.
None of this answers your question of why. I'm not sure I want the answer.
I just reread this from 6 years ago. I would say the only thing that has changed is that I no longer collect flag cancels and have sold most of those covers.
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The what: I have many different collecting interests, but my three primary areas are British Hong Kong and the China Treaty Ports; Queen Victoria issues across the Empire and depictions of the Queen on commemoratives; and British Commonwealth omnibus sets, from the 1935 Silver Jubilee to Diana and Charles' Royal Wedding. I really started collecting heavily in these areas within the past 25 years or so. I, as others, took time off after starting a worldwide collection of pretty stamps when I was about 7, through my early teens. Then the hiatus for many of the same reasons, but interestingly my stamp albums filled with the pretty stamps followed me from 1968 through the 1990s. I rarely looked at them until one of my uncles started sharing his collecting interests with me; I then started in earnest again and specializing, selling off most of my pretty stamps to build the three major areas.
I also have a few smaller areas of stamp collecting that just grab my interest from time to time as I get into these, then move on. Sometimes, they come from gifts or "pre-inheritance" from one of my collector uncles, and sometimes from my own purchases. These areas include Hawaii stamps and now postal stationery, paquebot and ship cancels on stamps, Japanese occupation covers (and banknotes), space themed stamps and covers (probably my next largest collection), what I find as interesting or unusual items (like Tin Can mail or First Flight BOAC covers), and I set aside errors and unusual stamps and cancels. All together, I don't have a lot, probably about 50 stockbooks and albums now, with a couple of new cartons to sort through. I wish I had continued during my younger years.
The why: The only area that I can say "why" is British Hong Kong. I was born on the Colony and have a fond memory of growing up through age 13 there, so I guess that is my motivation to capture in stamps that era of my life. The other areas are just interests, with no particular reason; I think the Omnibus collections started because I found the 1935 KE7 Silver Jubilee series so appealing.
In addition to stamps, I've also diversified my collecting (read: accumulated more stuff!) with NASA photos and transparencies, and worldwide coins (my second major collecting area but not as systematic as stamps). I need a bigger house!
Peter
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Hi, I am new here .I collect Nebraska postmarks. My grandmother started collecting post marks now I collecting them. My grandmother started me collecting when I was young that was over50 years ago. I collected everything. Richard
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Nebraska postmarks?!? Very interesting!
Would the Holy Grail be a Nebraska Overprint with a Nebraska postmark? Or maybe the oddity of a Kansas Overprint with a Nebraska postmark?
Lars
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Yes I have some of each. Mostly 2 cents. Lot of post offices are closed. And getting harder to find
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Not germaine to the discussion, but years and years ago in Prince George, British Columbia, on the last day of school, I asked one of my students what he and his family were doing during summer holidays. "Oh, we're driving to the States," he said.
I said, "Oh, where in the States?" (I am a Canadian-American; my wife, Susan, and I grew up in New Mexico. She was born in Valentine, Nebraska.)
He said, "Nebraska."
I said, "Really? Where in Nebraska?"
He said, "Oh, just a tiny little place. You've probably never heard of it."
I said, "Maybe not, but I'm curious. What town?"
He said, "Valentine."
My wife's family roots are in Nebraska and Illinois. She's written an interesting novel placed in Nebraska: http://www.susaningraham.net/legacies-ch-1.html.
Bob Ingraham
Vancouver, BC
(Modified by Moderator on 2014-01-16 07:04:05)
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Hello, all - I've just joined and looking forward to participating in the community after lurking for a month or so reading the postings and deciding that I just might have the time to be a bit more social.
While I had stamps when I was a small kid, they didn't interest me anywhere near as much as coins did - and that interest really came from a fascination with money in general. I had a few mint sets from the post office and I got one package of a thousand mixed stamps from somewhere that I put into a small Harris album, but that was it.
When I was 14, my father brought home a box of stamps he picked up for fifty bucks at an antique store and handed it to me. Turned out the collection belonged to a deceased former postmaster who seemed to have interests all over the place - all US, but there were singles, plate blocks, mint sheets, first day covers, postage due, revenues, stamped paper, precancels....I bought a catalog and went to work identifying and learning, and thats when the bug bit me. My father bought me a Scott Minuteman album and real mounts (since everything was mint) and I went to work filling it up. Without money, and without the internet (this was in the mid-eighties), that was it until about six years ago, when I pulled everything out and decided it was time to take things out of cardboard boxes and random envelops and buy decent albums. I spent months cataloging everything into a software program, re-mounting and then filling holes.
What I came to realize was that stamps offered the right mix of collecting for me that other types of collections didn't hold. I really like definitive series - a page with lots of similar looking stamps in different colors all neatly arranged and looking pristine really appeals to my sense of aesthetics, as does a nice well-laid out complete page of commemoratives. I've really been interested in getting into revenues because of this - all those red and green documentaries and stock transfers are very appealing. I'm the kind of collector that would pick an issue with a long print run and try to find all the plate numbers.
But what I'm finding even more appealing is the depth and breadth of the space. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. At work, I'm the answer guy - the one that knows all the bits and pieces and organizes them into a coherent understanding of a space. In the last year, I would have to say that I've actually become less interested in acquiring the actual stamps as acquiring knowledge and information.
A year ago, I got frustrated with the software I was using to manage my collection - it just wasn't specialized enough to really store and catalog all the information I wanted to know. A great example was a copy of a deed with state documentary stamps that I had - it just couldn't understand the concept of a piece of paper with multiple different stamps on them as being one thing. Well, I work in software, and my partner is a developer, so we knew we could do something better. We're not quite done yet, not by a long shot, but in the process of learning about different areas, acquiring catalogs and books, and building my own database of information, I've found that I'm less interested in the actual stamps. Now, I spend my time poring over little details, struggling with how to manage those little frustrating edge cases (like how to build a database of the possible plate blocks of the Huck press 6c and 8c flag over white house issues when I can't figure out the rhyme and reason behind the plates) and loving every minute of it just as much as staring at my pretty page of Prexies.
And so I'm here - to soak up (off?) everything I can and mount it in my repository. And though my knowledge is modest at best, maybe help out a little with those few nuggets I've picked up over time. I can easily see doing this for the rest of whatever time I have left, and hopefully leave behind a legacy of information that others can use to keep this world alive even if postal mail becomes a curious relic of the past.
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08:24:12am
Welcome, Michael!
Yeah, you'll fit here just fine. Your love of (and obsession with) minutia is shared by many members here. And your articulate style of sharing your enthusiasm will fit very well on this board. Enjoy yourself!
Bobby
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FrankyB
“Why all this has and is happening you ask. That is a very difficult question and a question I often ponder. The answer involves metaphysics and psycoanalysis among many other rabbit holes. Please write me a letter if you wish to discuss further.â€
Postmarks
“None of this answers your question of why. I'm not sure I want the answer. â€
Bujutsu
“Why? Not really sure but I do know that these areas interest me the most and I really enjoy them. “
tuscany4me
I'm not sure. Let me think about this. I will have to reach pretty deep and come up with something really profound.
======================================================
Dear All,
I think we are on a quest. Let's explore more fully to be sure. FrankyB, consider this as a request to explore that rabbit hole.
All good thoughts,
Dan C.
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I started as a kid in New York collecting US stamps from mail envelopes in a stock book. I would also get a few approvals that were advertised in the back of magazines. I was always fascinated with far away places.
Since we had relatives and friends in Greece I started saving a few of those as well as some from Australia and the rest of Europe. Then while living as a teen in Greece I was able to trade stamps with Greek kids and was able to build up my Greek collection. Nothing great mostly quantity and used. Upon return to the US and in possession of a Harris Ambassador album I was able to fill a few holes here and there but was busy with college, sports, girls and other activities . After marriage and while my children were young and we lived in Boston I started filling in some more holes by visiting S.L. Stone a stamp dealer in downtown Boston. That was around the time of the Bicentennial which really got me excited. I started subscribing to the annual sets from the post office and first day covers, first day souvenir sheets etc which lasted for a few years until things started getting expensive (about mid 80s) and family was growing. I even subscribed to some first day covers from the Greek Post Office! Work intervened and a lot of travel overseas DOD Army. I still had my mom and sisters saving stamps from mail and had boxes full of stamps that needed soaking. After the kids moved out and I retired I decided to clean up the collection. Meanwhile my wife started buying me sheets of stamps which seemed interesting and I would put them in some clear Rubbermaid storage containers.I really don't like the new adhesive type stamps that you can't soak so I think i will only stick with sheets that I find interesting. I still have one of my original ambassador albums and a new one. I used hinges on all my stamps even the mint ones until just this last year when I started buying some older stamps that I did not have. I think my US are getting well organized and I have to start doing something with my duplicates. I need to work on my Greece collection and try to get some trades going. Hopefully one of my children or grandchildren will pick up the hobby or at least hand it down. Its been a great experience and very educational and has helped keep me sane through some hard times.
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I had a penpal from Australia in second grade, and started saving the stamps. The rest is history!
I decided I was fascinated by the history of the British Empire, so I continued with the British Commonwealth. Because my Grandmother collected Great Britain, Ireland, and Australia when she was young, she helped me get started with these countries.
Later, as a young adult, I found a great start on a Canadian collection with a beautiful Bluenose for $20 at a flea market, and I just kept going on that as well.
Dabbled in plating Penny Reds for awhile, then plating Canadian map stamps, then bought a KGVI album in an auction and am STILL trying to finish filling that with good postally used examples of each. Also, I purchased a Brusden White Australia Specialists' catalogue.
A lot of what I collect has had to do with the availability of stamps or assistance from other collectors in that area.
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I've been a member here for about a year, and somehow missed this discussion thread until now. I limit my collecting to the years prior to 1960. I do that because I find it too daunting to try to collect more recent issues. Some countries, including the U.S., put out too many new stamps per year.
My collection started with U.S. commemoratives, and that is still my favorite type of stamp. Some Central and South American countries have attracted me: I collect El Salvador and Costa Rica. I might start Guatemala soon. I collect Ecuador and Peru. Their turbulent pasts are reflected in their stamps. I also am building collections of Canada, Bermuda, The Bahamas, and the British Commonwealth in general. I prefer mint stamps and lightly canceled used stamps. I'm not interested in postal history or postmarks. In fact, I prefer to concentrate on singles, and I ignore pairs and plate blocks.
I Am attracted to stamps because of the history they represent, as well as being works of art in their own right. For example, I like stamps from the French colonies because so many of them simply look great, such as French Morocco.
I organize my stamps on Vario pages in loose leaf notebooks, and transfer them to Steiner pages in nicer binder when I get enough to do so. Even this modest collection keeps me busy.
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"Some countries, including the U.S., put out too many new stamps per year."
"Some"??? I think it's more like 95% of them.
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I joined this group last Spring, but have never visited this "discussion" site. I collect world wide. I think I got my first stamp album when I was 7. No one in the family was a collector so my first stamps were put in with scotch tape.
Money was not all that available, so my stamp collecting was mainly searching through my grandparents and great aunt's old mail. Some years after my marriage, I resumed collecting and am now quite active. Although I collect world wide, I only collect each country to the extent I have pages for it. This limits my universe somewhat although I "accumulate the later issues as I get them, because some day I may get newer pages for that country.
I trade through the mail and have an extensive "want list". If anyone else wants to exchange want lists, I am more than willing.
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04:18:26pm
Welcome to the discussion group
I'm glad I'm not the only one who did the scotch tape faux pas. There is a thread that we discussed quite a while back about some of the biggest mistakes we've done as collectors (especially when we were young and uninformed). It's worth the read.
We have a Topic Section where you can post trades, etc. Post what you have/want and then people who are interested can send you a direct message rather than negotiate on the board itself.
Kelly
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After reading the numerous posts on this thread, I thought I'd respond.
I started collecting stamps at eight years old (I'll be 49 years old this April) at the encouragement of an Uncle. I started with a three-ringed Scott worldwide album and progressed to a Minkus Canada Album. In my teens, I used stockbooks and collected exclusively Canada. In my 20s I piddled around with British Commonwealth.
In 1998 I sold my Canada collection. I was bored with it. Boy, did I open a can of worms. Here's what I now collect (all used, with rare exception):
King George VI Reign of the British Commonwealth (1937-1952): I am interested in postage stamps and revenue stamps, postmarks, and marginal markings. I have an interest in postal stationery, and the postal history of Canada, Newfoundland, and Great Britain. I especially like covers with Canada's Foreign Exchange Control Board markings, Canadian blackout machine cancels, and other covers related to the war effort.
Costa Rica: I collect everything for this country, including marginal markings, revenues, city and town postmarks, first day covers, postal stationery, and postal history. (Phil B. got me into collecting a Latin American country!)
United States: I collect all of the U.S., including varieties, joint-line pairs, EFOs, etc. with a special interest in:
- marginal markings: for all definitives & commemoratives 1976-1999, (13¢ to 33¢ era);
- air postal history of Texas, including city & town postmarks on airmail stamps, airmail covers postmarked in Texas, First flight covers and airport dedication covers from Texas;
- perfins, precancels, and marginal markings on all airmail stamps;
- I specialise in the Americana Definitive Series (1975-1983) and am interested in postal history, perfins, precancels, plate number singles, and mint plate blocks;
- precancels from Texas & New York State;
- Federal, and State revenue stamps.
I don't collect U.S. stamps with wavy line cancels.
Netherlands Indies/Indonesia: I collect these countries mint or used, with an interest in revenues (on & off documents), city and town postmarks, marginal markings, EFOs, first day covers, and postal history.
Cardiology on Stamps: Cardiology is the study of diseases and disorders of the heart. I am interested in stamps, covers, and postmarks related to this topical.
Ronald Reagan: Any cover or postmark from the United States honouring the 40th President.
International Co-operation Year/ U.N. 20th Anniversary (1965): Any stamp, block, plate block, FDC, proof, mint or used, etc. of stamp(s) issued by any country.
Expo ‘67: Any mint stamp, block, or plate block; FDC, proof, etc. of stamp(s) issued by any country.
Domestic Cats on Stamps: Any stamp, block, plate block, FDC, proof, mint or used, etc. of stamps issued by any country.
R.M.S. Titanic: Any stamp, block, plate block, FDC, proof, mint or used, etc. of stamps issued by any country.
Football: NOT SOCCER! Canadian & American football, all levels, the game, the players, the coaches, the stadiums, etc.
Postal History of North Bay, Ontario: My home town! Postcards, advertising covers, postmarks, right up to the present day.
Postmarks of Montréal, Québec
1953-1972 Belgium King Baudouin: The Marchand / Lunettes series. This is the definitive issue with the King wearing his glasses. Any stamp, block, plate block, FDC, proof, mint or used, etc.
I have fun with it all!
David
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Definitely a mixed bag there!
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I Collect Perù as my country, but I have other specific topics like:
Radio
Radio stations
Communications
Ham Radio
Butterflies
Trains
Airplanes
Minerals
Covers from all over the world
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I can remember the day I began collecting. It was in May, 1974. I was 19 and working in maintenance at a country club and had a conversation with the snack bar lady about postage rates. I told her the oldest stamp I could remember was the 3 cent Liberty (Scott 1035). Right then I decided that I wanted to have a stamp collection. I didn't realize at the time it was even possible to get older stamps, I just thought of collecting from that point forward. I headed to the post office after work and asked the clerk to give me one of everything.
I had thought of collecting stamps before that, but I thought it was kind of a stupid thing to do because I'd seen collectors on TV lick the stamps and paste them in the album. That seemed to me to ruin the product. I also saw people use Scotch tape.
Fortunately for me, my mother told me about hinges, and even more fortunately for the collection, they sold mounts right next to the hinges and I thought those things were better than hinges.
I collect US only and my goal is to simply try to get most of the issues. All my stamps are mint or at least unused. I don't collect canceled stamps. I collect regular issues, commemoratives, and most of the "back of the book". I don't do post cards, envelopes, duck hunting, revenues, etc. I also don't try to get every color variation.
I've read on this thread that a lot of collectors started as kids, then rediscovered the hobby. That was not the case for me; I've never put the hobby aside. At worst there were times when I got a little behind, especially when they eliminated all the philatelic windows at the post offices. Fortunately the USPS catalog helps take up some of the slack.
My first album was the the Harris Liberty album, and it's a pretty good book, but I think the best albums are home made. Fortunately in this day and age of computers, printers, and publishing software it is not only practical to make your own, but you can make one as good or better than any store bought album. The first page I designed myself was for the Americana Series in 1976. On each stamp, the lettering runs along one side and either the top or bottom. When stamps are placed in the right groups of four, the lettering makes a picture frame. But no commercial album displays them that way.
Another problem I had with commercial books is the pages are always too small. I wanted to be able to have full panes or strips of stamps without having to resort to turning them sideways or on a diagonal. I also wanted to display a stamp series on just one page instead of two or three. (Not counting the Washington-Franklin series. OMG that one goes on FOREVER.)
I make my own albums now in a 12x12" format, using photo albums for the binders. The model I use has posts, just like the Harris albums, and not spirals.
I've got 6 volums now, totaling 480 pages, and I'm very proud to say there are not many empty spots left. All but 15 of those pages are complete.
A lot of you have expressed displeasure at the USPS turning out more and more stamps each year in an obvious attempt to generate extra revenue. I'm a little bugged by it too, because it costs at least $200 a year just to keep up, which is more than kids (and adults) probably feel like spending. On the other hand I remember telling postal clerks 30 years ago that other countries have stamps as their main export (Bhutan, for example) so perhaps the US should get on the bandwagon. I guess someone in Washington got the same idea.
I was also bothered by the blatant commercialization of the Harry Potter booklet, but I gotta tell you... If they did the same thing with Star Trek, I'd buy a CASE of them.
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It took me a while to decide what to collect to call my own. Finally decided on Duck stamps. Once that decision was made, it took me 8 months to have the whole set. Now, it will take me much longer to go backward and replace the used ones with mints.
I made my Duck book, something I can easily add to each year.
Also made a book of Baseball for my nephew. That will be given to him this year. Next will be deciding what to do for my niece. She's the most difficult. My other niece got a huge book from her Grandma Nana. I think Brooke and Carolyn, Mom, looked through it once and all the birds flew in the closet. Wonder if they'll ever come back out.
It's been fun for the past couple of years learning more and more about stamps. Hope I never stop learning.
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A very interesting thread.
I started collecting back in the late 80s when a friend of mine brought his stamp collection when he visited, and he gave me some Ethiopian definitive stamps, which I still have somewhere. From then on I collected until I was about 17 years, first I was a worldwide collector, before narrowing my scope to Norway and sports on stamp. I then packed up my collection, and left it at my parents place until I was thirty.
When I finished my master thesis in history I was buying a few souvenirs (I had written about the United Fruit Company, and bought a postcard and a picture I believe from ebay), but when it arrived from the United States I just couldn't stop looking at the stamps on the envelope. It was discount postage, but I still found it utterly fascinating. That was the moment I decided to start collecting stamps again, and I spent many hours just browsing ebay for stamps, but not buying anything until I had had a chance to have a look at my old collection. I did buy some modern kiloware on a whim though, and a catalog.
After that I have kept collecting, although it may lay undisturbed at times due to other things going on in my life and other interests taking first priority for a while, I have kept adding to my collection. These days I'm officially collecting Norway, Iceland, British Colonies and Commonwealth (with a special focus on Canada and Australia so far) and covers from 1979 (the year I was born). But I also pick up stamps I find interesting, and I have small collections from places like the Canal Zone, West Germany, Guinea-Bissau and more. So I guess I'm a sort of general collector, dipping my toe wherever I feel like.
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What an amazing collection of stamp-collectors' stories. Sounds like enough material here for someone to write a book!
I dabbled in collecting as a child and young teen, but then set it aside for so long that eventually I gave away my entire Harris album, including some 1960's first day covers, to a philatelist friend.
Since then, my only reason to "collect" has been to benefit the ongoing efforts of the school community at Foxborough (MA) Regional Charter School where the Holocaust Stamps Project is completing its fifth year, attempting to amass 11 million cancelled stamps from people who would have otherwise tossed them out with the recycling/trash.
Every stamp collected teaches the students something about the people, places, events, and cultures of the world, while the enormity of counting every single one on the path to the goal is teaching lessons about the enormity of the number of Holocaust victims who perished due to intolerance and horrendous acts of hatred.
Students have used thousands of the donated stamps to create 11 (of 18 planned) collage artworks that depict their understanding of the events and effects of the Holocaust.
As of 5/12/14, the total number of collected stamps was 3,749,287. It's taken 5 years, yet it only took 6 1/2 years for 11,000,000 innocents to be killed.
The Holocaust Stamps Project welcomes stamps donations of any size...Your unwanted duplicates are especially welcome! The collection will continue through summer as the school office remains open.
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I started with worldwide years ago but soon focused on the U.S. I now collect U.S. & Canada. Anything U.S. but with deeper interest in earlier years(the older it gets, the better I like it), anything BOB & being from the south have a deep interest in Confederate issues although I only have 3 so far. I do have some First day covers, sheets, etc. but am on a limited income & cant collect all I would like to. As I have started to design my own pages I have become interested in different cancellations also. In recent years I have started saving up metered stamps too.
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I started collecting stamps at about the age of 7 when the wife of the local vicar in the little English village of Holmbury St Mary south of London gave me stamps every now and then. Gradually the collection increased in size until I decided to concentrate on British and British Colonial stamps, writing up my album leaves in the optimistic hope that I would one day find the stamps to put in the little spaces allocated for them. Many years later it became apparent that this was not going to happen unless I won the football pools several times in a row. So I concentrated solely on British stamps, using the Gibbons specialized catalogues - which really are specialized. This kept me happy for many decades and the collection grew - almost to completion. But I have lived abroad for most of my life and the collection was in England, kept in a bank. Finally I decided that I was never going to see it for more than a couple of weeks a year so I scanned everything, had the result made into three books, and offered all the stamps issued before 1952 at auction. This brought in a fair amount of cash as the value of the older stamps had increased - often spectacularly - over the years. I kept the Queen Elizabeth issues which are mint (the others were all used with nice clear postmarks) and thought I might as well collect something else. What?
Well, in the late 1960s I was living in Nigeria and frequently used to visit Dahomey (now Benin) as well as other French ex-colonies in Africa. I thought it would be interesting to build up a collection of Dahomean stamps; the engraved designs were attractive and I could get unmounted mint copies fairly cheaply - there was only one stamp which cost more than $100 and I eventually found even this one.
But one thing led to another - as is usually the case - and for many years Dahomey used stamps of French West Africa together with all the other French ex-colonies in the region. They were all inexpensive so were soon added to the collection. It was only a matter of time before this extended to stamps of the other colonies in French West Africa - and then French Equatorial Africa - and then all the French colonies scattered around the world. Modern "wall-paper" stamps hold no interest for me and issues of Princess Diana from Mali and other countries strike me as absurd. But independence gave a clear cut-off point - in the case of Dahomey exceptionally I continued until it changed its name (back) to Benin. In other cases there were similar cut-off points such as name changes, use of French stamps instead of their own issues in places like Reunion, or some other date for places like New Caledonia which continue to issue stamps primarily for collectors.
I include a brief history of each territory as an introduction and include colour photostats of coins and banknotes in use during the time the stamps were current. I also include colour photostats of postcards from the period to show what these places looked like then.
Fortunately I speak French (though the collection is written up in English) so I have been able to make good use of the Delcampe.net site and, to a lesser extent ebay.fr as well as various French auctions so the collection is now in nine albums and is approaching completion. Goodness only knows what my heirs will do with it all since they don't understand French and will have problems with the French catalogues. I hope they have the common sense to take their time and, in their own interest, make the effort to discover the true value of some of the scarcer stamps. I won't be around to find out!!
In the meantime I can enjoy this collection - possibly the only one of its kind in Malaysia! I have learned a lot of history and geography in the process and looking through the pages reminds me of my travels in francophone Africa - a vast area from Timbuktu to the Congo and from Dakar to Djibouti, not to mention remote areas like French Guiana or the Wallis and Futuna Islands!!!
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I collect WW, but I prefer items prior to 1950. My favorite countries are U.S, Canada, Great Britain, and Germany. I collect all European nations, as well as early British Commonwealth.
Topicals I like include cats, dogs, zeppelins, and airplanes.
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I've enjoyed reading all of these stamp stories.
For me it started in the laste 1970's - pulling a few stamps off of letters and saving them in my marbles bag. I remember saving a few from the Americana series.
I saw a small collection one of my classmates brought to class in 3rd grade and was hooked. My mom bought me a stamp collecting kit from the Weekly Reader and off I started. I still have many of the first stamps I collected, including the first stamps I learned to soak. I collected everything that came my way until I "specialized" in US around 1986. I think I lost a little momemtum on my worldwide stamp collection by focusing on US so early. I did start filling a National album with a highlight being attendance at World Stamp Expo in 1989, and acquiring a mixed lot of Wash-Franklins.
Off to college, then the work force, I found myself in Chicago. This was perfect for a budding adult collector, as I had two great shops to satisfy my stamp bug. I purchased many items from Richard Drews and lots from Dr. Friedman, while developing a broader focus for my collection.
Today, I'm "focused" on 1840-1940 postally used worldwide, with emphasis on US, Scandivania, British Commonwealth and Various European countries. It's very difficult for me to focus, so I've just started to mount material I already own, while selectively adding a few stamps here and there. My own accumulation has proven to be my bourse, as I have broken down many collections over the years, but never mounted them.
Why do I collect the older stuff? I think it comes down to the beauty of the long definitive series and the engraving. I also started a Slania topical collection featuring his masterful engraving.
I still have that Hygrade Universal album with a few thousand CTO, damaged, and otherwise pictorial stamps. I think the Dennison hinges are more valuable than the stamps!
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"My own accumulation has proven to be my bourse"
an amazing sentiment, and one that captures my own life, if i'd only heed it
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I'm a world-wide collector, but I haven't been actively collecting for quite a few years. My father got me started when I was 10. Because of his job, my family found itself moving far from relatives and friends. For the first time, my siblings and I were in a strange suburban place without our friends and cousins. My parents found out about a local stamp club that held weekly meetings, with an area set aside for kids, and signed us up, as a possible means to meet other kids in the area, and to make friends outside of school. We each got a brand new, inexpensive, Minkus world-wide album for our very own to commemorate the occasion. My father had collected when he was a child, but hadn't been involved in the hobby since then. Still, my grandparents sent along a nice box of used US to get us kids started. Once a week, one or other of our parents would drive us down to some kind of local community center, and we kids would hang out for an hour with other kids, showing our growing collections, trading, and listening to short lectures by the adult moderators of the children's section about identification, using a catalog, grading, soaking, watermarks, mounting, and all the other mechanics of collecting. For 50 cents each week, each of us received a packet of common, easily identifiable stamps from all over the world. My siblings always wanted to trade their foreign stamps for US stamps, but I was fascinated by the discovery of all the hitherto unheard of countries in the world. Countries that were only mentioned in passing, if at all, in school. I was hooked! I still also collected US stamps, gleaned from all the mail that came to the house and all the cut corners sent to me by relatives ("No, don't you try to get the stamps off the envelopes. Just cut the corner of the envelope off and send it like that. I know how to soak the stamps off the right way!"). Special treats were the occasional foreign stamps that came from business correspondence that my aunts and uncles got hold of. Foreign stamps were the most interesting, to me.
My siblings lost interest after a few months, and eventually gave their collections to me, but my constant curiosity and questions must have driven my parents crazy. Visits to the library (yes, long before the Internet) were now weekly events, instead of just when books were due, so I could search the encyclopedia to find out who Philip the Good was, and why Sun Yat-sen was important enough to be on so many Chinese stamps. My father's interest was reawakened, and after about six months, as I remember, he bought himself a Minkus Supreme Global album and a set of catalogs, signed up with a penny approval service, and one or two Saturdays a month, he and I would visit local stamp shops in nearby towns. For Christmas, I got a Minkus Master Global album.
Then a curious thing happened. The more stamps I acquired, and the more I read about the subjects depicted, the better my grades were in school. History, geography, reading, even arithmetic, somehow ceased to be separate, individual subjects. I began to see connections, cause-and-effect relationships, patterns. I was still too young to see that this was happening, but during my later high school years and college, I realized that my understanding of the workings of our world began with my stamp collection, and I'm always surprised that people I meet are completely unaware that many of the problems in the Middle East today aren't modern issues of the past decade, but can be traced back to European arrogance at the end of World War I, nearly a century ago, and even farther back than that. Even the origins of World War I go back to the time of Napoleon.
So, I've always been, and will continue to be, a world-wide collector. Completeness was never a goal. Even completing sets was never a goal. I don't collect in order to one day have a valuable collection to sell or to pass on to someone else. I would guess that 90% or more of my stamps are minimal catalog value. Those stamps that do have some value are happy accidents. I didn't seek them out and buy them because they were expensive and would probably increase in value. The majority of my stamps are used, although I've never turned away an unused stamp, should it turn up, and I did subscribe to a new issue service through most of the 1980s, so I'm fairly complete in a half dozen countries for that decade.
I've never been the least interested in postal history. No disrespect intended to the postal historians on this board, but it's just too much like saving mail, to me. I don't have the space, and never did.
I've never considered myself a topical collector, because there has never been any single topic or group of topics that interests me to the exclusion of any other subject. I've rarely bought a stamp because the person, place, or thing depicted had some bearing on a subject in which I had an interest. Usually, it's the opposite. I'll buy some stamps because the subjects are persons who seem to be of some importance, wearing what looks like medieval European clothing. I'm curious who each of those people are. Why are they considered important? Are they important only in the country issuing the stamps, or do they have regional or international significance? Why are they collected together in this set? Any one of those stamps might ignite a new curiosity in me, or complete a connection I didn't realize existed. To me, each stamp is a potential glimpse into the past, which may reverberate in the present, and even possibly shed a glimmer of light into our possible future.
That's what I collect, and why. And how this hobby came to be, for me.
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MinorFaults, I think you just hit the nail on the head as to why the teachers are now, at last, finding that Philately can be such an important part of learning in schools. I still have to look up countries especially after some of the name changes when I was not actively collecting. Even counting was helped because as nippers we seem to always be adding up how many stamps were in our books.
So many of todays youngsters (and not so young) have no clue as to where countries are in the world and even fewer seem to have any grasp of world news. Sort of if it did not happen locally then it does not matter.
Always remember my dad saying that WW3 would start out of the African continent, hopefully he will not be proved correct but there is still an awful lot of conflict, poverty and corruption in the continent.
Oh yes, the thread, I collect everything but like GB, USA, canada and Commonwealth up to early QE2.
Now where's my medication nurse?
Vic
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Good question..and it seems i'm in good company here,everyone is as eccentric. Las me. Well myself, a proud Aussie on the east coast of down under. I like investigating what post office stamped my stamp 100+years ago.yep.bit of penchant for history..I like to see theyoung queen smiling.lot of wars since.
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Guess I like the predecimals as we willingly died for queen.and country.eu
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I started with stamps when I was about 4 or 5 years old. That was over 50 years ago. My grandfather was trying to get a bit of a stamp business going, selling small packets in a corner store, and to some of the people he worked with. So I would sit for hours matching up the pictures.
After about a year or so, I was able to match by countries, and then help soak stamps off paper as well.
Then when I was 11 years old, my grandfather passed away and I got all the stamps. I put them away for a few years. I didn't know what to do with them by myself.
When I was 14 I saw a big world wide album in a store, and my mom bought it for me, along with a few of the little sacks of world wide on paper, and some hinges. I also had two old catalogues that I was able to use right away. The world at the time was only in the two catlaogues. So I was all set. But it still wasn't much fun on my own.
Anyhow I had just turned 20 years old and we went to a festival/fair type event in August. There were people there from the local Stoney Creek Stamp Club. I went to talk to them and look at the exhibits.
In Sept of that same year, I joined the club. Then I joined another club in Hamilton, and another one in Burlington. ( All 3 cities are only 15 minutes away from where I live. So none of the clubs were that far away. I actually joined three other clubs as well. So at certain times I was at a club meeting 4 or 5 nights a week.
I'm back down to one club now. Which is ok.
I learned a lot from all the clubs. Not only did I collect stamps, I am also a dealer at the club now as well.
Over the years, I was also the sales circuit manager, and then president of the Stoney Creek Club. I was on the board of directors for the Hamilton club, and also on the board of directors for the GRVPA. Grand River Valley Philatelic Association. I was exhibits chairman for the Royal Show in Hamilton for 1998 and the Millenium Show in 2000.
I've done a lot of other odds and ends at the clubs too. I enjoy helping out as much or more then just being at the clubs.
As for collecting, I started out with worldwide, but then narrowed it down to Sweden, France, and a few dozen topics.
I also have my daughter collecting. She started when she was 2 years old, matching stamps with pictures in a worldwide album that weighed more then she did. She went on to exhibt as a junior winning dozens of medals, certificates and ribbons. Now as an adult, she collects several countries and another dozen or more topics.
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It all started when I was only 26 yrs old. It was after my 2nd tour in VietNam. I was having a hard time ajusting, it was not called PTSD at that time. I was going to group meetings at Fort Lee VA. The group leader said we should look into doing something that would not only keep us busy, but we would also enjoy. I was at the base libery and they were giving out packets of stamps. I asked how to find out some info on them. I was given a scott catalog to check out.
Needless to say I was hooked. There is so much to learn. I left the Army to join the Navy "you know See the World" and did I and my collection grew. I would buy stamps in every port of call, I orded stamps through Linns.
I retired from the Navy in 1988, beleive me there was not a lot of jobs at that time. I went to apply for a job as a guard at Chicago's Field Mesuem. Now the funny thing is my stamp collecting knowadge did wonders. There were four or five hundred people for two positions.
It was down to four people. A women walked into the interview room and started asking me a lot of questions. She could not beleive how much I knew about what they did at the mesume. I told her I collected stamps. I found out she was the chair person for the visitor service department.
Because of stamp collecting my PTSD was under control and the whole world was opened up to me. I was not hired as a guard, I was offered a position as a supervisor in the visitor service department.
My grandson is into trains and he has his own stamp album of railway and train stamps.
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James, i love your story, and always feel an attachment to the vets with PTSD, even though I never served (roll of the ball, as it were). There are a number of RR stamp collectors here, too.
David
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I might as well give my story here too…
Like many a collector, I started stamp collecting when I was about 8 years old. My parents gave me a small paperback Harris stamp album (you know the one with an astronaut and a horse-drawn covered wagon on the front cover) and a packet of stamps. I was hooked. I have fond memories of sitting in front of the TV putting stamps into my little album. I eventually moved up to the Harris Standard World Stamp album. But, once my teenage years rolled around, I put my stamps aside for other interests (cars, girls, beer, etc.). Then came the military, college, graduate school, marriage, kids, raising a family, etc., and my stamps stayed boxed up in storage over the years. I do remember visiting a few actual stamp shops in various different cities while I was in the Navy during the mid-1980s, but that was about it.
Then, a few years ago, I dug out my stamps and slowly started collecting again. I decided not to specialize in any specific country, but to continue to be a generalist worldwide collector, but I would focus on the classic era stamps from 1840-1940. And after playing around with Steiner pages and looking into the Minkus Supreme Global albums, I decided I would go with the Scott International Vol I. I must say, my choice to be a WW classic era stamp collector using these albums was influenced by a couple of popular blogs on collecting using the Scott Internationals and an article I read in the Washington Post about two guys in the 1970s who set out (and travelled the world) to complete the 11-volume Scott International albums. To them, ‘the hunt was the challenge.’ Of course the ability to find specific stamps is much easier today with the internet than back in the 70s, but there are still plenty of stamps in the Vol I that are considered ‘hard to find.’ And, with 35,000 spaces and my limited stamp budget, I will not run out of stamps needed to fill the album!
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I am a plant developmental geneticist. One of my research projects concerns the control of the juvenile-to-adult transition in trees, in particular, Acacia and related species. About a year ago my son gave me an art magazine that contained an article about the "Tree of Tenere", an Acacia located in Niger, in the Sahara desert. It was the only tree in a 250 mile radius, and was a stopping point for caravans, until it was killed by a drunk driver in 1970 (or so the story goes). The government of Niger saved what it could, and put these parts in a museum. An artist erected a statue at the site of the tree, which is featured in the movie "The Great Match (La Gran final)".
What does this have to do with why I collect stamps, you ask? Three months ago, I was not a stamp collector (although I was as a kid, and my father still is). Nevertheless, the thought occurred to me, "I wonder if there is a stamp of the tree of Tenere?. I'm sure I could find a way to work it into a seminar on our research". So, I searched Ebay, and sure enough, there is a stamp of the "Tree of Tenere" issued by Niger in 1974 as a memorial. So I bought it. Actually, I bought two--one for me, and one for the graduate student working on this project.
Fast forward a few months. I am in Strasbourg, France, preparing to deliver a seminar at a research institute. As I wander the city the day before my seminar, I come across a stamp shop. Figuring that two copies of a stamp are better than one, I walk in and ask the proprietor if he speaks English. He does, so I ask him if he has the tree of Tenere stamp. He looks in his collection, finds none, and I leave disappointed. But, as I was returning to the hotel, it occurred to me that perhaps Niger was not alone in its appreciation of Acacias. And then another thought--what better way to demonstrate the cultural and economic significance of my research organism than to show all the countries that had issued stamps of Acacia on a Powerpoint slide. So I returned to the shop, and asked to see the stamps of Australia. Acacias (wattles) are widespread in Australia. In fact, Acacia pycnantha is the national tree of Australia. Sure enough, he had three Australian stamps with wattles, including the famous 1959 stamp. So I bought them, for 1 euro.
Back in Philadelphia, I started my hunt in earnest. My goal was to show a world map with pictures of Acacia stamps from around the world. Remarkably, I found that lots of countries have issued stamps of Acacias, or related species. I started buying them. About $100 into this exercise (mostly for postage from Europe), it occurred to me that I could just grab the pictures from the internet using Google image, but by then i was hooked. Now, many hundreds of dollars later, I have a very large collection of Acacia stamps. I started out buying single stamps, used or mint, then decided I wanted mint, and then decided I wanted the entire set of which the stamp was a part. Pretty soon, I ran out of Acacias, so I decided to branch into other species in the Mimosoideae and Ceasalpinoideae (avoiding the Papilionoid legumes, because they get all the love). But there were not enough of those, and my addiction was growing. So I started collecting baobabs. And then palms, and then trees that just looked interesting (e.g. trees in Madagascar). This has limited my collection to stamps from tropical countries, but this is fine because I grew up in the Philippines, so I have an affinity for the tropics.
Along the way, I started collecting stamps about reforestation and environmental preservation, and then stamps of corn, because I used to work on corn. It has gotten to be pretty expensive, and very time consuming. But there is nothing more exciting than returning home at night and finding an envelope from some foreign country (usually France) with stamps on it, and in it!
We visited my parents in Chicago for Christmas. Knowing of my new interest, my father gave me his large stamp collection from the Philippines, which he acquired while we were living there as Presbyterian missionaries, from 1957-1970. He is saving the rest of the collection to give me on future occasions. 62-year-old son, and 90-year- old father, bonding over stamps.
Happily, one of the folks that I bought stamps from told me about this site a few days ago. You seem like very nice people, and your stamps are a lot cheaper than on Delcampe or Ebay, so I plan to visit often. If any of you have stamps of trees, or corn, or agriculture let me know.
Cheers,
Scott
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I'm speechless, Scott!
THAT is a great story! I now feel silly tracking down a stamp with Texas BlueBonnets on it for a joke about "Give me your Lupins" from the Monty Python skit Dennis Moore.
...but, before someone else beats me to it, I must ask: Do you have any stamps with The Larch?
Lars
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Lars,
No, I do not. Please illuminate me. What is "the larch'?
Scott
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I’m collecting mints Canadian stamps in a Lighthouse album up to 1999
I’m collecting mints US stamps in a Lighthouse album up to 1965
I’m collecting mints Philippines stamps in a Minkus album up to 2000.
I’m also collecting used stamps of the world in a Scott Int. Albums up to 1960 and print my own pages only for the stamps I have after 1960 since my main interest is for engraved stamps, I print my own pages for the engraved stamps of countries after 1960 and place them in Scott Int. Binders .
I have 0 interests in the new stamps Canada and US release just to make more sell.
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Larix is the scientific name for the Larch family. It is part of the Pinaceae family.
vic.
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Scott, that was a great story of discovery and self-defined collecting; how wonderful to discover stamps in that way. You should consider publishing it in a stamp publication (maybe through APS?).
When Lars said
"Do you have any stamps with The Larch?"
Cheers,
Peter
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After I posted my response, it occurred to me that Lars was referring to Monty Python. It is obvious that I am out of my depth in this area, although I greatly enjoyed "The Life of Brian".
Scott
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" Lars was referring to Monty Python"
You have to watch thayt guy..... also going off on a tangent.....
Hey Lars.I can make this simple....I collect any and everything except dead presidents (on spendable paper)
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"Re the Larch --- just watch a the very earliest Python episodes to catch the Larch references. Funnnneeeeee stuff! Fish slapping --OMG sooo funneee, ministry of silly walks, lumberjack song, etc etc"
Great stuff for sure!!!
Get Lars started and get out the way..... He knows every Python skit word for word....
Lars, where is Doug N....
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09:18:31am
A friendly reminder - please try to stay on topic or start a new thread. I love the discussions and banter, but we don't want this thread to become more about off-topic than on.
Lisa
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Sorry Lisa, I just went to the way back machine.
We will now resume control of what we collect and why.
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Interesting to read how everyone came about collecting what they do.
I started out as a child collecting used American because my parents bought me an American album and a bag of used stamps.
That graduated into a world collection, because the world kiddie packs were cheap...and pretty. Loved all those big cat and dog pictures!
Then I started collecting stamps off anything that came in the mail. Dad worked for government and often had international mail. He'd bring the stamps home to me.
In university I had summer jobs and a student loan. I felt flush! Little did I know... I spent some money on plate blocks and mint Canadian stamps...until I decided I needed to eat more than spend money on stamps. I quit stamp collecting.
Fast forward 15 years...my two children were 10 and 8. They were ready for an introduction to stamp collecting. I pulled out my collection and the oldest was raring to go! I took her to the local dealer in Calgary and she picked out a huge bag of Australian stamps on cover. Took us a while, but we got all those suckers off cover. She learned all about Australia and did a mini-unit study on Australia and its history. She even ended up extending it and writing the Queen about her stamp collection. A letter dutifully answered by the Queen's lady-in-waiting.
At any rate...the kids and I kept going for a few years. Then they lost interest as teenagers. I was too busy with life at that time and stopped as well.
Fast forward another 15 years...the girls are grown and left home about ten years ago. Hubby and I are looking around the place thinking we need to declutter a few things and think seriously of downsizing into a condo or something. I pull out my little 8 volume collection by then (took up half a closet shelf) with the idea of selling it. But, a funny thing happened on the way to the dealer... 
I decided to pick up collecting again.
This time with more focus and a goal in mind. I do want it to be worth something eventually, but recognize I have limited funds to spend on it. I also realize Hubby and kids are just not interested. So I am collecting for myself. I told Hubby if anything happens to me first to take my collection to the local Stamp Club and sell it there, if there be any takers.
Now I am collecting used Canadian to finish up a Lighthouse album that pre-dates SF days because I hate to see anything unfinished. I am selling my used American collection and the Australian collection. I am collecting Canadian mint blocks because I think they're pretty. Love the unadorned artwork. No cancels, make a nice presentation/layout. And they have investment potential in some cases.
And I am collecting mint worldwide Textiles (not costumes, but spinning, weaving, etc.) because I am a fibre artist IRL and sell my work in various shops as well as exhibiting in various venues. I love fibre, so this is a natural fit for me.
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I've been away for a while and thought this post would make a nice return to activity.
I started when I was 7 or 8 years old, with an ad from Boy's Life and approvals from HE Harris.
My interests are varied. These days I am actively working on Haiti, Vatican City, Israel, Palestine, newspaper stamps and newspaper railway stamps, US Coast Guard Postal History and a worldwide collection. I also have a Scouts on Stamps and judo on stamps collection, but haven't worked on them in quite a while.
Of course, my main focus is giving my girls a love of stamp collecting:
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Hi Clay,
Good to hear from you again. You seem to have a few helpers there on the stamp front.
Regards ... Tim.
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Hello claymorgan,
Thanks for posting a picture of those little angels. They all look just alike. They could be triplets.
-Ernie
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Thanks Tim and Ernie.
The girls sometimes introduce themselves as twins and a spare.
The twins will be 7 in February, the younger sister turned 5 in June.
The one on the right (batgirl shirt) has taken a bit more of a serious interest in stamp collecting. The other two piddle with it.
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Wow, such wonderful stories you all have.
Mine is much simpler. I can remember, as a boy, attempting to start a number of different things. Baseball Cards and Stamps do come to mind. Most of these attempts were a joint effort with my older brother.
Of course, my father was an officer in the US Army and we never lived in one location more than three years. Back then, when an officer was going to move, a crew of enlisted men came in and packed everything in crates and boxes. Only drawback was the existence of a weight limit based on number of people in the household (including us munchkins). This meant that any item that was considered frivolous had to be tossed. The Baseball cards and stamps were among those items that got tossed.
In my early teens, I worked part time after school and between that and studying, I didn’t have time for any hobbies. Now once dad Retired I was 16. I took all the money I’d saved and bought an old beat up rust bucket of a car. I worked in a gas station to pay for my gas and maintenance. I had also discovered that girls were rather fun to be around and a lot of my money went to paying for dates. Still no time for collecting.
Fast forward to today. Work and family have consumed the majority of my time. My wife has retired and started doing crafting projects as a hobby. I fancy photography but mostly landscapes and abstract items. I hate photographing people. I love doing flowers and macro. Our two kids (girl + boy) have grown and each have two children of their own.
About 8 months ago I was laying in the hospital suffering from my fifth bout of Pneumonia in six years and wondered just what kind of legacy have I left for my kids and grandkids. There was really nothing at all. One day I was watching a TV program (don’t remember the show), and there was a stamp collection involved in the plot.
I decided to start four individual year collections for each of my grandkids. (2004, 2007, 2008 and 2010). Things quickly got out of control. I added my two kids (1976 and 1979) and added mine and the wife’s birth years too. I bought some pre printed year albums online, but will probably abandon those. I feel I would rather to show a stamp with a history lesson attached telling what that stamp is all about. I’ve found so far that the history of some stamps can fill a couple of pages.
I’ve then started experimenting with making my own pages using MS Publisher. I tried using Word, but just couldn’t get the formatting down. Publisher allows me greater freedom of locating my images.
I am giving myself two years to amass all the stamps I’ll need. I can plan retirement after that and approach other years at a very leisurely pace.
Now for those of you who I have bored into unconsciousness, you can wake up and move on to other and better things. Thanks for listening.
Mikey
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08:41:30pm
Mikey
I have heard of many collecting styles, but this is the first one based on birth years of descendants. What a novel and fascinating idea! It would be interesting to see some of the pages and write-ups you create.
Bobby
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What do i collect ? Dutch Indies covers and postcards, Chicago Century of Progress 1933-34 covers, worldwide stamps to 1969. Thats all the sins i can think of right now !
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Thanks for the kind words Bobby. The first one I'm working on is 1976. Here are my title and the first two pages.
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When I get more time, I will try to do a posting about the Muskoka / Parry Sound area. We live in Muskoka and, for a time, long before I was born, my mother lived in Parry Sound.
I must have missed the posting asking me to do this. Sorry about that.
Over the years, I have amassed a collection of over 3000+ covers, and the same amount for postcards of this region. Of the 3000+ (postcards) mentioned, I would have to say that 95% are pre 1950. Parry Sound isn't as big, but, I am still adding to it.
Until then, happy collecting and Merry Christmas
Chimo
Bujutsu
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I collect the one cent Ben Franklin stamp from the Series of 1902. (Go figger!) I first was drawn to this stamp in my teens because I always admired Ben Franklin and I thought the stamp design was classic and beautiful. I specialized in this stamp back then and won silver awards in adult competition at the big ASDA NY shows. Then of course, I discovered cars and girls and I lost interest in stamps for many years.
Enter eBay, twenty years ago. I made a killing there selling old car dealer brochures to collectors and classic car owners. At one point I was grossing over $1000 a month with this little endeavor. Flush with easy money, I discovered I could buy stamps on eBay and started buying the more elusive items... imperfs, private perforations and booklet panes. Things I had never seen in person in all my collecting years were suddenly available if I took the time to look regularly. My renewed interest opened my Ben Franklin collection again!
Within the past year, I got curious and dug out all the boxes of stamps and collections I had in my teen years. I have small collections of things that I forgot all about. And I have collections that never got further than being sorted into a box or stock book. Now I have money to buy albums and pages to get them all in order. So I started sorting.
I have renewed my New Jersey postmark cover collection and it's all in two, now going on three albums. I have been regularly adding covers and postcards with DPOs and small offices.
I just found my George Washington Bicentennial cover collection. Back in the 1970s I did a pretty good job of collecting all the known commemorative cachets that were issued for events and celebrations all year long. Then I was browsing on Buckacover and found a few more I had never seen. Collection reactivated, and headed for an album!
This summer I got the inkling that with all the stuff I had collected and hoarded, I probably had a pretty good USA collection. So I started "The Big Sort", putting all of this into Scott order. I don't care if I have a mint or used single, a used block of four with a neat cancel, a plate block, first day cover or any interesting usage on cover, it all has gone into the sort! And like I thought, I have an example of most 20th century stamps up until I stopped collecting around 1980. And my 19th century stuff, starting with US 1, isn't too shabby either.
So I'm having fun.
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I started around 1960 when I was about 8 years old. My father encouraged me.
Albums, acessories and packets of stamps were readily available in Woolworths.
Of course, it was all very juvenile but in those days General Knowledge....knowing abot flags, capital cities, populations etc was valued. In 2016, it is dismissed as Trivia.
In 1970, I started to specialise in Ireland but for several years still collected world wide. But gave up the "world" around 1985.
Around 2000...I gave up collecting stamps...simply because Ireland was issuing too many stamps. I resumed collecting in 2012 and have painstakingly obtained all the issues....mint and used from 2001 to date. I travel to Dublin several times a year to buy new issues.
Ironically I have also resumed collecting the world. Specialising in Ireland is obsessional and not always "fun" but somehow buying some random stamps is still "fun".
Why do I do it?
The best answer I can come up with is that a Stamp Album of a specific country....USA, Australia, France wherever is a Greatest Hits Album.....History, Geography, Politics, Music, Art, Literature, Sport, Folklore....its all there in a very compact form.
Although I am not a big fan of First Day Covers, I do have some. But I much prefer commercial covers or postcards showing authentic use of stamps. To be pompous for a moment....the sending and delivery of mail is one of the great achievements of the Human Race.
I also collect Irish postcards from 1900-1922.
But along with many collectors, I have a collecting "gene" so whether its Postcards, Coins, Phonecards, Autographs, Bubblegum Cards, theres always plenty to see and buy in a flea market. Indeed earlier this week, an American friend sent me three "campaign buttons" from the current USA Presidential Election Campaign. So a whole new area opens up.
I just enjoy being on the border line between Collecting and Hoarding.
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FItzjamesHorse-I believe you may have uncovered the driving force behind us all as collectors/accumulators when you observed "I have a collecting "gene". I wonder if another possible explanation might not include the desire for the hunt along with the remarkable ability to continually find new/exciting areas of intellectual pursuit.
In reading through this thread again, I see many names not seen on this board for far too long. If a special invitation would be of any value, know that you are missed.
Best,
Dan C.
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"FItzjamesHorse-I believe you may have uncovered the driving force behind us all as collectors/accumulators when you observed "I have a collecting "gene". I wonder if another possible explanation might not include the desire for the hunt along with the remarkable ability to continually find new/exciting areas of intellectual pursuit."
A nice summary. I have always thought my desire to collect and hold "things" was partly because of my military upbringing. Unlike most folks, my childhood was punctuated with relocations every 2 or 3 years. That meant I left behind all my friends and things familiar. The only thing I could control and remained familiar were my possessions.
Then there were periods of living abroad in places like Izmir, Turkey in 1966. There literally was nothing to buy there. So my possessions, like my Matchbox Car collection became dear to me because they were irreplaceable. I learned to take very good care of my things. And to hold onto things. I learned to create order in my life. Thus my collections.
I also agree that our own desire for intellectual pursuit fuels our need to collect. I have had many areas of collecting over my life, and have always enjoyed learning about new things, places and history. My friends and family see me as someone who knows a bit about everything. And that has served me well in my life!
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I have often seen the "thrill of the hunt" referenced but personally I never really got it.
But I think all of us are intrigued by "collections"....such as the guy with the railway memorabalia who was on TV a month ago or the guy with the beer mat collection on TV tonight.
I dont really know why I started a collection of 3,000 plastic Toy Soldiers thirty years ago....but Nostalgia is a big factor...a way of conserving parts of our past. But it has certainly diverted resources away from the main business...Stamps.
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"I have often seen the "thrill of the hunt" referenced but personally I never really got it."
I get the "thrill of the hunt" and the Internet has pretty much ended that. In days yore, I'd go to shows and look for specific collectibles. Especially in the model car world, I'd go to a show and I was pleased as punch to find a specific item I had been looking for! Today, go to eBay and put in the search term and dozens of that formerly illusive item will pop up instantly. That takes the thrill out of the chase!
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I've been interested in stamps since I was a child, but I never really had an opportunity to collect them seriously. My eyes would brighten, and I would become covetous of any foreign stamp I came across, which was a rare occurrence. Most of my collecting has been done recently, my interest has been ignited,surpassing insurmountably the casual interest of my childhood. I have been buying stamps obsessively, going on philatelic tangents. I love history, and have a great interest in Russia, this has led me to compile a large collection of Russian and Soviet stamps.I am very magpie like, and an irredeemable hoarder, My interests are growing all the time; I recently bought some British colonial stamps,and now I am trying to get as many as I can. I just love collecting, the history and images amaze me.
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"I've been interested in stamps since I was a child,"
Anyone remember what that first spark was as a child? I do!
It was 1966 and we had just moved to Izmir, Turkey when I was eight. There was no television there yet, so we kids became big readers. I was reading the book "Johnny Appleseed" and my father showed me the 1966 Johnny Appleseed stamps on a package we had just received from my grandparents. That was one of those big moments for me. I saved those stamps and one of them survives to this day. You may see a used and stained copy of that stamp in my album, yea that's the one that started it all!
The next moment I remember was my father bringing home a stamp he had received at work. It was from South Africa and I was very impressed. This stamp was actually in Africa! I saved that one too. Don't know if it survived. Little did I know then that someday I'd have good friends from South Africa that would visit my home!
Anyone?
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I am new here. I have been collecting worldwide stamps since I was 8 years old. My mother got me interested in the hobby. And I have been collecting ever since. However I am now disabled and it's as much a form of therapy as a hobby. It keeps me interested. With a lot of time on my hands I use stamp collecting to cope with the situation I am under. In the last 5 years I have bought over 75 kilograms from charities. I soak them, I sort them, I organize them and I am starting to catalogue them and place them in albums. I literally keep busy that way. Since I have so many stamps accumulated I doubt I will ever reach the end this obsession. The rather odd thing in all of my collecting is I don't think I have ever sold or traded anything. I have given things away on occasions but buying and selling isn't me. I am just too busy organizing. In the scheme of things I am fine with that but maybe one day... I can simply let go of the excess which is quite literally "excessive". I don't normally talk stamps with anyone, I don't get magazines, I don't go to shows, I don't belong to a club, and likely I am missing out on all that stuff but you see I simply don't care if I have the greatest collection on earth or whether I have every single set from a particular country. I do research a lot, have very good software and Scott's Catalogues and a lifetime of experience at whatever I am not quite sure. To me though stamps are all works of art with a story behind them and all worthy of possessing; even the Cinderellas, fakes, CTO or what some people refer to as junk. I do throw the damaged ones out but otherwise... Anyway that's my story I guess.
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Paul, if I was to remove the disable part, it would me who wrote that message! I call myself a freelance collector, don't belong to any club either, shows are not for me but when it comes to stamps I am a packrat. Great to have you with us.
Tony
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Paul,
Welcome!
And if I may, I would suggest to NOT throw out the damaged ones;
better to send them to a worthy cause, such as the HOLOCAUST STAMPS PROJECT!
Please check out the link below, and consider sending them your damaged stamps.
Thank you!
http://www.foxboroughrcs.org/students-families/frcs-holocaust-stamp-project/
Randy
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Thanks Musicman...had no idea about the project and I will be sure to send some stamps in. I have plenty to spare them.
Paul
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Welcome Paul! I don't do the show and club thing either. Used to, just not for me anymore. I've been collecting since I was about 9 yrs old and I can't stop. I just love this hobby. Great fun.
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Like many here, I started my collection with a Harris album when I was a teen. I have come back to stamps after a hiatus of almost 40 years. I still enjoy collecting worldwide, but I don't collect anything past the 1960's since that was when I stopped collecting. I'm not interested (and have neither the time nor money) for complete sets of anything or complete countries. Rather, I prefer a sampling from as many countries as I can of different eras, which gives me a sweep of a country's history, events, and memories. In addition, since I grew up in the restaurant business, I have started a topical collection of food, by which I mean cuisine and prepared dishes, not raw materials, such as vegetables. It doesn't seem as if there are many such stamps printed about this topic, which is good because I might be able to keep up with what's there.
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We started collecting about 45 years ago. Once our boys were in their teens we also started them in the hobby but they had very little interest and everything was put into storage. Now that we are both retired and our sons both have their own families we picked up again and can't quit. The boys laughed when they realized we still had all the boxes
We have collected worldwide along with plate blocks of Canada and lots of Olympic sets. We do belong to a local club but not very active. Have learnt alot from them as well as from SOR. We are slowly progressing thru the boxes by sorting stamps by country and stamp number - putting them in envelopes and the mint ones in albums and glassine envelopes. We have a long way to go and wonder if we will see the end of this task. But like others it just seems to keep our minds and interest going.. We use Stampmanage for world wide and EZstamp for Canadian as far as databases go.
Happy sorting everybody!
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Bumping this thread because I think everyone should re-read it!
Never hurts to remind ourselves about what others collect here -
after all, we are a club first and foremost!
I am updating the list I keep on hand of members' interests -
some of you might want to do the same.
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I don't think I ever posted to this list, so here goes . . .
Ireland is my main collection. I'm one seahorse shy (not counting a few recent issues) of a complete used collection. I'm very interested in the early overprints and I'm always looking for interesting cancels, perfins, watermarks, plate varieties, multiples, copies with attached selvage, covers, booklet varieties attached setenant pairs, Cinderellas, stationery, cut squares, FDCs, mint sets, booklets, overprints, revenues, postage dues, railway issues, - you name it, I'm delighted to get them! Only exception - no interest in the modern self adhesive issues.
FYI I'm currently trying to convert all of my bulk trading stock into Ireland material to study. I'll be back trading in a month - contact me then if you'd like to take those duplicated, common stamps that have been sitting in your stockbook forever and swap for something new. I am uploading scans of trading lots I can offer in return
When I broke up my worldwide collection, I wanted to keep at least one country from every continent or major geopolitical area. I selected these to keep:
Austria
Bermuda - looking for key plates and I really like Bermuda postcards
Canada and Provinces - Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Is, Br Columbia & Vancouver
Hawaii
Guernsey - Alderney and Herm Cinderellas, Jersey, Isle of Man and Lundy
Japan, Ryukyu and Manchukuo
Tannu Touva
Vatican City
Venezuela
Virgin Islands and Leeward Islands
Scandinavia:
Danish West Indies
Denmark - I really like Danish Advertising pairs
Faroes
Finland
Finland also Aland, Aunus, Karelia, North Ingermanland
Greenland
Iceland
Norway
Sweden
I mostly collect used singles, but mint are sometimes OK. I'm trying to prune my mint because I live in the tropics and, while we have excellent air conditioning and humidity control, I would rather not store a large mint collection here in case of a hurricane.
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Theresa, I hear you re: the humidity. I love fully red, uncirculated copper coins but I know better than to even try to collect them here in Florida. The album would look like 101 Dalmatians in no time!
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I had this whole bloody thing typed out and hit some wrong key and it all bloody disappeared so now its condensed ... I knew an old guy who lived nearby and we played crib and scrabble and he had a pile of old books, stamps and what have you... he had no kids and every time i went there he gave a me a stamp or two once i had shown interest in them... so by time i was 10 i had a virtually complete collection of newfoundland without having any real sense of what that entailed. But I kept things that seemed relevant to me and so i still have them. We moved as we did so often and i lost track of that old guy who was a doctor of some type tho i dont even recall his name. I do recall him telling me about his dad who was a collector. He had sheets and sheets of every old newfoundland stamp. He lived in this gigantic house near Bowring Park across from the lt gov's place. I had a good friend who lived nearby on military road who's dad shot himself when we were both about ten. Apparently he was dying of cancer. These are things that i recall about stamp collecting as a kid. That and the old GPO on water street which later became the courthouse. I still have my mother in laws centennial box somewhere from the expo. That year we went to the travelling expo and got hit head on by some drunk in a datsun drag racing on the road to trepassey. My brother was the only casualty , putting his head through the windshield. He lived to the ripe old age of 53 sour as ever. I do however have some of those cancellations including some helicopter mail. Yes so callous. Well thats another long story. Anyway our home was always open to whatever happened along and so political judiciousness lead to prosperity and I can always tip my hat to the PC's without whom I would have had to strive much harder than i did, however liberal i might vote. Consequently i have a fine collection of ministerial cancellations from everybody up to Joe Clark. I even have a personal letter of recommendation from John Crosbie who got me my first job after my mom campaigned for him for many years. I did return the favor by milking Acoa of several hundred million working in the private sector to fund offshore fishery patrols, aerial photography, engine machine shops and what have you, for several of his buds. Such is life and a reflection on the fact that life does NOT change. If you doubt me i challenge you to take up a copy of the 1920's papers and show me what is new. This was my morning starting at three later the post office listen to these lines because they hold eternal truth for the accepting/common? man... To which i will only add one comment ... all that cod they shipped worldwide was soaked in DDT to keep off the flies... was much safer slurping the cod liver oil from the drum or grabbing a bit of fresh cod off the flake... and thru all that those early years of rowing 15 miles a day; of misery; of cold; and poverty; and frost; and a saturday bottle of bacardi: this was the song my dad sang to my mom ...on every occasion worthy of a draught
(Modified by Moderator on 2019-12-29 06:06:20)
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I have a US collection but stopped when the stamps were getting too expensive so I switched to British Asia (Singapore, Malaya, etc) before going to worldwide British commonwealth. I focus on pre-1980 (mainly the pre-Princess Diana and Disney phase). Given the breath, I tend to buy collections to get common material rather than one at a time. Steiner pages broke the tie to expensive binders and pages and gave me the freedom to create my own pages. The Internet has also been a big catalyst so I can see what others are going. Some of follow parallel paths.
I have always been interested in stamps and went through usual phases of activity and inactivity but actually subscribed to Linn's off and on in the post college years. My Dad was big into coins but never liked the coin hobby. There is no history in coins.
I have no interest in financial aspects and no hoping to find that rare stamp in some collection or bragging about the big deal. It is a hobby you can mostly do by yourself at any time. It works for an ISTJ type.
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"... There is no history in coins ..."
Ouch!
There is as much history in any coin as there is in any mint stamp ...
... history in the design, manufacture, usages, etc.
Find the cheapest coin of an Islamic reign with a would-not-work-for-a-necklace hole, and you may have found a good luck charm that was nailed onto the doorstep of someone's home.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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My main collection is the Ben Franklin 1 cent green of the Series of 1902 (see my avatar!). I started collecting this one stamp as a specialty back in the early 1970s when I was 14 or 15. I went to the major NY metro shows in those days and was enthralled with all the exhibits of studies on early US stamps, only expensive ones! So as a kid I decided to emulate those collections, but with a cheap stamp.
I always admired Ben Franklin as a kid, so when I first saw this stamp it just clicked. I thought the classic engraving was beautiful, and I started to amass stamps and covers. And I continue to this day. Shown here is a rare Covel private perforation on this issue.
My next collection also dates back to my teens. I started collecting New Jersey postmarks on full cover. I found a lot of older ones at shows in the cheap cover boxes. Then I started visiting post offices as well as writing by mail. When I got back to collecting a few years ago as an adult, I found the box of covers, along with the old paperback zip code directory I used as a checklist.
Armed with modern tools like eBay I started it up again and now have close to 1,000 town varieties, only 42% of what's possible according to the enormous spread sheet I have put together from every source I could find. It's housed on two pocket clear pages, in 10 thick binders! Below is an example of a page in my collection. The top cover was one of those I mailed away for in my teens!
I also have maintained my general USA collection that I started back then too. I decided I didn't care if I had a single, block, pair, interesting multiple, first day covers or interesting usage. It would all go in one binder to represent that stamp. So again, I employed my 2 pocket pages, and have amassed a pretty complete USA collection from the 1920s to 1980. Past 1980 I save what I acquire, and have those in stock books and a cover box, just in case I decide to move the end date back.
My first page in my Airmail album, the first series of airmail stamps. C1 represented with a cover, C2 as a single and C3 as a plate block. I consider this page complete.
National Defense 1 cent stamp of 1940. I considered the margin stamp with "100" on it kinda rare and deserving to be here! This was no doubt the top sheet of a stack of 100 sheets. I also had a plate block, and this type of collection allows me to include interesting collateral material such as this related slogan cancel. (I hadn't noticed the typo on the word "LiberTy" until now, gotta fix that)
And I do have an album called "Cool Stuff" where I keep other interesting items I find.
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My primary focus is the Danish West Indies.
Was a generalist as a kid in the 70's and 80's, but always leaned toward Scandinavia as we had family there and I would keep envelopes, post cards, and stamps from family in Sweden and Denmark. Worked for an auction house while in college, and decided to focus on DWI as it was a smaller, somewhat overlooked area, with a lot of varieties and printings, plus had a family connection -- the pharmacist in St. Thomas -- who was one of two pharmacists who regummed the 1st issue as many of the sheets had stuck together on the voyage to the islands. He also created the "Royal Navy Rum," which Cruzon now makes.
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I'm still looking for a stamp depicting "The Larch"
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Hi everyone! I thoroughly enjoyed reading and rereading everyone’s responses. I posted in 2015 to this thread under hs2o. I think it’s time to give an update.
Since then we sold half of everything we owned, but not the stamp collection (!), and moved halfway across the continent. We decided to have new wills drawn up and were asked about valuables, such as stamp collections. That got me thinking. Since 2015 I have focused in on Canada, including perfins and revenues. I have a burgeoning Christmas collection. Plus I’m working on a textile/handwork collection. I prefer postally used stamps, but won’t turn my nose up at mint! I’m collecting Canada because I live here. I collect Christmas because I am a person of faith who loves the magic of Christmas. I collect textiles because I’m a textile artist in real life.
Recently I bartered some stamps for a piece of my artwork and started a small Newfoundland collection. I was also given a couple of collections. As a result I have more worldwide stamps to either sell or gift away.
I did have some success in the past selling on Stamporama, and plan to get back to it in 2021.
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Jean,
Thank you for bumping this thread back to current status!
I know we have had a handful of new members this year and hopefully they will add
their interests to our ongoing list.
To all the recent SOR members, please don't hesitate to post what you collect and WHY you
collect!
Lets keep this thread rolling!
And to all those who have joined this year - WELCOME ABOARD!!!
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I've been collecting stamps and postal history since I received a Minkus Worldwide Album for a Christmas present, in 1966.
My Danish heritage, and the inheritance of my uncles' stamp collection in the 1970s, led me to focus on Denmark. From there, I branched out to the few Danish colonies (Iceland, Danish West Indies, and Greenland), primarily focusing on the earliest issues up through independence. That got me interested in other Caribbean colonial powers, and the intricacies of maritime interactions between Spanish, French, Dutch, and English colonies as well as the private packets.
Another interesting diversion for me has been the stamps issued by Schleswig-Holstein prior to and including the 1920 plebiscite which divided the territory between what is now Denmark and Germany. And, you've seen some of my Christmas postcard topical diversion.
You can see how Denmark forms the backbone for all these collecting areas.
Because I like airplanes, aviation pioneering and the early transatlantic airmails are another area of interest for me. I prefer to collect items that are not philatelic or ceremonial, because the stories they can tell are more interesting to me. Again, the presence of multiple players in this arena (e.g., Air France, Lufthansa, and PanAm) and their interactions adds interest for me.
I generally prefer collecting used stamps and covers, because the varieties and vagaries of how, why, when, and where they were cancelled adds a lot of dimension and interest.
Even more generally, I admire and collect items that can tell a story about where they've been and why they went there.
PM me if you want chat more about these collecting areas!
-Paul
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I accumulated a small pile of stamps about 15 years ago, and I recently started trying to get it into some sort of order. As a part of that process, I've managed to buy some random assortments of stamps from eBay, so I'm probably moving toward less order rather than more.
I initially thought I would be collecting US stamps, but once I started, the thought of distinguishing the very early stamps turns a hobby into a job (see another recent thread about distinguishing ABN/CBN/NBN stamps elsewhere in the forum for an example). So, I may try to collect the various designs, but I don't think I'm going to attempt to find all the Scott numbers or anything like that.
Somewhere along the line, I acquired two old beginner albums which had a few stamps from a lot of places, and when I learned about the collect-one-from-every-country idea, I thought I would try that, since I've already got stamps from a variety of countries, and I don't want to go whole-hog and try to collect worldwide in a serious way.
Then, I had an idea for a collection that displays the tree of life as portrayed on stamps (a version of which Don implemented on Stamp Smarter). That's my primary focus. The why? I don't expect to ever have to hunt down a very expensive stamp for this collection; there's probably another stamp with a design that works.
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Capn Ed...above is a snippet from the HE Harris catalog for USA. I bought a copy in 2016 because it's spiral bound, so it will sit flat, plus I like all the color images and other aspects of their presentation and layout.
The Scott catalog assigns each image a number, then you have to go hunting through all the little text to find the stamps that correspond with the image. What I like about Harris, as above, they tell you right out the stamps that are represented by each image. That brings me to the way I'm collecting early USA, so as not to drive myself variety crazy, which includes hefty prices on some of them.
So basically all the US stamps issued between 1847 and 1861 can be consolidated into 7 face different stamps. Find the cheapest version of each and you have all the stamps the post office intended to produce for that era.
As it goes, for instance the issue of 1847 is just US 1 and US 2 the five and ten cent values. 3 and 4 aren't even stamps in my book. They were printed as souvenirs at the 1876 Exposition and not even valid for postage. Ironically, they catalog higher than the originals... and you know what? I don't need them.
Some of the early US catalog varieties come off the same sheet of stamps! Early collectors, probably because there were less than 100 US stamps to collect at the time, went crazy finding all these varieties that Scott then listed.
As far as "Face Different", I can go as far as collecting the imperf and perforated value, but I don't have to go crazy for all the minute details.
I hope this helps.
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Yes, it is key to depart from collecting Scott numbers or space on album pages.
For the US, as with BenFranklin1902,I found it more satisfying to collect face-different stamps. I ditched my grandfather's old Scott National album and placed the stamps in Vario sheets so I could see what I have and not what I don't, and don't even want.
Those blue one-cent Franklins should just be one major number. Some of the others belong in the same category as plate flaws.
I bypass the Washington and Franklin headaches altogether, but as for the banknotes, I do collect the secret marks. They are face different, even if you need a magnifying glass to identify them.
I collected France according to an album, but then realized that some were never issued, so are not of interest, while others did have interesting variations not recognized in the album.
As for the German area, I take a different approach and go full Michel: chasing plate flaws and shade differences.
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Countries I collected with albums were places I lived as a kid, or had some family connection: US, France, Canada.
Collecting areas where I have gotten bogged down in the weeds were initially problems I faced and decided to resolve. Wondering how to distinguish early French and French colonial issues led to a collection of French Colonies postmarks. Sorting out how to distinguish genuine German states stamps from the forgeries led to an interest in some of them.
Academic work led to dead ends in academia but did lead to perspective on areas I studied, which in turn provided context for collecting French African colonies, especially Morocco.
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Started off thinking WW but too overwhelming. Quickly focused on Germany and anything related which is pretty extensive given how much they loved other countries (at least to occupy).
Recently thinking of collecting WW just for my birth year. I could easily parse my Steiner pages to create a customized album. Anyone else do that?
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capn_ed:
"I initially thought I would be collecting US stamps, but once I started, the thought of distinguishing the very early stamps turns a hobby into a job (see another recent thread about distinguishing ABN/CBN/NBN stamps elsewhere in the forum for an example). So, I may try to collect the various designs, but I don't think I'm going to attempt to find all the Scott numbers or anything like that."
I am the one that started that thread, but it was because I only wanted to attempt to ID which version I had. I agree that every Scott number is crazy!
This may be of interest to you:
http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/philosophy.htm
Cheers!
Lars
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I started collecting US in the early 1970's when I was much younger and had lots of patience. I can remember spending a full afternoon identifying a couple stamps. I really wouldn't have the patience for that now, the early US really can be a chore sometimes. I really am looking for each Scott number and not counting BOB, with a 1976 cut off, I am down to needing 148 stamps. A lot of these are not attainable but I have a very good collection that I worked hard at and am quite proud of. If you want a more attainable area to collect that you can almost finish try Ireland, Australia or some of the African areas. The stamps for Nyassa and The Mozambique Company are very attractive and affordable. I also started North Borneo and except for some of the early issues the country is quite affordable. Stamp collecting should not be a chore, there are several areas that are easier but still fun and challenging!
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Nothing personal to anyone on SOR, but I feel like I've 'evolved' past the stage of needing to fill every space in an album. Can I get sufficient gratification by simply examining a high-quality image of a stamp, rather than the stamp itself? YES!
In the early days, I justified my interest in stamp collecting because I saw the product as a finite collection. Contrasted with say, collecting candy dishes or elephants or pigs or postcards where the potential size of the collection is infinite. The idea of completion was attractive and comforting, and a concrete objective. Turns out that "complete" is not so easily defined.
Then, as I matured in the hobby, I began to think on dimensions other than a stamp's designated catalog number, or of corraling it with all its brethren. I began to think about an individual stamp's intended use, and the quirks of the range of its actual use. I guess that's what you call "specializing". Anymore, the utility of Scott numbers is simply to distinguish a stamp from its fellows in a relativistic sense, for example: "Was this stamp issued before than that one?" Even Scott numbers are notably flawed in this respect. The example that jumps to mind is that Denmark #2 was actually issued before Denmark #1.
I certainly "get" the attraction of completing a collection, and I have a few small complete collections. But, I've (mostly) come to terms with the burdensome obsessiveness of 'completion' and have been able to find more enjoyment in researching the stories an object (of which, the stamp itself is often just a small part) can tell in the context of its actual use. And, this opens up an infinite range of dimensionality that is not really accessed by filling spaces in an album. In fact, I've never acquired or created an album after that first one, given to me in 1966.
This is also the principle reason I am much more attracted to used stamps than mint stamps. A little 'battle damage' can contribute to the historical context, and it mutes the idealistic while amplifying the practical.
-Paul
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Thank God we're all different - what's good for one is not necessarily good for the other. I've always been a collector! I know very few collections can be completed, but I like to try to come as close as possible! Not everyone thinks that way, but we're all different!
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Harvey wrote:
"Thank God we're all different "
Yup... someone once said that if we were all the same we wouldn't fall in love.
David
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Since I last posted in this thread a year ago. my colleting interests have not changed much except I got into Machins as well after purchasing a GB collection.
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I mainly collect the old states of Germany. For those for whom these are not familiar,
they are: Baden, Bavaria, Bergedorf, Braunschweig, Bremen, Hamburg, Hannover, Helogland,
Lubeck, Mecklenburg Schwerin, Mecklenburg Strelitz, Oldenburg, Prussia, Saxony,
Schleswig-Holstein and Wurttemberg. These are all to 1871 (except Helgoland to 1890).
Also included is the mail system of Thurn & Taxis, the Confederation of North German
states (1868-71) and German occupied Alsace & Lorraine (France).
I am a member of APS, Germany Philatelic Society, Peninsular State Philatelic Society
(collecting society of Michigan) and serve on the APS expert committee for the old states
of Germany.
I have authored nearly 50 articles on various subjects (you may have seen one in AP) and
in various venues. I have done but two exhibits: one frame online (first issues of Helgoland), and a 5-frame Helgoland exhibit earning national Gold and Large Vermeil at
the World Exhibition in New York, 2016.
I would post articles here, but the system does not allow easy uploading of a document.
If anyone is interested in any of the above, please email me at: Lawrence.mead@usm.edu
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A Service Dog gives a person with a disability independence. Never approach, distract or pet a working dog, especially when (s)he is in harness. Never be afraid to ask questions to the handler (parent).
21 Jan 2013
01:35:52pm
I've been collecting for about 30+ years, starting with the cereal box CTOs. By the time I was in my 20s I was buying boxlots and doing the whole "worldwide" thing, creating my own album pages by simply printing off paper with a line border around it, writing the country on it and then hinging the stamps to the pages (trying to keep together sets, etc) and then putting them in acid-free page protectors with card stock pages between so I had a front and back and didn't have to worry if my stamps fell off the hinges. I'd put the year of issue and Scott # if I could find it (which usually were empty when it came to China stamps, as I just didn't have the patience for those!). I really loved seeing the Belgium precancels and the railway stamps so I started getting those together.
Then I discovered a Nova Scotia stamp one day and decided to try to collect some of the Canadian Provinces. This is much the same way I started my German collection. I came across a Prussian stamp with a really cool postmark and decided, hey, this is what I want to get. So I started my Prussian collection which grew to other States and eventually to all of Germany.
I've also loved anything related to the British Royal Family (I remember getting up at 5am and watching "the wedding of the century" in 1981!) So, I started picking up pieces here and there and that grew to a very nice sized Royalty collection.
In my work on my German collection which really became my "focus" collection, I was drawn to the DDR, particularly because of the political significance displayed in the stamps. As I've researched more about each stamp or series, I realised that I was missing something really important. Russia!
Of course in my worldwide collection, I had bits and pieces of Russian stamps, so then I decided to bring the two together, side by side.
So that's my collection in a nutshell. I've got some other smaller interests and covet my Queen Victoria stamps - if it's got her face on it, I love it! LOL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, what about you guys? What do you collect and why? I'm interested in hearing from people who collect topicals. I suppose you could call my Royalty collection a topical, but I've always been intrigued as to what draws a person to collect something like butterflies or flowers or trains, etc. etc.
I'm looking forward to hearing from all you guys. And for those who read the discussion board but really don't feel they have anything to add, please step up and share your collecting interests. The world of stamp collecting and anything philatelic (FDCs, Covers, etc) is such a vast world, please, share with us. I personally am looking forward to learning from all of you.
Kelly
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re: What do you collect and why?
Primarily, I am a U.S. collector. That's how I started out as a kid. Unfortunately, research for collecting back then was difficult for a kid and the hobby went to bed for quite some time.
When I got back into the hobby back in 2010, due to my father dying, I inherited a foreign collection as well. I've often talked about "The Garbage Bag Collection" which was as it's name describes, a bunch of stuff in books and loose in a garbage bag. I wanted to kindle an interest in the hobby for my kids so I took some advice from people here and showed them various topical that caught their eyes. Hence the posting I always use when people ask me the very same question you asked:
"Anything that peaks my kids interest... you know, cool boy stuff... like space, planes, trains, cars, boats, buildings, dinosaurs, wildlife, sports and things that go BOOM!!!"
As of now, I have all of the U.S. stuff from those collections processed and in the proper books. I am still sorting all the foreign stuff into countries, but luckily, the garbage bag has been replaced by a nice plastic tub full of marked plastic bags representing countries. The next step of course will be to ID all of that stuff. I'll probably loose my eye-sight from all the squinting over the next year, ha ha.
---Pat
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21 Jan 2013
02:39:16pm
re: What do you collect and why?
My collections are varied, I consider my self a general worldwide collector but I am starting to focus on the classical era of stamps and will probably narrow it down further from that. I also currently have a modest Canada, GB, Machin, German, Japanes and Russian collection.
From a thematic/topical standpoint I have airplanes, ships, paintings, rugby, soccer, militaria just starting chess and am looking at adding to and narrowing down some of my thematic interests. I collect my topicals because each of the topics is something I have an interest in. I love planes and actively flight sim, I was a Sea Cadet and love all things navy. I played competitive rugby and soccer as well as refereeing to soccer to a semi professional level. My BA is in history and I concentrated in military history, I enjoy playing chess and I appreciate I nice painting and can't afford thre really nice ones.
Where I design my own album pages, I try to provide a write-up of the individual stamps. This is part of the fun of the collection.
Great question Kelly.
Alyn
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It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. - Aristotle Onassis
21 Jan 2013
08:22:12pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Kelly,
As you know, for now I'm dabbling in the whole world of stamps....literally!! I find that science, medicine and nature interest me the most in terms of topicals but I'll be sitting with my stamps and see a train and think "Oh, I should collect trains!" I guess that makes me a scattered collector with no clear topic. I'm sure I'll have one some day, but for now, I'm a worldwide collector.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I started out worldwide, and still pursue that, primarily pre-1940 (altho' I don't turn away more recent stamps--and the pre-1940 era means some pretty tight financial restrictions). However, I have gotten into postal history--specifically related to my hometown area, where I live now and my spouse's family's areas of history. (It all ties in to my interests in history and genealogy.) Right now I am sorting a huge accumulation of worldwide which runs from the late 19th century to the 1990's--and I'm really enjoying it. I guess my goal is to bring order from disorder (but then I am seriously Type A...).
Roger
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22 Jan 2013
02:54:38am
re: What do you collect and why?
" .... What do you collect and why? ...."
I have posted parts of this essay in other discussions here and there, but it does answer he question posed.
I started collecting stamps as a young boy probably at the age of eight or so. My parents collected stamps during the early years of their marriage which was during the Great Depression (1929-1939). During World War II they did not have the time to sit and collect things in the evenings but continued to accumulate any stamps that they came upon in the mails. Unlike today almost all the mail bore real stamps which could be saved by a collector.
After the War ended they continued their collection, moving stamps from old pages and binders into a New Scott Blue International Album which they had bought in the late '40s. Believe it or not, that one three inch wide album had spaces just about all the stamps of the world to the date of its printing.
(Today a complete world wide collection requires thirty or forty similar large thick albums.)
I think it gave them some time to sit calmly and do something together and involve my brothers and me in a quiet family activity. Even when they were too busy to soak and mount stamps, they continued to accumulate anything that came their way on the corners of envelopes. I remember them also getting bundles of stamps that had been saved by friends and relatives from envelopes that they had received. Most were United States stamps but enough were from other countries to make it interesting for a young boy to search the 12" globe and a world atlas for their source.
By the time I was about eight years old I had my own small album and often received small packets as a birthday or X-mas gift. In those days you could buy an inexpensive packet of used worldwide stamps in the very common Woolworths or SS Kresge "Five and Ten Cent Stores" . Sometimes they had a cloth bag on sale with world wide mixtures for probably $0.25, so I am sure that that was where I actually bought stamps myself for the first time.
In those days there were many small stamp dealers with neighborhood stores everywhere. Schools had student stamp clubs as an after school activity. Dealers had boxes of penny stamps that a young collector could spend his allowance on.
Then about age ten or twelve I discovered that girls were for more than just pulling ponytails, or shooting spitballs at, and the stamp albums were eventually put aside, but as my parents had done, I continued to accumulate whatever I found in the mails.
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But after college and a four year stint in the US Coast Guard, I joined the Merchant Marine. One rainy afternoon, about 1963-4, I was home for a few days between trips to Germany, the UK and back to New York, when I noticed both my old albums and the Blue Scott's International on a nearby shelf. As I idly began to look through the albums and the piles of stamps that had been accumulated in a desk drawer something interesting caught my attention.
.
There were spaces for three stamps from the Tokelau Islands on one page.
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Now, few people other than collectors have ever heard of the Tokelau Islands and even less have ever been there. However for about three years I had been stationed on the CGC Buttonwood (WAGL-306) a small 180' long US Coast Guard cutter home-ported in Honolulu, Hawaii. Most of the time this vessel sailed the Western and South Pacific on five and six month cruises, visiting many of the Trust Territory Islands, the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong, Okinawa and even American Samoa as well as many of the other atolls and islands in between, some that only got their names into the news during WW II when they were the site of some horrendous battles.
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On one trip after visiting Pago Pago, the main port in American Samoa and its capital city, for a couple of weeks, the Captain met some missionaries who were desirous of transport to the Tokelau Islands. Apparently there was only an occasional supply ship that would call there and they would have had to wait for several weeks for the next inter-island trader to arrive in Samoa and run that way.
So as a gesture of friendship or something, when we sailed for Honolulu we took them aboard and sailed north to the three atolls bearing that name, stopping for a short time at each one. If I remember correctly the trip to the Tokelaus took about two days as the CG cutter seldom exceeded 12 knots, unless the wind was behind us. These atolls were more or less on the route we were going to follow north anyway to other remote islands on our return leg to Hawaii.
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The Tokelaus are three small atolls about a day or two steaming north of Samoa, so isolated that they are not visible from one another and certainly removed from almost anywhere else. The three stamps each referred to one of the islands and showed some aspect of native life. There was no harbor to speak of so when we arrived we had to maintain power while the natives came out to the ship with shells and wooden poi bowls to sell or trade. They used small canoe-like boats and many, both children and young adults were either naked or nearly so. I am sure that the horrified missionaries put an end to that in short order.
After a brief stop at each island during which our passengers departed we went on our way to other equally remote islands such as Howland and Baker that after the loss of Amilia Earhart are seldom in the news.
In some ways the visit was prescient of the scenes in the blockbuster movie "Hawaii" that was produced four years later when the sailing vessel from New England paused at different Hawaiian Islands debarking a missionary whose goal was to do good, and, as the punch line of the Hawaiian joke goes, considering who wound up with the Island's wealth, "They did damm well !"
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Finding the spaces for the Tokelau stamps in the old album got me to delve further through the pages, looking at both the stamps we had and the intriguing open spaces. A day or so later I went into New York City to rejoin the USNS Geiger for its next trip across the pond and stopped at Macy's Department Store in New York City . Since this was some fifteen or more years after the date of the old blue Scott Album I had realized that a new album was needed. I bought a large new H.E. Harris Citation album for the envelopes that we had accumulated and were stuffed with the newer stamps that had been saved by my parents over the previous ten or fifteen years. An envelope of Dennison Hinges and a couple of World Wide packets found their way into my shopping bag also. On the trip back to my parents home on Long Island before we sailed I kept looking through the things I had bought and the thrill that stamp collectors often feel made the ride an adventure.
That is how the bug bit me and I have been collecting, sorting, soaking and eventually mounting stamps ever since.
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The Harris Album accompanied me to sea from then on growing into two thick albums as I found stamp stores and dealer all over the world. I even had an extra lifejacket with a ten foot long lanyard, a roll of quality duct tape and two sealable plastic bags ready in my compartment for emergencies. Fortunately they were never needed.
That epiphany was about 1964 and I have been an active collector ever since. A few years later at a stamp bourse I met a dealer who had removed just about all the stamps from a 15 volume set of Minkus Supreme Global Stamp albums, so I bought them all for about $35.00. I still use the Minkus set today for my basic world wide albums although I have added four or five more binders to hold more pages, and have eight Scott's binders for a second Worldwide collection I started for the duplicates that seemed to gather almost by themselves.
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During those years I have never regretted becoming a stamper. I found stamp stores in Istanbul, Beirut, Aden, Calcutta and Bombay, Singapore, Manila and Kaoshung, Guam and Saigon as well as all over Europe and of course the USA ports where my ship stopped. I met even more stamp collectors and maintained a correspondence with some for years after I visited their country.
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Today, my child's Worldwide Stamp Album has grown into a room in the house set aside mostly for stamps, albums, shoeboxes, file drawers, stock books, catalogs and informational books about the hobby.
Over the years I have pulled several countries stamps from the World Wide Albums and began to put them on my own pages dedicated to that country.
My interest in Machins came from a deep interest in the earlier Wildings with their graphite lines, phosphor bands and revolving watermarks, then, like Topsey, "dey jes grew an' grew".
On a trip to the Far East I had become friends with another collector who showed me his Gibbons catalog and was able to explain the intricacies of the Wilding series, fortunately just before I tossed a bunch of seeming duplicates overboard. On another trip the ship's Radio Operator's passion was an extensive and quite valuable collection of Newfoundland as well as the classic US Air Mails both of which were ailing along with him.
At first the Machins with only Queen Elizabeth's profile and the value had seemed so plain and potentially boring. I had extensive collections built up of Norse Post Horns, Chinese Junks and Reapers, the ubiquitous Wildings and some other long definitive series. On a long trip to Ceylon and back I accumulated bundles of the Crown Agents Key Plate types from three dealers in Columbo, Beirut and Aden to study and sort. Then the Machins began to come fast and furious with their seeming infinite variations. Who could resist ?
I have often bought catalogs from other countries as they provide much more information that Scott does. Other books that explore some detailed aspect of philately including an almost complete set of Billigs handbooks have come my way. There is really no limit to where the hobby can take the collector.
My decision to collect postally used stamps was made almost fifty years ago and has not been regretted and it came with a companion decision. I plan to die before my collection comes up for resale and let someone else worry about what it is worth. I have left informational instruction sheets explaining some of the ins and outs as well as the common pitfalls of disposing of a family's legacy collection. I hope that one of my children or grandchildren will be able to do more than just hold a garage sale on a rainy Saturday morning.
I have had the pleasure of ownership.
I have had the excitement of the chase and the thrill of success as some interesting addition completes a page, or even better, a series of pages.
I have long benefited from the knowledge of other cultures, of the details of printing and production that even the most oblivious accumulator is exposed to in his collecting habits. And then there is the vicarious enjoyment of visiting faraway lands that I will never actually see, or of mentally returning to places that I have visited in my youth when I traveled extensively. And last but by no means least, I have found friendships and sometimes, companionship in the numerous friends whom I have met or corresponded with from all corners of this world. These things can neither be quantified nor taken away easily. They also cannot be sold in a box or an album to another person. But to me that is the true value of stamping.
Some years ago there was an article in the then current Life Magazine that told the story of several more or less wealthy (Translation: Filthy rich) stamp collectors and illustrated some of the gems in their possession. One very well known collector, in explaining why he traveled around the states and sometimes the world, purchasing rare and unusual stamps for his voluminous collections, said in response to a question as to why he was so motivated; "You do not know what stamps can do to a man." I remember reading that in 1954 and about ten years later came across a copy of the magazine so I bought it. I still have the beat up copy on a shelf in my stamp room.
Many times, especially after I resumed the hobby, I thought about the meaning of those words and their inherent truth. Most people do not understand why these little pieces of paper create such interest, and in truth, I cannot think of why, or how, they manages to mesmerize men and women so completely. But I do know that they do so.
For some stampers financial gain is as important as the less quantifiable benefits I mentioned.
I understand that. I suppose all of us have a secret hope that something that we collect will eventually have some value above and beyond what we paid for it or the value of the effort we spent looking for it.
I will state categorically from years of experience and observation that, in my opinion, the majority of stampers who seek stamps as an investment, (They actually are usually accumulators.) will gain comparatively far less than they hope to, while those who seek the simple pleasure of possession and completion of a theme or an album are quite likely to be pleasantly surprised. Or their heirs will.
One important rule to consider is a general rule, not limited to stamps; "If it is made for collectors, it is not collectable." It refers to fancy ceremonial coins, plates, model cars and so on. It does not mean that an individual cannot enjoy owning some special souvenir that they personally find interesting, attractive or otherwise meaningful, but the things that are truly collectable are the common everyday items that even if made in vast numbers were discarded and lost to our culture. Then years later someone decided to accumulate similar items and a collection of some strange item is born. The annals of collections are full of those items. And today quite often they earn a premium that can be very significant in relation to the original value of the item. It’s a strange world.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I'm not sure. Let me think about this. I will have to reach pretty deep and come up with something really profound.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Charlie hopefully you put this story someplace for your kids to read before they decide to have that garage sale.
The most valuable gift I received from my great grandfather before he died was a letter he wrote about his life and immigration to the US.
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22 Jan 2013
02:53:31pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Oh yes, Michael, I have that and many other files telling of the things I've seen the places I've been and many thoughts that have popped into my mind over the years.
One of the benefits of writing a lot of letters and being wordy is eventually a large story develops that can be read by my children and grand children.
One of the things that bothers me is that neither of my grandfathers left much in the way of stories beyond what I can recall vaguely from some casual conversations. Yet my great grand father came from Ireland as a teen and joined the US Navy during the Civil War. He later married and raised eight or so children. But other than a letter from the War Department Veterans affairs in the late 1870s explaining that he had a pension of some kind due to injuries, there is simply nothing left but dust.
My other grandfather often told my cousins and me about his teen years when he sailed on a ship that carried supplies to remote lighthouses along the New England Coast, probably a vessel of, or chartered by, the US Lighthouse Service an organization that was absorbed by the US Coast Guard in 1939.
I do recall him speaking of the waves that swamped a longboat and a friend who drowned along the rocky shorelines. He explained that they had no motor launch so the boats had to be rowed by strong seamen through the surf. But I was too young to write things out and had no idea that what must have seemed so crystal clear sixty years ago would be shrouded on a mental fog today.
That is so very similar to the type ship and voyages about the Central Pacific that I referred to in the previous post. But I was young when he spun his stories and he was not inclined to write things down so I am left with a strong suspicion marinating in fanciful speculation.
So your advice is well taken and some of our friends here at SoR ought to take heed and type out what they recall of their adventures before it is too distant a memory.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Charlie:
I have the same experience with my grandfather (and others in the family)related stories. I vaguely remember some of them, others are just faint tickles. Those frustrations plus not having a clue about asking questions that would fill in holes in my quest to compile a family genealogy. I have no letters from grandparents, but I do have one from an uncle written from Tokyo Bay 2 days after the signing of the surrender in Aug, 1945. I treasure that. Many other family letters were destroyed by my mother after my father died because she was angry at him for dying. I suppose we all have stories like this.
Roger
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re: What do you collect and why?
CDJ,
Your replies are great, and very interesting reading. You say that we should put our memories in writing, which by the way I have done, but I think that you should write a book on your adventures.
I only have one correction to your writings, and that is her name is Amelia Earhart, not Emilia. This little bit of editing shows that I really read every thing you wrote.
Keep them coming.
Richaard
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
23 Jan 2013
01:21:42am
re: What do you collect and why?
Its Amelia, not Emilia, of course. I knew that, but just had one of those brain gasps.
I am going to edit it and any other typos I see.
Thanks, Richaard
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re: What do you collect and why?
During WWII my dad went off to war and left me his stamp collection to manage. Unfortunately my dad was not a true collector but saved every stamp he could buy from the local stamp dealer.....I never found one stamp of any value. I've always been an organizer so I took it upon myself to start with the US collection and make something of it. $10,000+ since I started I now have an impressive collection. Since my family is Canadian I started on this country next.....although not as complete as the US stuff it is well represented. Next came Japan, I had access to many of the stamps of the period and also acquired many of the older issues. Although I do not collect GB I do have many of the early issues as these were printed before US stamps, thus an interest. I really enjoy the back of the book stuff, it's fun and unusual. My US collection includes PB's of most of the stamps post 1920 except those $5,000 or more issues.
I'm losing interest in the modern era stamps as I find them most boring and too costly to justify the expense according to the way I collect and of course the current economy.
Perry
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re: What do you collect and why?
I started collecting stamps when I was 8, now well over 50 years later I am still collecting, Australia, New Zealand, UK & Canada, my daughter took over my USA collection when she was 8, she is now 16.
The one thing that frustrated the hell out of me when I was young was the cost of stamp catalogues, when I first got involved with computers in the 70's I saw the possibilities, so it was only a matter of time before I produced the Australian Online Stamp Catalogue, currently all stamps and most booklets along with SESS Sheetlets are listed from 1913 to 2005, I am currently working on 2006
http://australianstrampcatalogue.com
Larry
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re: What do you collect and why?
I started out as a kid with a collection Netherlands and a collection worldwide. Both were one stockbook. The worldwide collection grew and at a certain time I decided worldwide was a bit too much, so I concentrated on a few countries. These were mostly countries I already had the most stamps of, and/or found the most interesting. Countries such as Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand. Once I found out about stamp exchanges through the internet, with wantlists etc, I reached a point where I could not get any further with most countries. Not without large costs anyway because only the really expensive stamps were still missing.
So I thought what to do next and I decided to go for less common countries (at least over here in the Netherlands), such as Japan, Nepal, Mauritius, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and finally Egypt. In most cases the choice was rather random: for some reason I liked the country or its stamps. An important factor was that these countries are not really in high demand here, so it is relatively easy get them in exchanges at stampshows, because most collectors are glad to get rid of them
For Egypt it was a bit different. When I started that collection I had a relation with an archaeologist specialized in ancient Egypt. It did not work out with her in the end, but the Egyptian stamps remained
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I started out collecting world wide, but soon I started concentrating solely on my own country, Denmark and Greenland. At a certain point I only lacked a dozen of stamps. Not the prettiest but definately the most expensive. As I love the engraved stamps of my country and I had all those, I suddenly found myself collecting recess pictorial definitive stamps of British Commonwealth. I still build on that collection and I also add commemorative sets of similar size and style. After working on that for around 10 years I discovered the Antarctic Territories AAT, BAT, South Georgia, Ross Dependency and FSAT along with Falkland Islands Dependencies. Only the latter and BAT and South Goergia has produced that type of definitive sets I collect, but I saw the rest of their productions and fell in love
So now I collect the series I mentioned from Br. Commonwealth + Antarctic territories and Greenland. I particularly love the engraved stamps which are still issued by both Greenland and FSAT
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11:51:44am
re: What do you collect and why?
First, I joined the club this week, and look forward to being an "active" member starting with this entry. Up until the start of 2013, I was a thematic collector. Fourteen years with tall sailing ships on stamps (world wide) Always to be my first love! Being a disabled veteran and only 56 years old, I decided to add to my collecting interest because of the time I hope to have in this wonderful hobby. I'm adding all issues that have to do with the Universal Postal Union, world issues from 1956, and the 1937 Paris International Expo. I enjoy keeping very extensive records and belonging to a local stamp club. (my first one in fact) I enjoy the fellow collectors I've come to know along the way. Being my VA comp. payment is my only income, I find the hobby is easy to enjoy with very limited funds each month. After all, I'm a collector not an investor.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome Aboard Popeye56............We sincerely hope you enjoy our club and participate as often as you desire. We're here to help, as much as possible. We have some very knowledgable folks on deck who collect pretty much everything and I'm sure they are willing to answer any questions you may have. Thanks for entering the discussion board. Perry
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re: What do you collect and why?
OK, Here's my deep thought....
I knew my mother had kept a few stamps here and there. But as I said here before when I first joined sor, I ended up with my mother's little stamp collection when she passed away this past summer. Her small stockbook was actually very well stocked, mostly u.s. stamps and blocks from the 30s and 70s. I had always thought about collecting stamps, well not always. But as I went through my mothers things and took a real good look at her meager stamp collection, I decided to do it. That's when I had come across and joined sor.
Now... Honestly, I am not too interested in "postal" history, or anything else "postal," for that matter, and collecting has not changed my view. OK, maybe just a bit. I am working small antique postal scales into my antique scale collection. And I love "Old,Old" like Old West Post offices/museums.
So after really thinking about the question here at hand, here's what I can honestly say...
I collect stamps, for the "art," the "pictorial" printed on the stamp, the "history" that the "picture" on the stamp conveys. This obviously has a lot to do with why I moved head first in to "Topical Collecting."
I do not need to collect 10 of the "same stamps" just because they have different "denominations" on them, nor would I go out of my way to buy multiples of the same stamp, just because they are a different color.
I acquire a stamp soley for the "picture" that is on it.
As to what topics I collect/buy for... it really does depend on what mood I'm in, and what "catches" my eye. A recent example, many of you may know I have been collecting "Vatican," stamps. Now although I am a religious person, I am not a church-going person, and I am not catholic, (although my wife and kids are) but when I saw the "art" in some vatican stamps that were up for auction, I decided to buy, and now I have a growing collection of Vatican stamps, along with my Christmas stamp collection.
I know many collect stamps with ships on them. Currently I don't, and have no interest in starting to, even though we used to own a '62 - 34ft Tollycraft with twin engines, it doesn't translate into an interest in stamps. Who knows why?? Don't know!
So in summation, I am a topical collector, collecting for the Art, the Photography, depicted ON the stamp and I can spend quite a bit of time, just perusing what I have collected, and think of it as just my own little art/history museum.
Clayton
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re: What do you collect and why?
Just like Clayton, I love countries that issue engraved stamps with art on them. However, I don't just collect "art" stamps, or have the desire to try to truly collect world-wide stamps, so have been concentrating on just GB, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Italy and to about 1950 of the U. S. stamps. A lot of what I enter in the auction is from countries that I have collected at one time, or another, but decided to give them up and really concentrate on the countries listed above.
Mike
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24 Jan 2013
04:21:58pm
re: What do you collect and why?
When I read about collecting stamps for the art on them - i.e. famous paintings that one knows one will never acquire but can have a tiny replica on a beautiful 2" piece of paper, etc., I recall a discussion I had many years ago with a friend who was not a stamp collector. I was showing him a few of my previous ctos from the cereal boxes and the old five and dime style bags. He saw a group of nudes. His eyes lit up and said "hey, are there a lot of stamps with naked chicks on them?" I started to laugh and said "well, the catalogues are in black and white so you can't really tell how many are out there but from what I've seen, yup, I think there are. Why?" He said, "well, I can't hide playboys in my room anymore, Mum found my collection, so maybe I oughta look for miniature versions like these stamps and then I can just tell her that they are art!".
I think he may have taken a couple of my "art nudes" but I doubt he ever took an interest in stamp collecting.
Kelly
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
24 Jan 2013
05:59:23pm
re: What do you collect and why?
That reminds me of being about ten years old and discussing the very confusing "La maja desnuda" from Spain with on of my cousins. Being brought up in a very repressed Irish Catholic family where even the word "SEX" was thought to be a four letter word we studied it with a magnifier in great detail trying to figure out what girls were all about.
The problem was, to our extremely naive inquiring minds, the image raised more questions than it answered.
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24 Jan 2013
07:47:36pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome Popeye! I hope you enjoy SOR!
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03:49:40am
re: What do you collect and why?
I am new to this stamp collecting thing. I work at a small town post office in Nova Scotia. We are a very busy little office however as it is located in a University town. There are locals and students here from every corner of the globe. I am not much of a stamp collector however. My interest at the present time is merely to share with others and maybe send some nice Canadian stamps to people around the world that are interested in them. And maybe I will, at some point, begin my own personal collection.
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It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. - Aristotle Onassis
25 Jan 2013
10:16:09am
re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome karlmalone! Stay here for a bit and the collecting bug might just bite you like it bit the rest of us!
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re: What do you collect and why?
and nothing we collectors like more than a postal clerk who's attuned to the way we want stuff: heavy on the commemoratives and light on the Sharpie
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re: What do you collect and why?
I always had an interest in the U.S. space program since John Glenn's flight in 1962. I watched every launch on television when they were shown years ago. In 1972 I saw an article in Linn's about the Space Unit and found out information about them. This ignited my interest in collecting space covers and autographs. I started collecting with the Skylab space station in 1973. I also was interested in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. I have an exhibit that I show a few times a year. Check it out in the exhibits section. To this day, I follow the exploits on the International Space Station. I plan to write new articles for Stamporama.
P.S. I am also a postal clerk.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I used to collect WW but soon found out that this was impossible.
Basically, I am down to about 10 countries now, those being: Canada, Belgium, GB, Germany, Iceland, Greenland, US airmails only, Hawaii, Australia and NZ. Why? I find these stamps interesting plus had an advanced collection on at least 4 of the countries mentioned.
I also collect postal history and my areas are for the Muskoka / Parry Sound districts plus Canadian military mail. I find the history of my area (Muskoka / Parry Sound)quite interesting. I collect the Canadian military mail only and that is because it gives me a better overview about what the Canadians did during the different wars.
Other postal history areas I like are Belgium, the Sabena airways covers, Royal Visit to North America (1939 only) and NYWF (1939 only)and no, it was NOT the year I was born lol.
Also, I collect the postcards from my area too, plus ocean liners and a special emphasis on the steamer "Noronic".
I know, I still collect too may things but, they all keep me happy. That is the main thing I think
Chimo / Bujutsu
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
25 Jan 2013
04:49:05pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I became a member just a couple of days ago, and absolutely love this club!
I began my collection with a box of stamps my mother had put aside over the years, when I was but 9 years old (around 1957 - do the math). I fell in love with the stories of those little bits of paper from places I could only dream about visiting. Other than an hiatus from 1966 - 1980 to chase girls and drink too much, I have been collecting since then.
I still collect worldwide, although I have little or no interest in much after 1945 (other than some British Commonwealth stuff up to 1960). I am not obsessed with completeness, but I do have a representative collection housed in many albums.
I also collect USA, but focus on pre-1945 here as well. I do have a 99% complete collection of USA MNH from 1940-2000, but stopped at 2000 because the money I was spending on new issues was better aimed at the older stuff.
More later....
Bobby
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25 Jan 2013
06:08:25pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome, Bobby! I hope you share as much as you can learn and have fun here at SOR!
Bujutsu - I'm a worldwide collector and so I'm interested many of the topics you listed. I would love to learn more about Muskoka and Parry Sound. If you're willing to write an article or put together an exhibit so we can all learn from their stamps about their history, I'm sure many members would be interested!
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Auctions - Approvals
re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome Bobby!!! What is it about girls that just seems to put stamps aside? The same thing happened to me. :-)
As Liz said, I hope you really enjoy the club.
Best regards ... Tim.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome Bobby!
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re: What do you collect and why?
For the most part, I collect US issues; everything from the beginning 'til now - postally used.
This includes the area I am most passionate about; federal, state and local revenues.
For me, revenues show a much more in-depth history of us as a nation. And with a great interest in the Civil War era, what better place to start than with the revenues that, arguably, kept the Union from losing the war.
All US back-of-the-book stuff is a strong area for me as well, including -but not limited to- all US protectorates such as Ryukyu's, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc...
My other "minor" interests are;
Machins (they're just fun!)
Cheetahs (the most intelligent of all the big cats...and so beautiful!)
Early Great Britain ( I like the stamps!)
Pitcairn Islands (possibly the most remote pace on earth-2000 miles from anywhere!)
AMG's (Allied Military Government - confusing at times!!)
I do have a mint collection of US, but I don't actively pursue it very often - I'm more interested in stamps that have done what they were created to do.
I'm sure I could include something else, but this has been more than enough to go over for now...!
This is a fun thread - I enjoy hearing what the varied interests are in our members.
...and welcome newcomers! I am glad you saw fit to jump right in here - wonderful!
I've been a member since 2005, but its fun once in a while to tell others your collecting passions.... (like commemorative/signed baseballs!! But that's a DIFFERENT story!LOL)
Randy
Oh almost forgot! (GASP) BASEBALL on stamps, too! Live and love the game!!!
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re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome aboard Bobby.....thanks for the kind words and the participation in our discussion board. It's a real perk in this club.............................Perry
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re: What do you collect and why?
hi everyone, I'm pleased to meet you all... I'm Birdie the bird stamp collector,a true thematic collector which means it's more than stamps. I include all sorts of postal stationary, pictorial postmarks, postal history covers..anything interesting with a bird on it that's been thru the postal system. A collection of WW birds is far too broad so I'm narrowing it down to raptors and particularly Golden eagles, Imperial eagles, Bald eagles and birds for the sport of falconry. I would have loved to create an exhibit on falconry but there's just not enough material around, so I extended the theme to the hunting of wild animals and named the exhibit "Catch Them If You Can" which was shown in my home state of Queensland.
Collecting birds on stamps is an extension of my birding (twitching) activities. Having seen nearly all the birds in Australia and in several other countries I'm now happy to hunt for the birds on stamps which I will never see in the wild. As well as birds in MUH condition I also collect used birds with clear cancellations which I add to my http://g.co/maps/tpjra Traveling Birds Google Map.
Besides all these bird stamps I also collect Australia and errors and varieties of bird stamps. That's it for now, I'll end by sharing with you my favorite bird stamp of a carmine bee-eater.
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It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. - Aristotle Onassis
17 Feb 2013
09:31:16am
re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome, Vera! That is a beautiful stamp and of course, a gorgeous bird. I hope you find Stamporama as exciting and informative as the rest of us do.
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re: What do you collect and why?
thanks Lisa. It will take me a while to find my way around, but I must say how easy it is to upload images here so I'm looking fwd to uploading and discussing my favorite stamps with you all
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re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome aboard Vera
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re: What do you collect and why?
nice to meet you, Vera. We have lots of topicalists here, but few who are pure topicalists.
Brian Hahn is also a bird collector (I just wrote him about a trade). Don't know who else.
I'm primarily a cover collector, specializing in tied seals and air mail special delivery, but i have lots of side lines including topical collections of bats, militaria, turtles, and, for my daughter, horses.
David
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re: What do you collect and why?
I am down to 10 countries and still sometimes feel that I am collecting too much. The countries I still collect, I was formerly a WW collector, are now Canada, Belgium, Germany, GB, NZ, Australia, Greenland, Iceland, US airmails only, and Hawaii.
My specialist areas are the postal history of the Muskoka / Parry Sound districts, Belgium postal history, ocean liner postcards,steamers and specifically the steamer "Noronic" ,Canadian military mail and martial arts on stamps and postcards.
Why? Not really sure but I do know that these areas interest me the most and I really enjoy them.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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17 Feb 2013
04:55:36pm
re: What do you collect and why?
A warm welcome to you Vera. Glad to see you here.
Alyn
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The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.
17 Feb 2013
06:29:04pm
re: What do you collect and why?
You're airborne, Vera, really soaring and flying up there with the high and the mighty.
Welcome to Samporama. Hope you tolerate bottom-feeders such as yours truly,
John Derry
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re: What do you collect and why?
Hello, I am an avid collector of ANYTHING from Guyana, stamps first of course, but also anything else such as belts, caps, t-shirts, postcards, tickets/stubs, maps, etc.
Went to Guyana in 1980 and met my then wife-to-be. Have been back twice since and love the place.
Next with stamps comes UK, any ex-british Caribbean, dutch Caribbean, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, USA.
Also a few bits and bobs that just grab my attention.
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
20 Nov 2013
11:18:05am
re: What do you collect and why?
Martyn, you are an accumulator after my own heart!
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12:36:43pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I have really enjoyed reading about what everyone collects. In the last 6 months,I have just begun to restart the small collection I had as a kid. I am working on a combination of used and mint US stamps. The used is what I had growing up and I decided to add mint stamps to that.
Really looking forward to learning more about collecting before I venture into new areas. Hope you all don't mind the most basic of questions.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I collect Cinderellas.
It all started when I began a GB side collection of British Exhibition souvenir sheets and labels. Then it moved on to the USA Expos, then worldwide, then Poster and Advertising stamps, then.........
I found myself selling off my collections of Postage stamps and buying the Non-postage variety instead !! It seemed to me to be full of surprises, not knowing what was out there and so it evolved. At the end of 2013 I decided to part with all my Postage stamps except the Flags and Machins and concentrate on, and enjoy the Cinderella collections.
But saying I collect Cinderellas is like saying I collect Postage stamps ! So let me elaborate.
British, USA and Worldwide Philatelic Exhibitions
Other Exhibitions worldwide
British Strike Mail labels
Reproductions,Forgeries and Non-postal reprints
Propaganda and Patriotic labels
Christmas, Easter and other Seals
Jewish National Fund labels and sheets
Other Israel and Palestine Labels
Ration Stamps
Post Office training stamps
Sample and Dummy Stamps
Savings stamps
Flags on Cinderellas (all Flags go into this collection first)
Revenues (General Worldwide)
Locals (Only certain types/places)
Air Mail Etiquettes
Registration Labels
Poster stamps and Advertising labels
Other (Test,Essays,Proofs,Unissued,Others)
Londonbus1
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What do I collect and why?
Is it too snarky to say: "I collect what I want because I can?"
I have changed the parameters of WHAT I collect several times as I have progressed in the hobby and in my knowledge. I just might change again tomorrow, who knows!
Lars
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03:46:03pm
Approvals
re: What do you collect and why?
I started as a 7 year old worldwide collector (Ambassador album from my parents - Merry Christmas!) In my 20s I somewhat specialized in Canada and Ireland (in the mistaken belief that my ancestors were from there - they actually came from Yorkshire as it turns out!) Subsequently I have developed a number of other "favorite" countries and areas including the Baltics and Scandinavia, Belgium, and Switzerland. And most recently (now in my 50s) I've shifted to topicals along with some holdover country collections (hockey, autos/auto racing mainly). This brought with it an interest in covers which seems to be growing like a bad weed at the moment. Unlike many, I've never really stopped collecting at any point, much to the consternation of various girlfriends and my one and only wife.
Hard to answer the "why" exactly - I just have a tendency to get interested in things for about 5 to 10 years or so and move on to the next thing. That's why it's such a great hobby, there's always something new to collect!
Eric
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The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.
14 Jan 2014
09:05:14pm
re: What do you collect and why?
...and stamp-collecting stories to tell. Thank you for yours, Eric.
John Derry
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re: What do you collect and why?
Interesting read.
My story is much the same as many members. My brothers and I were introduced to collecting by my mother. My grandpa and to a larger degree my great grandpa were WW collectors. As a kid we messed around with stamps and hinged albums. We inherited various binders and binded albums and stockbooks. In the past 5 years or so I along with my brother and mother have taken up the hobby in a more active way.
We like to take kiloware soak it off paper and make stockbooks. So far I have stockbooks for in order from most detailed to least: Germany, Canada, USA, Austrailia, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Austria, Spain, Nederlands, Hungary, Swiss. I am at the point for the first 5 counties when a checklist is becoming needed. Canada and Germany I have albums (hingless mounts) in progress. I am buying kiloware and some stuff here and there always soaking and sorting accumulation.
The goal is to have a good album for a bunch of countries. For me a good album is with few stamps missing. At this point I am using Scott # system to sort but I would consider changing to a more detailed system at some point down the road. Also sorting away all the doubles and deciding whether to trade/sell or accumulate is a constant effort.
Why all this has and is happening you ask. That is a very difficult question and a question I often ponder. The answer involves metaphysics and psycoanalysis among many other rabbit holes. Please write me a letter if you wish to discuss further.
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re: What do you collect and why?
The What's and the Why's change. I started collecting almost 50 years ago. At that point I was going to collect every stamp ever issued in the world. So, with the help of approval companies advertising on matchbooks and magazines I loaded up on worthless CTO's. Fortunately the 70's came around and girls, motorcycles, cars and girls slowed my collecting considerably. I never quit, but I broke free of approvals and for a while I just accumulated "stuff". Mostly the daily mail and box lots I got at estate sales, auctions and garage sales.
About 20 years ago I got back into actual collecting. At this point I had a four drawer file cabinet filled with stamps and a few covers. What interested me the most was those covers and the 19th century stamps. I joined a stamp club and found a whole new world of collecting. A bunch of collectors with many specialties and a ton of knowledge. Every time someone shared a story I went back to my hoard to see what I had. Sometimes a new collection was formed and my focus would be diverted to that for a while.
Then in 1994 I got a computer and I discovered the internet. The ability to research and find items exploded. My collecting is now many different collections. Mostly covers. I am now one of those guys I met 20 years ago. My file cabinet is gone and my collections fill my entire basement. I still collect 19th century worldwide, all years U.S., I still have the three albums I had as a kid, but they now share space with 100's of other albums.
My main focus for a while has been covers. I collect covers from my home state, Minnesota. I have about 2000 different cities from Minnesota on cover. I also collect Hawaii and Alaska. My other cover collections are, Special Delivery, Foreign Destinations, 19th Century U.S., 19th Century World, Flag Cancels, Machine Cancels, Territorials, really anything that I find interesting.
None of this answers your question of why. I'm not sure I want the answer.
I just reread this from 6 years ago. I would say the only thing that has changed is that I no longer collect flag cancels and have sold most of those covers.
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08:21:45am
re: What do you collect and why?
The what: I have many different collecting interests, but my three primary areas are British Hong Kong and the China Treaty Ports; Queen Victoria issues across the Empire and depictions of the Queen on commemoratives; and British Commonwealth omnibus sets, from the 1935 Silver Jubilee to Diana and Charles' Royal Wedding. I really started collecting heavily in these areas within the past 25 years or so. I, as others, took time off after starting a worldwide collection of pretty stamps when I was about 7, through my early teens. Then the hiatus for many of the same reasons, but interestingly my stamp albums filled with the pretty stamps followed me from 1968 through the 1990s. I rarely looked at them until one of my uncles started sharing his collecting interests with me; I then started in earnest again and specializing, selling off most of my pretty stamps to build the three major areas.
I also have a few smaller areas of stamp collecting that just grab my interest from time to time as I get into these, then move on. Sometimes, they come from gifts or "pre-inheritance" from one of my collector uncles, and sometimes from my own purchases. These areas include Hawaii stamps and now postal stationery, paquebot and ship cancels on stamps, Japanese occupation covers (and banknotes), space themed stamps and covers (probably my next largest collection), what I find as interesting or unusual items (like Tin Can mail or First Flight BOAC covers), and I set aside errors and unusual stamps and cancels. All together, I don't have a lot, probably about 50 stockbooks and albums now, with a couple of new cartons to sort through. I wish I had continued during my younger years.
The why: The only area that I can say "why" is British Hong Kong. I was born on the Colony and have a fond memory of growing up through age 13 there, so I guess that is my motivation to capture in stamps that era of my life. The other areas are just interests, with no particular reason; I think the Omnibus collections started because I found the 1935 KE7 Silver Jubilee series so appealing.
In addition to stamps, I've also diversified my collecting (read: accumulated more stuff!) with NASA photos and transparencies, and worldwide coins (my second major collecting area but not as systematic as stamps). I need a bigger house!
Peter
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re: What do you collect and why?
Hi, I am new here .I collect Nebraska postmarks. My grandmother started collecting post marks now I collecting them. My grandmother started me collecting when I was young that was over50 years ago. I collected everything. Richard
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re: What do you collect and why?
Nebraska postmarks?!? Very interesting!
Would the Holy Grail be a Nebraska Overprint with a Nebraska postmark? Or maybe the oddity of a Kansas Overprint with a Nebraska postmark?
Lars
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re: What do you collect and why?
Yes I have some of each. Mostly 2 cents. Lot of post offices are closed. And getting harder to find
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re: What do you collect and why?
Not germaine to the discussion, but years and years ago in Prince George, British Columbia, on the last day of school, I asked one of my students what he and his family were doing during summer holidays. "Oh, we're driving to the States," he said.
I said, "Oh, where in the States?" (I am a Canadian-American; my wife, Susan, and I grew up in New Mexico. She was born in Valentine, Nebraska.)
He said, "Nebraska."
I said, "Really? Where in Nebraska?"
He said, "Oh, just a tiny little place. You've probably never heard of it."
I said, "Maybe not, but I'm curious. What town?"
He said, "Valentine."
My wife's family roots are in Nebraska and Illinois. She's written an interesting novel placed in Nebraska: http://www.susaningraham.net/legacies-ch-1.html.
Bob Ingraham
Vancouver, BC
(Modified by Moderator on 2014-01-16 07:04:05)
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03:08:50am
re: What do you collect and why?
Hello, all - I've just joined and looking forward to participating in the community after lurking for a month or so reading the postings and deciding that I just might have the time to be a bit more social.
While I had stamps when I was a small kid, they didn't interest me anywhere near as much as coins did - and that interest really came from a fascination with money in general. I had a few mint sets from the post office and I got one package of a thousand mixed stamps from somewhere that I put into a small Harris album, but that was it.
When I was 14, my father brought home a box of stamps he picked up for fifty bucks at an antique store and handed it to me. Turned out the collection belonged to a deceased former postmaster who seemed to have interests all over the place - all US, but there were singles, plate blocks, mint sheets, first day covers, postage due, revenues, stamped paper, precancels....I bought a catalog and went to work identifying and learning, and thats when the bug bit me. My father bought me a Scott Minuteman album and real mounts (since everything was mint) and I went to work filling it up. Without money, and without the internet (this was in the mid-eighties), that was it until about six years ago, when I pulled everything out and decided it was time to take things out of cardboard boxes and random envelops and buy decent albums. I spent months cataloging everything into a software program, re-mounting and then filling holes.
What I came to realize was that stamps offered the right mix of collecting for me that other types of collections didn't hold. I really like definitive series - a page with lots of similar looking stamps in different colors all neatly arranged and looking pristine really appeals to my sense of aesthetics, as does a nice well-laid out complete page of commemoratives. I've really been interested in getting into revenues because of this - all those red and green documentaries and stock transfers are very appealing. I'm the kind of collector that would pick an issue with a long print run and try to find all the plate numbers.
But what I'm finding even more appealing is the depth and breadth of the space. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. At work, I'm the answer guy - the one that knows all the bits and pieces and organizes them into a coherent understanding of a space. In the last year, I would have to say that I've actually become less interested in acquiring the actual stamps as acquiring knowledge and information.
A year ago, I got frustrated with the software I was using to manage my collection - it just wasn't specialized enough to really store and catalog all the information I wanted to know. A great example was a copy of a deed with state documentary stamps that I had - it just couldn't understand the concept of a piece of paper with multiple different stamps on them as being one thing. Well, I work in software, and my partner is a developer, so we knew we could do something better. We're not quite done yet, not by a long shot, but in the process of learning about different areas, acquiring catalogs and books, and building my own database of information, I've found that I'm less interested in the actual stamps. Now, I spend my time poring over little details, struggling with how to manage those little frustrating edge cases (like how to build a database of the possible plate blocks of the Huck press 6c and 8c flag over white house issues when I can't figure out the rhyme and reason behind the plates) and loving every minute of it just as much as staring at my pretty page of Prexies.
And so I'm here - to soak up (off?) everything I can and mount it in my repository. And though my knowledge is modest at best, maybe help out a little with those few nuggets I've picked up over time. I can easily see doing this for the rest of whatever time I have left, and hopefully leave behind a legacy of information that others can use to keep this world alive even if postal mail becomes a curious relic of the past.
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
25 Jan 2014
08:24:12am
re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome, Michael!
Yeah, you'll fit here just fine. Your love of (and obsession with) minutia is shared by many members here. And your articulate style of sharing your enthusiasm will fit very well on this board. Enjoy yourself!
Bobby
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re: What do you collect and why?
FrankyB
“Why all this has and is happening you ask. That is a very difficult question and a question I often ponder. The answer involves metaphysics and psycoanalysis among many other rabbit holes. Please write me a letter if you wish to discuss further.â€
Postmarks
“None of this answers your question of why. I'm not sure I want the answer. â€
Bujutsu
“Why? Not really sure but I do know that these areas interest me the most and I really enjoy them. “
tuscany4me
I'm not sure. Let me think about this. I will have to reach pretty deep and come up with something really profound.
======================================================
Dear All,
I think we are on a quest. Let's explore more fully to be sure. FrankyB, consider this as a request to explore that rabbit hole.
All good thoughts,
Dan C.
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07:46:37pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I started as a kid in New York collecting US stamps from mail envelopes in a stock book. I would also get a few approvals that were advertised in the back of magazines. I was always fascinated with far away places.
Since we had relatives and friends in Greece I started saving a few of those as well as some from Australia and the rest of Europe. Then while living as a teen in Greece I was able to trade stamps with Greek kids and was able to build up my Greek collection. Nothing great mostly quantity and used. Upon return to the US and in possession of a Harris Ambassador album I was able to fill a few holes here and there but was busy with college, sports, girls and other activities . After marriage and while my children were young and we lived in Boston I started filling in some more holes by visiting S.L. Stone a stamp dealer in downtown Boston. That was around the time of the Bicentennial which really got me excited. I started subscribing to the annual sets from the post office and first day covers, first day souvenir sheets etc which lasted for a few years until things started getting expensive (about mid 80s) and family was growing. I even subscribed to some first day covers from the Greek Post Office! Work intervened and a lot of travel overseas DOD Army. I still had my mom and sisters saving stamps from mail and had boxes full of stamps that needed soaking. After the kids moved out and I retired I decided to clean up the collection. Meanwhile my wife started buying me sheets of stamps which seemed interesting and I would put them in some clear Rubbermaid storage containers.I really don't like the new adhesive type stamps that you can't soak so I think i will only stick with sheets that I find interesting. I still have one of my original ambassador albums and a new one. I used hinges on all my stamps even the mint ones until just this last year when I started buying some older stamps that I did not have. I think my US are getting well organized and I have to start doing something with my duplicates. I need to work on my Greece collection and try to get some trades going. Hopefully one of my children or grandchildren will pick up the hobby or at least hand it down. Its been a great experience and very educational and has helped keep me sane through some hard times.
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12:31:32pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I had a penpal from Australia in second grade, and started saving the stamps. The rest is history!
I decided I was fascinated by the history of the British Empire, so I continued with the British Commonwealth. Because my Grandmother collected Great Britain, Ireland, and Australia when she was young, she helped me get started with these countries.
Later, as a young adult, I found a great start on a Canadian collection with a beautiful Bluenose for $20 at a flea market, and I just kept going on that as well.
Dabbled in plating Penny Reds for awhile, then plating Canadian map stamps, then bought a KGVI album in an auction and am STILL trying to finish filling that with good postally used examples of each. Also, I purchased a Brusden White Australia Specialists' catalogue.
A lot of what I collect has had to do with the availability of stamps or assistance from other collectors in that area.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I've been a member here for about a year, and somehow missed this discussion thread until now. I limit my collecting to the years prior to 1960. I do that because I find it too daunting to try to collect more recent issues. Some countries, including the U.S., put out too many new stamps per year.
My collection started with U.S. commemoratives, and that is still my favorite type of stamp. Some Central and South American countries have attracted me: I collect El Salvador and Costa Rica. I might start Guatemala soon. I collect Ecuador and Peru. Their turbulent pasts are reflected in their stamps. I also am building collections of Canada, Bermuda, The Bahamas, and the British Commonwealth in general. I prefer mint stamps and lightly canceled used stamps. I'm not interested in postal history or postmarks. In fact, I prefer to concentrate on singles, and I ignore pairs and plate blocks.
I Am attracted to stamps because of the history they represent, as well as being works of art in their own right. For example, I like stamps from the French colonies because so many of them simply look great, such as French Morocco.
I organize my stamps on Vario pages in loose leaf notebooks, and transfer them to Steiner pages in nicer binder when I get enough to do so. Even this modest collection keeps me busy.
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re: What do you collect and why?
"Some countries, including the U.S., put out too many new stamps per year."
"Some"??? I think it's more like 95% of them.
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03:40:44pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I joined this group last Spring, but have never visited this "discussion" site. I collect world wide. I think I got my first stamp album when I was 7. No one in the family was a collector so my first stamps were put in with scotch tape.
Money was not all that available, so my stamp collecting was mainly searching through my grandparents and great aunt's old mail. Some years after my marriage, I resumed collecting and am now quite active. Although I collect world wide, I only collect each country to the extent I have pages for it. This limits my universe somewhat although I "accumulate the later issues as I get them, because some day I may get newer pages for that country.
I trade through the mail and have an extensive "want list". If anyone else wants to exchange want lists, I am more than willing.
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05 Feb 2014
04:18:26pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Welcome to the discussion group
I'm glad I'm not the only one who did the scotch tape faux pas. There is a thread that we discussed quite a while back about some of the biggest mistakes we've done as collectors (especially when we were young and uninformed). It's worth the read.
We have a Topic Section where you can post trades, etc. Post what you have/want and then people who are interested can send you a direct message rather than negotiate on the board itself.
Kelly
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re: What do you collect and why?
After reading the numerous posts on this thread, I thought I'd respond.
I started collecting stamps at eight years old (I'll be 49 years old this April) at the encouragement of an Uncle. I started with a three-ringed Scott worldwide album and progressed to a Minkus Canada Album. In my teens, I used stockbooks and collected exclusively Canada. In my 20s I piddled around with British Commonwealth.
In 1998 I sold my Canada collection. I was bored with it. Boy, did I open a can of worms. Here's what I now collect (all used, with rare exception):
King George VI Reign of the British Commonwealth (1937-1952): I am interested in postage stamps and revenue stamps, postmarks, and marginal markings. I have an interest in postal stationery, and the postal history of Canada, Newfoundland, and Great Britain. I especially like covers with Canada's Foreign Exchange Control Board markings, Canadian blackout machine cancels, and other covers related to the war effort.
Costa Rica: I collect everything for this country, including marginal markings, revenues, city and town postmarks, first day covers, postal stationery, and postal history. (Phil B. got me into collecting a Latin American country!)
United States: I collect all of the U.S., including varieties, joint-line pairs, EFOs, etc. with a special interest in:
- marginal markings: for all definitives & commemoratives 1976-1999, (13¢ to 33¢ era);
- air postal history of Texas, including city & town postmarks on airmail stamps, airmail covers postmarked in Texas, First flight covers and airport dedication covers from Texas;
- perfins, precancels, and marginal markings on all airmail stamps;
- I specialise in the Americana Definitive Series (1975-1983) and am interested in postal history, perfins, precancels, plate number singles, and mint plate blocks;
- precancels from Texas & New York State;
- Federal, and State revenue stamps.
I don't collect U.S. stamps with wavy line cancels.
Netherlands Indies/Indonesia: I collect these countries mint or used, with an interest in revenues (on & off documents), city and town postmarks, marginal markings, EFOs, first day covers, and postal history.
Cardiology on Stamps: Cardiology is the study of diseases and disorders of the heart. I am interested in stamps, covers, and postmarks related to this topical.
Ronald Reagan: Any cover or postmark from the United States honouring the 40th President.
International Co-operation Year/ U.N. 20th Anniversary (1965): Any stamp, block, plate block, FDC, proof, mint or used, etc. of stamp(s) issued by any country.
Expo ‘67: Any mint stamp, block, or plate block; FDC, proof, etc. of stamp(s) issued by any country.
Domestic Cats on Stamps: Any stamp, block, plate block, FDC, proof, mint or used, etc. of stamps issued by any country.
R.M.S. Titanic: Any stamp, block, plate block, FDC, proof, mint or used, etc. of stamps issued by any country.
Football: NOT SOCCER! Canadian & American football, all levels, the game, the players, the coaches, the stadiums, etc.
Postal History of North Bay, Ontario: My home town! Postcards, advertising covers, postmarks, right up to the present day.
Postmarks of Montréal, Québec
1953-1972 Belgium King Baudouin: The Marchand / Lunettes series. This is the definitive issue with the King wearing his glasses. Any stamp, block, plate block, FDC, proof, mint or used, etc.
I have fun with it all!
David
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re: What do you collect and why?
Definitely a mixed bag there!
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09:49:39pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I Collect Perù as my country, but I have other specific topics like:
Radio
Radio stations
Communications
Ham Radio
Butterflies
Trains
Airplanes
Minerals
Covers from all over the world
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re: What do you collect and why?
I can remember the day I began collecting. It was in May, 1974. I was 19 and working in maintenance at a country club and had a conversation with the snack bar lady about postage rates. I told her the oldest stamp I could remember was the 3 cent Liberty (Scott 1035). Right then I decided that I wanted to have a stamp collection. I didn't realize at the time it was even possible to get older stamps, I just thought of collecting from that point forward. I headed to the post office after work and asked the clerk to give me one of everything.
I had thought of collecting stamps before that, but I thought it was kind of a stupid thing to do because I'd seen collectors on TV lick the stamps and paste them in the album. That seemed to me to ruin the product. I also saw people use Scotch tape.
Fortunately for me, my mother told me about hinges, and even more fortunately for the collection, they sold mounts right next to the hinges and I thought those things were better than hinges.
I collect US only and my goal is to simply try to get most of the issues. All my stamps are mint or at least unused. I don't collect canceled stamps. I collect regular issues, commemoratives, and most of the "back of the book". I don't do post cards, envelopes, duck hunting, revenues, etc. I also don't try to get every color variation.
I've read on this thread that a lot of collectors started as kids, then rediscovered the hobby. That was not the case for me; I've never put the hobby aside. At worst there were times when I got a little behind, especially when they eliminated all the philatelic windows at the post offices. Fortunately the USPS catalog helps take up some of the slack.
My first album was the the Harris Liberty album, and it's a pretty good book, but I think the best albums are home made. Fortunately in this day and age of computers, printers, and publishing software it is not only practical to make your own, but you can make one as good or better than any store bought album. The first page I designed myself was for the Americana Series in 1976. On each stamp, the lettering runs along one side and either the top or bottom. When stamps are placed in the right groups of four, the lettering makes a picture frame. But no commercial album displays them that way.
Another problem I had with commercial books is the pages are always too small. I wanted to be able to have full panes or strips of stamps without having to resort to turning them sideways or on a diagonal. I also wanted to display a stamp series on just one page instead of two or three. (Not counting the Washington-Franklin series. OMG that one goes on FOREVER.)
I make my own albums now in a 12x12" format, using photo albums for the binders. The model I use has posts, just like the Harris albums, and not spirals.
I've got 6 volums now, totaling 480 pages, and I'm very proud to say there are not many empty spots left. All but 15 of those pages are complete.
A lot of you have expressed displeasure at the USPS turning out more and more stamps each year in an obvious attempt to generate extra revenue. I'm a little bugged by it too, because it costs at least $200 a year just to keep up, which is more than kids (and adults) probably feel like spending. On the other hand I remember telling postal clerks 30 years ago that other countries have stamps as their main export (Bhutan, for example) so perhaps the US should get on the bandwagon. I guess someone in Washington got the same idea.
I was also bothered by the blatant commercialization of the Harry Potter booklet, but I gotta tell you... If they did the same thing with Star Trek, I'd buy a CASE of them.
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re: What do you collect and why?
It took me a while to decide what to collect to call my own. Finally decided on Duck stamps. Once that decision was made, it took me 8 months to have the whole set. Now, it will take me much longer to go backward and replace the used ones with mints.
I made my Duck book, something I can easily add to each year.
Also made a book of Baseball for my nephew. That will be given to him this year. Next will be deciding what to do for my niece. She's the most difficult. My other niece got a huge book from her Grandma Nana. I think Brooke and Carolyn, Mom, looked through it once and all the birds flew in the closet. Wonder if they'll ever come back out.
It's been fun for the past couple of years learning more and more about stamps. Hope I never stop learning.
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02:54:24pm
re: What do you collect and why?
A very interesting thread.
I started collecting back in the late 80s when a friend of mine brought his stamp collection when he visited, and he gave me some Ethiopian definitive stamps, which I still have somewhere. From then on I collected until I was about 17 years, first I was a worldwide collector, before narrowing my scope to Norway and sports on stamp. I then packed up my collection, and left it at my parents place until I was thirty.
When I finished my master thesis in history I was buying a few souvenirs (I had written about the United Fruit Company, and bought a postcard and a picture I believe from ebay), but when it arrived from the United States I just couldn't stop looking at the stamps on the envelope. It was discount postage, but I still found it utterly fascinating. That was the moment I decided to start collecting stamps again, and I spent many hours just browsing ebay for stamps, but not buying anything until I had had a chance to have a look at my old collection. I did buy some modern kiloware on a whim though, and a catalog.
After that I have kept collecting, although it may lay undisturbed at times due to other things going on in my life and other interests taking first priority for a while, I have kept adding to my collection. These days I'm officially collecting Norway, Iceland, British Colonies and Commonwealth (with a special focus on Canada and Australia so far) and covers from 1979 (the year I was born). But I also pick up stamps I find interesting, and I have small collections from places like the Canal Zone, West Germany, Guinea-Bissau and more. So I guess I'm a sort of general collector, dipping my toe wherever I feel like.
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re: What do you collect and why?
What an amazing collection of stamp-collectors' stories. Sounds like enough material here for someone to write a book!
I dabbled in collecting as a child and young teen, but then set it aside for so long that eventually I gave away my entire Harris album, including some 1960's first day covers, to a philatelist friend.
Since then, my only reason to "collect" has been to benefit the ongoing efforts of the school community at Foxborough (MA) Regional Charter School where the Holocaust Stamps Project is completing its fifth year, attempting to amass 11 million cancelled stamps from people who would have otherwise tossed them out with the recycling/trash.
Every stamp collected teaches the students something about the people, places, events, and cultures of the world, while the enormity of counting every single one on the path to the goal is teaching lessons about the enormity of the number of Holocaust victims who perished due to intolerance and horrendous acts of hatred.
Students have used thousands of the donated stamps to create 11 (of 18 planned) collage artworks that depict their understanding of the events and effects of the Holocaust.
As of 5/12/14, the total number of collected stamps was 3,749,287. It's taken 5 years, yet it only took 6 1/2 years for 11,000,000 innocents to be killed.
The Holocaust Stamps Project welcomes stamps donations of any size...Your unwanted duplicates are especially welcome! The collection will continue through summer as the school office remains open.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I started with worldwide years ago but soon focused on the U.S. I now collect U.S. & Canada. Anything U.S. but with deeper interest in earlier years(the older it gets, the better I like it), anything BOB & being from the south have a deep interest in Confederate issues although I only have 3 so far. I do have some First day covers, sheets, etc. but am on a limited income & cant collect all I would like to. As I have started to design my own pages I have become interested in different cancellations also. In recent years I have started saving up metered stamps too.
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10:46:35pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I started collecting stamps at about the age of 7 when the wife of the local vicar in the little English village of Holmbury St Mary south of London gave me stamps every now and then. Gradually the collection increased in size until I decided to concentrate on British and British Colonial stamps, writing up my album leaves in the optimistic hope that I would one day find the stamps to put in the little spaces allocated for them. Many years later it became apparent that this was not going to happen unless I won the football pools several times in a row. So I concentrated solely on British stamps, using the Gibbons specialized catalogues - which really are specialized. This kept me happy for many decades and the collection grew - almost to completion. But I have lived abroad for most of my life and the collection was in England, kept in a bank. Finally I decided that I was never going to see it for more than a couple of weeks a year so I scanned everything, had the result made into three books, and offered all the stamps issued before 1952 at auction. This brought in a fair amount of cash as the value of the older stamps had increased - often spectacularly - over the years. I kept the Queen Elizabeth issues which are mint (the others were all used with nice clear postmarks) and thought I might as well collect something else. What?
Well, in the late 1960s I was living in Nigeria and frequently used to visit Dahomey (now Benin) as well as other French ex-colonies in Africa. I thought it would be interesting to build up a collection of Dahomean stamps; the engraved designs were attractive and I could get unmounted mint copies fairly cheaply - there was only one stamp which cost more than $100 and I eventually found even this one.
But one thing led to another - as is usually the case - and for many years Dahomey used stamps of French West Africa together with all the other French ex-colonies in the region. They were all inexpensive so were soon added to the collection. It was only a matter of time before this extended to stamps of the other colonies in French West Africa - and then French Equatorial Africa - and then all the French colonies scattered around the world. Modern "wall-paper" stamps hold no interest for me and issues of Princess Diana from Mali and other countries strike me as absurd. But independence gave a clear cut-off point - in the case of Dahomey exceptionally I continued until it changed its name (back) to Benin. In other cases there were similar cut-off points such as name changes, use of French stamps instead of their own issues in places like Reunion, or some other date for places like New Caledonia which continue to issue stamps primarily for collectors.
I include a brief history of each territory as an introduction and include colour photostats of coins and banknotes in use during the time the stamps were current. I also include colour photostats of postcards from the period to show what these places looked like then.
Fortunately I speak French (though the collection is written up in English) so I have been able to make good use of the Delcampe.net site and, to a lesser extent ebay.fr as well as various French auctions so the collection is now in nine albums and is approaching completion. Goodness only knows what my heirs will do with it all since they don't understand French and will have problems with the French catalogues. I hope they have the common sense to take their time and, in their own interest, make the effort to discover the true value of some of the scarcer stamps. I won't be around to find out!!
In the meantime I can enjoy this collection - possibly the only one of its kind in Malaysia! I have learned a lot of history and geography in the process and looking through the pages reminds me of my travels in francophone Africa - a vast area from Timbuktu to the Congo and from Dakar to Djibouti, not to mention remote areas like French Guiana or the Wallis and Futuna Islands!!!
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12:07:38am
re: What do you collect and why?
I collect WW, but I prefer items prior to 1950. My favorite countries are U.S, Canada, Great Britain, and Germany. I collect all European nations, as well as early British Commonwealth.
Topicals I like include cats, dogs, zeppelins, and airplanes.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I've enjoyed reading all of these stamp stories.
For me it started in the laste 1970's - pulling a few stamps off of letters and saving them in my marbles bag. I remember saving a few from the Americana series.
I saw a small collection one of my classmates brought to class in 3rd grade and was hooked. My mom bought me a stamp collecting kit from the Weekly Reader and off I started. I still have many of the first stamps I collected, including the first stamps I learned to soak. I collected everything that came my way until I "specialized" in US around 1986. I think I lost a little momemtum on my worldwide stamp collection by focusing on US so early. I did start filling a National album with a highlight being attendance at World Stamp Expo in 1989, and acquiring a mixed lot of Wash-Franklins.
Off to college, then the work force, I found myself in Chicago. This was perfect for a budding adult collector, as I had two great shops to satisfy my stamp bug. I purchased many items from Richard Drews and lots from Dr. Friedman, while developing a broader focus for my collection.
Today, I'm "focused" on 1840-1940 postally used worldwide, with emphasis on US, Scandivania, British Commonwealth and Various European countries. It's very difficult for me to focus, so I've just started to mount material I already own, while selectively adding a few stamps here and there. My own accumulation has proven to be my bourse, as I have broken down many collections over the years, but never mounted them.
Why do I collect the older stuff? I think it comes down to the beauty of the long definitive series and the engraving. I also started a Slania topical collection featuring his masterful engraving.
I still have that Hygrade Universal album with a few thousand CTO, damaged, and otherwise pictorial stamps. I think the Dennison hinges are more valuable than the stamps!
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re: What do you collect and why?
"My own accumulation has proven to be my bourse"
an amazing sentiment, and one that captures my own life, if i'd only heed it
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re: What do you collect and why?
I'm a world-wide collector, but I haven't been actively collecting for quite a few years. My father got me started when I was 10. Because of his job, my family found itself moving far from relatives and friends. For the first time, my siblings and I were in a strange suburban place without our friends and cousins. My parents found out about a local stamp club that held weekly meetings, with an area set aside for kids, and signed us up, as a possible means to meet other kids in the area, and to make friends outside of school. We each got a brand new, inexpensive, Minkus world-wide album for our very own to commemorate the occasion. My father had collected when he was a child, but hadn't been involved in the hobby since then. Still, my grandparents sent along a nice box of used US to get us kids started. Once a week, one or other of our parents would drive us down to some kind of local community center, and we kids would hang out for an hour with other kids, showing our growing collections, trading, and listening to short lectures by the adult moderators of the children's section about identification, using a catalog, grading, soaking, watermarks, mounting, and all the other mechanics of collecting. For 50 cents each week, each of us received a packet of common, easily identifiable stamps from all over the world. My siblings always wanted to trade their foreign stamps for US stamps, but I was fascinated by the discovery of all the hitherto unheard of countries in the world. Countries that were only mentioned in passing, if at all, in school. I was hooked! I still also collected US stamps, gleaned from all the mail that came to the house and all the cut corners sent to me by relatives ("No, don't you try to get the stamps off the envelopes. Just cut the corner of the envelope off and send it like that. I know how to soak the stamps off the right way!"). Special treats were the occasional foreign stamps that came from business correspondence that my aunts and uncles got hold of. Foreign stamps were the most interesting, to me.
My siblings lost interest after a few months, and eventually gave their collections to me, but my constant curiosity and questions must have driven my parents crazy. Visits to the library (yes, long before the Internet) were now weekly events, instead of just when books were due, so I could search the encyclopedia to find out who Philip the Good was, and why Sun Yat-sen was important enough to be on so many Chinese stamps. My father's interest was reawakened, and after about six months, as I remember, he bought himself a Minkus Supreme Global album and a set of catalogs, signed up with a penny approval service, and one or two Saturdays a month, he and I would visit local stamp shops in nearby towns. For Christmas, I got a Minkus Master Global album.
Then a curious thing happened. The more stamps I acquired, and the more I read about the subjects depicted, the better my grades were in school. History, geography, reading, even arithmetic, somehow ceased to be separate, individual subjects. I began to see connections, cause-and-effect relationships, patterns. I was still too young to see that this was happening, but during my later high school years and college, I realized that my understanding of the workings of our world began with my stamp collection, and I'm always surprised that people I meet are completely unaware that many of the problems in the Middle East today aren't modern issues of the past decade, but can be traced back to European arrogance at the end of World War I, nearly a century ago, and even farther back than that. Even the origins of World War I go back to the time of Napoleon.
So, I've always been, and will continue to be, a world-wide collector. Completeness was never a goal. Even completing sets was never a goal. I don't collect in order to one day have a valuable collection to sell or to pass on to someone else. I would guess that 90% or more of my stamps are minimal catalog value. Those stamps that do have some value are happy accidents. I didn't seek them out and buy them because they were expensive and would probably increase in value. The majority of my stamps are used, although I've never turned away an unused stamp, should it turn up, and I did subscribe to a new issue service through most of the 1980s, so I'm fairly complete in a half dozen countries for that decade.
I've never been the least interested in postal history. No disrespect intended to the postal historians on this board, but it's just too much like saving mail, to me. I don't have the space, and never did.
I've never considered myself a topical collector, because there has never been any single topic or group of topics that interests me to the exclusion of any other subject. I've rarely bought a stamp because the person, place, or thing depicted had some bearing on a subject in which I had an interest. Usually, it's the opposite. I'll buy some stamps because the subjects are persons who seem to be of some importance, wearing what looks like medieval European clothing. I'm curious who each of those people are. Why are they considered important? Are they important only in the country issuing the stamps, or do they have regional or international significance? Why are they collected together in this set? Any one of those stamps might ignite a new curiosity in me, or complete a connection I didn't realize existed. To me, each stamp is a potential glimpse into the past, which may reverberate in the present, and even possibly shed a glimmer of light into our possible future.
That's what I collect, and why. And how this hobby came to be, for me.
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re: What do you collect and why?
MinorFaults, I think you just hit the nail on the head as to why the teachers are now, at last, finding that Philately can be such an important part of learning in schools. I still have to look up countries especially after some of the name changes when I was not actively collecting. Even counting was helped because as nippers we seem to always be adding up how many stamps were in our books.
So many of todays youngsters (and not so young) have no clue as to where countries are in the world and even fewer seem to have any grasp of world news. Sort of if it did not happen locally then it does not matter.
Always remember my dad saying that WW3 would start out of the African continent, hopefully he will not be proved correct but there is still an awful lot of conflict, poverty and corruption in the continent.
Oh yes, the thread, I collect everything but like GB, USA, canada and Commonwealth up to early QE2.
Now where's my medication nurse?
Vic
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10:59:56am
re: What do you collect and why?
Good question..and it seems i'm in good company here,everyone is as eccentric. Las me. Well myself, a proud Aussie on the east coast of down under. I like investigating what post office stamped my stamp 100+years ago.yep.bit of penchant for history..I like to see theyoung queen smiling.lot of wars since.
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11:08:53am
re: What do you collect and why?
Guess I like the predecimals as we willingly died for queen.and country.eu
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re: What do you collect and why?
I started with stamps when I was about 4 or 5 years old. That was over 50 years ago. My grandfather was trying to get a bit of a stamp business going, selling small packets in a corner store, and to some of the people he worked with. So I would sit for hours matching up the pictures.
After about a year or so, I was able to match by countries, and then help soak stamps off paper as well.
Then when I was 11 years old, my grandfather passed away and I got all the stamps. I put them away for a few years. I didn't know what to do with them by myself.
When I was 14 I saw a big world wide album in a store, and my mom bought it for me, along with a few of the little sacks of world wide on paper, and some hinges. I also had two old catalogues that I was able to use right away. The world at the time was only in the two catlaogues. So I was all set. But it still wasn't much fun on my own.
Anyhow I had just turned 20 years old and we went to a festival/fair type event in August. There were people there from the local Stoney Creek Stamp Club. I went to talk to them and look at the exhibits.
In Sept of that same year, I joined the club. Then I joined another club in Hamilton, and another one in Burlington. ( All 3 cities are only 15 minutes away from where I live. So none of the clubs were that far away. I actually joined three other clubs as well. So at certain times I was at a club meeting 4 or 5 nights a week.
I'm back down to one club now. Which is ok.
I learned a lot from all the clubs. Not only did I collect stamps, I am also a dealer at the club now as well.
Over the years, I was also the sales circuit manager, and then president of the Stoney Creek Club. I was on the board of directors for the Hamilton club, and also on the board of directors for the GRVPA. Grand River Valley Philatelic Association. I was exhibits chairman for the Royal Show in Hamilton for 1998 and the Millenium Show in 2000.
I've done a lot of other odds and ends at the clubs too. I enjoy helping out as much or more then just being at the clubs.
As for collecting, I started out with worldwide, but then narrowed it down to Sweden, France, and a few dozen topics.
I also have my daughter collecting. She started when she was 2 years old, matching stamps with pictures in a worldwide album that weighed more then she did. She went on to exhibt as a junior winning dozens of medals, certificates and ribbons. Now as an adult, she collects several countries and another dozen or more topics.
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04:57:58pm
re: What do you collect and why?
It all started when I was only 26 yrs old. It was after my 2nd tour in VietNam. I was having a hard time ajusting, it was not called PTSD at that time. I was going to group meetings at Fort Lee VA. The group leader said we should look into doing something that would not only keep us busy, but we would also enjoy. I was at the base libery and they were giving out packets of stamps. I asked how to find out some info on them. I was given a scott catalog to check out.
Needless to say I was hooked. There is so much to learn. I left the Army to join the Navy "you know See the World" and did I and my collection grew. I would buy stamps in every port of call, I orded stamps through Linns.
I retired from the Navy in 1988, beleive me there was not a lot of jobs at that time. I went to apply for a job as a guard at Chicago's Field Mesuem. Now the funny thing is my stamp collecting knowadge did wonders. There were four or five hundred people for two positions.
It was down to four people. A women walked into the interview room and started asking me a lot of questions. She could not beleive how much I knew about what they did at the mesume. I told her I collected stamps. I found out she was the chair person for the visitor service department.
Because of stamp collecting my PTSD was under control and the whole world was opened up to me. I was not hired as a guard, I was offered a position as a supervisor in the visitor service department.
My grandson is into trains and he has his own stamp album of railway and train stamps.
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re: What do you collect and why?
James, i love your story, and always feel an attachment to the vets with PTSD, even though I never served (roll of the ball, as it were). There are a number of RR stamp collectors here, too.
David
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re: What do you collect and why?
I might as well give my story here too…
Like many a collector, I started stamp collecting when I was about 8 years old. My parents gave me a small paperback Harris stamp album (you know the one with an astronaut and a horse-drawn covered wagon on the front cover) and a packet of stamps. I was hooked. I have fond memories of sitting in front of the TV putting stamps into my little album. I eventually moved up to the Harris Standard World Stamp album. But, once my teenage years rolled around, I put my stamps aside for other interests (cars, girls, beer, etc.). Then came the military, college, graduate school, marriage, kids, raising a family, etc., and my stamps stayed boxed up in storage over the years. I do remember visiting a few actual stamp shops in various different cities while I was in the Navy during the mid-1980s, but that was about it.
Then, a few years ago, I dug out my stamps and slowly started collecting again. I decided not to specialize in any specific country, but to continue to be a generalist worldwide collector, but I would focus on the classic era stamps from 1840-1940. And after playing around with Steiner pages and looking into the Minkus Supreme Global albums, I decided I would go with the Scott International Vol I. I must say, my choice to be a WW classic era stamp collector using these albums was influenced by a couple of popular blogs on collecting using the Scott Internationals and an article I read in the Washington Post about two guys in the 1970s who set out (and travelled the world) to complete the 11-volume Scott International albums. To them, ‘the hunt was the challenge.’ Of course the ability to find specific stamps is much easier today with the internet than back in the 70s, but there are still plenty of stamps in the Vol I that are considered ‘hard to find.’ And, with 35,000 spaces and my limited stamp budget, I will not run out of stamps needed to fill the album!
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re: What do you collect and why?
I am a plant developmental geneticist. One of my research projects concerns the control of the juvenile-to-adult transition in trees, in particular, Acacia and related species. About a year ago my son gave me an art magazine that contained an article about the "Tree of Tenere", an Acacia located in Niger, in the Sahara desert. It was the only tree in a 250 mile radius, and was a stopping point for caravans, until it was killed by a drunk driver in 1970 (or so the story goes). The government of Niger saved what it could, and put these parts in a museum. An artist erected a statue at the site of the tree, which is featured in the movie "The Great Match (La Gran final)".
What does this have to do with why I collect stamps, you ask? Three months ago, I was not a stamp collector (although I was as a kid, and my father still is). Nevertheless, the thought occurred to me, "I wonder if there is a stamp of the tree of Tenere?. I'm sure I could find a way to work it into a seminar on our research". So, I searched Ebay, and sure enough, there is a stamp of the "Tree of Tenere" issued by Niger in 1974 as a memorial. So I bought it. Actually, I bought two--one for me, and one for the graduate student working on this project.
Fast forward a few months. I am in Strasbourg, France, preparing to deliver a seminar at a research institute. As I wander the city the day before my seminar, I come across a stamp shop. Figuring that two copies of a stamp are better than one, I walk in and ask the proprietor if he speaks English. He does, so I ask him if he has the tree of Tenere stamp. He looks in his collection, finds none, and I leave disappointed. But, as I was returning to the hotel, it occurred to me that perhaps Niger was not alone in its appreciation of Acacias. And then another thought--what better way to demonstrate the cultural and economic significance of my research organism than to show all the countries that had issued stamps of Acacia on a Powerpoint slide. So I returned to the shop, and asked to see the stamps of Australia. Acacias (wattles) are widespread in Australia. In fact, Acacia pycnantha is the national tree of Australia. Sure enough, he had three Australian stamps with wattles, including the famous 1959 stamp. So I bought them, for 1 euro.
Back in Philadelphia, I started my hunt in earnest. My goal was to show a world map with pictures of Acacia stamps from around the world. Remarkably, I found that lots of countries have issued stamps of Acacias, or related species. I started buying them. About $100 into this exercise (mostly for postage from Europe), it occurred to me that I could just grab the pictures from the internet using Google image, but by then i was hooked. Now, many hundreds of dollars later, I have a very large collection of Acacia stamps. I started out buying single stamps, used or mint, then decided I wanted mint, and then decided I wanted the entire set of which the stamp was a part. Pretty soon, I ran out of Acacias, so I decided to branch into other species in the Mimosoideae and Ceasalpinoideae (avoiding the Papilionoid legumes, because they get all the love). But there were not enough of those, and my addiction was growing. So I started collecting baobabs. And then palms, and then trees that just looked interesting (e.g. trees in Madagascar). This has limited my collection to stamps from tropical countries, but this is fine because I grew up in the Philippines, so I have an affinity for the tropics.
Along the way, I started collecting stamps about reforestation and environmental preservation, and then stamps of corn, because I used to work on corn. It has gotten to be pretty expensive, and very time consuming. But there is nothing more exciting than returning home at night and finding an envelope from some foreign country (usually France) with stamps on it, and in it!
We visited my parents in Chicago for Christmas. Knowing of my new interest, my father gave me his large stamp collection from the Philippines, which he acquired while we were living there as Presbyterian missionaries, from 1957-1970. He is saving the rest of the collection to give me on future occasions. 62-year-old son, and 90-year- old father, bonding over stamps.
Happily, one of the folks that I bought stamps from told me about this site a few days ago. You seem like very nice people, and your stamps are a lot cheaper than on Delcampe or Ebay, so I plan to visit often. If any of you have stamps of trees, or corn, or agriculture let me know.
Cheers,
Scott
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re: What do you collect and why?
I'm speechless, Scott!
THAT is a great story! I now feel silly tracking down a stamp with Texas BlueBonnets on it for a joke about "Give me your Lupins" from the Monty Python skit Dennis Moore.
...but, before someone else beats me to it, I must ask: Do you have any stamps with The Larch?
Lars
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re: What do you collect and why?
Lars,
No, I do not. Please illuminate me. What is "the larch'?
Scott
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re: What do you collect and why?
I’m collecting mints Canadian stamps in a Lighthouse album up to 1999
I’m collecting mints US stamps in a Lighthouse album up to 1965
I’m collecting mints Philippines stamps in a Minkus album up to 2000.
I’m also collecting used stamps of the world in a Scott Int. Albums up to 1960 and print my own pages only for the stamps I have after 1960 since my main interest is for engraved stamps, I print my own pages for the engraved stamps of countries after 1960 and place them in Scott Int. Binders .
I have 0 interests in the new stamps Canada and US release just to make more sell.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Larix is the scientific name for the Larch family. It is part of the Pinaceae family.
vic.
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07:20:38am
re: What do you collect and why?
Scott, that was a great story of discovery and self-defined collecting; how wonderful to discover stamps in that way. You should consider publishing it in a stamp publication (maybe through APS?).
When Lars said
"Do you have any stamps with The Larch?"
Cheers,
Peter
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re: What do you collect and why?
After I posted my response, it occurred to me that Lars was referring to Monty Python. It is obvious that I am out of my depth in this area, although I greatly enjoyed "The Life of Brian".
Scott
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re: What do you collect and why?
" Lars was referring to Monty Python"
You have to watch thayt guy..... also going off on a tangent.....
Hey Lars.I can make this simple....I collect any and everything except dead presidents (on spendable paper)
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re: What do you collect and why?
"Re the Larch --- just watch a the very earliest Python episodes to catch the Larch references. Funnnneeeeee stuff! Fish slapping --OMG sooo funneee, ministry of silly walks, lumberjack song, etc etc"
Great stuff for sure!!!
Get Lars started and get out the way..... He knows every Python skit word for word....
Lars, where is Doug N....
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It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. - Aristotle Onassis
21 Feb 2015
09:18:31am
re: What do you collect and why?
A friendly reminder - please try to stay on topic or start a new thread. I love the discussions and banter, but we don't want this thread to become more about off-topic than on.
Lisa
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re: What do you collect and why?
Sorry Lisa, I just went to the way back machine.
We will now resume control of what we collect and why.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Interesting to read how everyone came about collecting what they do.
I started out as a child collecting used American because my parents bought me an American album and a bag of used stamps.
That graduated into a world collection, because the world kiddie packs were cheap...and pretty. Loved all those big cat and dog pictures!
Then I started collecting stamps off anything that came in the mail. Dad worked for government and often had international mail. He'd bring the stamps home to me.
In university I had summer jobs and a student loan. I felt flush! Little did I know... I spent some money on plate blocks and mint Canadian stamps...until I decided I needed to eat more than spend money on stamps. I quit stamp collecting.
Fast forward 15 years...my two children were 10 and 8. They were ready for an introduction to stamp collecting. I pulled out my collection and the oldest was raring to go! I took her to the local dealer in Calgary and she picked out a huge bag of Australian stamps on cover. Took us a while, but we got all those suckers off cover. She learned all about Australia and did a mini-unit study on Australia and its history. She even ended up extending it and writing the Queen about her stamp collection. A letter dutifully answered by the Queen's lady-in-waiting.
At any rate...the kids and I kept going for a few years. Then they lost interest as teenagers. I was too busy with life at that time and stopped as well.
Fast forward another 15 years...the girls are grown and left home about ten years ago. Hubby and I are looking around the place thinking we need to declutter a few things and think seriously of downsizing into a condo or something. I pull out my little 8 volume collection by then (took up half a closet shelf) with the idea of selling it. But, a funny thing happened on the way to the dealer... I decided to pick up collecting again.
This time with more focus and a goal in mind. I do want it to be worth something eventually, but recognize I have limited funds to spend on it. I also realize Hubby and kids are just not interested. So I am collecting for myself. I told Hubby if anything happens to me first to take my collection to the local Stamp Club and sell it there, if there be any takers.
Now I am collecting used Canadian to finish up a Lighthouse album that pre-dates SF days because I hate to see anything unfinished. I am selling my used American collection and the Australian collection. I am collecting Canadian mint blocks because I think they're pretty. Love the unadorned artwork. No cancels, make a nice presentation/layout. And they have investment potential in some cases.
And I am collecting mint worldwide Textiles (not costumes, but spinning, weaving, etc.) because I am a fibre artist IRL and sell my work in various shops as well as exhibiting in various venues. I love fibre, so this is a natural fit for me.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I've been away for a while and thought this post would make a nice return to activity.
I started when I was 7 or 8 years old, with an ad from Boy's Life and approvals from HE Harris.
My interests are varied. These days I am actively working on Haiti, Vatican City, Israel, Palestine, newspaper stamps and newspaper railway stamps, US Coast Guard Postal History and a worldwide collection. I also have a Scouts on Stamps and judo on stamps collection, but haven't worked on them in quite a while.
Of course, my main focus is giving my girls a love of stamp collecting:
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re: What do you collect and why?
Hi Clay,
Good to hear from you again. You seem to have a few helpers there on the stamp front.
Regards ... Tim.
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Hello claymorgan,
Thanks for posting a picture of those little angels. They all look just alike. They could be triplets.
-Ernie
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re: What do you collect and why?
Thanks Tim and Ernie.
The girls sometimes introduce themselves as twins and a spare.
The twins will be 7 in February, the younger sister turned 5 in June.
The one on the right (batgirl shirt) has taken a bit more of a serious interest in stamp collecting. The other two piddle with it.
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Wow, such wonderful stories you all have.
Mine is much simpler. I can remember, as a boy, attempting to start a number of different things. Baseball Cards and Stamps do come to mind. Most of these attempts were a joint effort with my older brother.
Of course, my father was an officer in the US Army and we never lived in one location more than three years. Back then, when an officer was going to move, a crew of enlisted men came in and packed everything in crates and boxes. Only drawback was the existence of a weight limit based on number of people in the household (including us munchkins). This meant that any item that was considered frivolous had to be tossed. The Baseball cards and stamps were among those items that got tossed.
In my early teens, I worked part time after school and between that and studying, I didn’t have time for any hobbies. Now once dad Retired I was 16. I took all the money I’d saved and bought an old beat up rust bucket of a car. I worked in a gas station to pay for my gas and maintenance. I had also discovered that girls were rather fun to be around and a lot of my money went to paying for dates. Still no time for collecting.
Fast forward to today. Work and family have consumed the majority of my time. My wife has retired and started doing crafting projects as a hobby. I fancy photography but mostly landscapes and abstract items. I hate photographing people. I love doing flowers and macro. Our two kids (girl + boy) have grown and each have two children of their own.
About 8 months ago I was laying in the hospital suffering from my fifth bout of Pneumonia in six years and wondered just what kind of legacy have I left for my kids and grandkids. There was really nothing at all. One day I was watching a TV program (don’t remember the show), and there was a stamp collection involved in the plot.
I decided to start four individual year collections for each of my grandkids. (2004, 2007, 2008 and 2010). Things quickly got out of control. I added my two kids (1976 and 1979) and added mine and the wife’s birth years too. I bought some pre printed year albums online, but will probably abandon those. I feel I would rather to show a stamp with a history lesson attached telling what that stamp is all about. I’ve found so far that the history of some stamps can fill a couple of pages.
I’ve then started experimenting with making my own pages using MS Publisher. I tried using Word, but just couldn’t get the formatting down. Publisher allows me greater freedom of locating my images.
I am giving myself two years to amass all the stamps I’ll need. I can plan retirement after that and approach other years at a very leisurely pace.
Now for those of you who I have bored into unconsciousness, you can wake up and move on to other and better things. Thanks for listening.
Mikey
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
11 Dec 2015
08:41:30pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Mikey
I have heard of many collecting styles, but this is the first one based on birth years of descendants. What a novel and fascinating idea! It would be interesting to see some of the pages and write-ups you create.
Bobby
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re: What do you collect and why?
What do i collect ? Dutch Indies covers and postcards, Chicago Century of Progress 1933-34 covers, worldwide stamps to 1969. Thats all the sins i can think of right now !
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Thanks for the kind words Bobby. The first one I'm working on is 1976. Here are my title and the first two pages.
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re: What do you collect and why?
When I get more time, I will try to do a posting about the Muskoka / Parry Sound area. We live in Muskoka and, for a time, long before I was born, my mother lived in Parry Sound.
I must have missed the posting asking me to do this. Sorry about that.
Over the years, I have amassed a collection of over 3000+ covers, and the same amount for postcards of this region. Of the 3000+ (postcards) mentioned, I would have to say that 95% are pre 1950. Parry Sound isn't as big, but, I am still adding to it.
Until then, happy collecting and Merry Christmas
Chimo
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re: What do you collect and why?
I collect the one cent Ben Franklin stamp from the Series of 1902. (Go figger!) I first was drawn to this stamp in my teens because I always admired Ben Franklin and I thought the stamp design was classic and beautiful. I specialized in this stamp back then and won silver awards in adult competition at the big ASDA NY shows. Then of course, I discovered cars and girls and I lost interest in stamps for many years.
Enter eBay, twenty years ago. I made a killing there selling old car dealer brochures to collectors and classic car owners. At one point I was grossing over $1000 a month with this little endeavor. Flush with easy money, I discovered I could buy stamps on eBay and started buying the more elusive items... imperfs, private perforations and booklet panes. Things I had never seen in person in all my collecting years were suddenly available if I took the time to look regularly. My renewed interest opened my Ben Franklin collection again!
Within the past year, I got curious and dug out all the boxes of stamps and collections I had in my teen years. I have small collections of things that I forgot all about. And I have collections that never got further than being sorted into a box or stock book. Now I have money to buy albums and pages to get them all in order. So I started sorting.
I have renewed my New Jersey postmark cover collection and it's all in two, now going on three albums. I have been regularly adding covers and postcards with DPOs and small offices.
I just found my George Washington Bicentennial cover collection. Back in the 1970s I did a pretty good job of collecting all the known commemorative cachets that were issued for events and celebrations all year long. Then I was browsing on Buckacover and found a few more I had never seen. Collection reactivated, and headed for an album!
This summer I got the inkling that with all the stuff I had collected and hoarded, I probably had a pretty good USA collection. So I started "The Big Sort", putting all of this into Scott order. I don't care if I have a mint or used single, a used block of four with a neat cancel, a plate block, first day cover or any interesting usage on cover, it all has gone into the sort! And like I thought, I have an example of most 20th century stamps up until I stopped collecting around 1980. And my 19th century stuff, starting with US 1, isn't too shabby either.
So I'm having fun.
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09:06:31pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I started around 1960 when I was about 8 years old. My father encouraged me.
Albums, acessories and packets of stamps were readily available in Woolworths.
Of course, it was all very juvenile but in those days General Knowledge....knowing abot flags, capital cities, populations etc was valued. In 2016, it is dismissed as Trivia.
In 1970, I started to specialise in Ireland but for several years still collected world wide. But gave up the "world" around 1985.
Around 2000...I gave up collecting stamps...simply because Ireland was issuing too many stamps. I resumed collecting in 2012 and have painstakingly obtained all the issues....mint and used from 2001 to date. I travel to Dublin several times a year to buy new issues.
Ironically I have also resumed collecting the world. Specialising in Ireland is obsessional and not always "fun" but somehow buying some random stamps is still "fun".
Why do I do it?
The best answer I can come up with is that a Stamp Album of a specific country....USA, Australia, France wherever is a Greatest Hits Album.....History, Geography, Politics, Music, Art, Literature, Sport, Folklore....its all there in a very compact form.
Although I am not a big fan of First Day Covers, I do have some. But I much prefer commercial covers or postcards showing authentic use of stamps. To be pompous for a moment....the sending and delivery of mail is one of the great achievements of the Human Race.
I also collect Irish postcards from 1900-1922.
But along with many collectors, I have a collecting "gene" so whether its Postcards, Coins, Phonecards, Autographs, Bubblegum Cards, theres always plenty to see and buy in a flea market. Indeed earlier this week, an American friend sent me three "campaign buttons" from the current USA Presidential Election Campaign. So a whole new area opens up.
I just enjoy being on the border line between Collecting and Hoarding.
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re: What do you collect and why?
FItzjamesHorse-I believe you may have uncovered the driving force behind us all as collectors/accumulators when you observed "I have a collecting "gene". I wonder if another possible explanation might not include the desire for the hunt along with the remarkable ability to continually find new/exciting areas of intellectual pursuit.
In reading through this thread again, I see many names not seen on this board for far too long. If a special invitation would be of any value, know that you are missed.
Best,
Dan C.
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re: What do you collect and why?
"FItzjamesHorse-I believe you may have uncovered the driving force behind us all as collectors/accumulators when you observed "I have a collecting "gene". I wonder if another possible explanation might not include the desire for the hunt along with the remarkable ability to continually find new/exciting areas of intellectual pursuit."
A nice summary. I have always thought my desire to collect and hold "things" was partly because of my military upbringing. Unlike most folks, my childhood was punctuated with relocations every 2 or 3 years. That meant I left behind all my friends and things familiar. The only thing I could control and remained familiar were my possessions.
Then there were periods of living abroad in places like Izmir, Turkey in 1966. There literally was nothing to buy there. So my possessions, like my Matchbox Car collection became dear to me because they were irreplaceable. I learned to take very good care of my things. And to hold onto things. I learned to create order in my life. Thus my collections.
I also agree that our own desire for intellectual pursuit fuels our need to collect. I have had many areas of collecting over my life, and have always enjoyed learning about new things, places and history. My friends and family see me as someone who knows a bit about everything. And that has served me well in my life!
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07:06:29pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I have often seen the "thrill of the hunt" referenced but personally I never really got it.
But I think all of us are intrigued by "collections"....such as the guy with the railway memorabalia who was on TV a month ago or the guy with the beer mat collection on TV tonight.
I dont really know why I started a collection of 3,000 plastic Toy Soldiers thirty years ago....but Nostalgia is a big factor...a way of conserving parts of our past. But it has certainly diverted resources away from the main business...Stamps.
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"I have often seen the "thrill of the hunt" referenced but personally I never really got it."
I get the "thrill of the hunt" and the Internet has pretty much ended that. In days yore, I'd go to shows and look for specific collectibles. Especially in the model car world, I'd go to a show and I was pleased as punch to find a specific item I had been looking for! Today, go to eBay and put in the search term and dozens of that formerly illusive item will pop up instantly. That takes the thrill out of the chase!
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10:34:34pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I've been interested in stamps since I was a child, but I never really had an opportunity to collect them seriously. My eyes would brighten, and I would become covetous of any foreign stamp I came across, which was a rare occurrence. Most of my collecting has been done recently, my interest has been ignited,surpassing insurmountably the casual interest of my childhood. I have been buying stamps obsessively, going on philatelic tangents. I love history, and have a great interest in Russia, this has led me to compile a large collection of Russian and Soviet stamps.I am very magpie like, and an irredeemable hoarder, My interests are growing all the time; I recently bought some British colonial stamps,and now I am trying to get as many as I can. I just love collecting, the history and images amaze me.
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"I've been interested in stamps since I was a child,"
Anyone remember what that first spark was as a child? I do!
It was 1966 and we had just moved to Izmir, Turkey when I was eight. There was no television there yet, so we kids became big readers. I was reading the book "Johnny Appleseed" and my father showed me the 1966 Johnny Appleseed stamps on a package we had just received from my grandparents. That was one of those big moments for me. I saved those stamps and one of them survives to this day. You may see a used and stained copy of that stamp in my album, yea that's the one that started it all!
The next moment I remember was my father bringing home a stamp he had received at work. It was from South Africa and I was very impressed. This stamp was actually in Africa! I saved that one too. Don't know if it survived. Little did I know then that someday I'd have good friends from South Africa that would visit my home!
Anyone?
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07:22:46pm
re: What do you collect and why?
I am new here. I have been collecting worldwide stamps since I was 8 years old. My mother got me interested in the hobby. And I have been collecting ever since. However I am now disabled and it's as much a form of therapy as a hobby. It keeps me interested. With a lot of time on my hands I use stamp collecting to cope with the situation I am under. In the last 5 years I have bought over 75 kilograms from charities. I soak them, I sort them, I organize them and I am starting to catalogue them and place them in albums. I literally keep busy that way. Since I have so many stamps accumulated I doubt I will ever reach the end this obsession. The rather odd thing in all of my collecting is I don't think I have ever sold or traded anything. I have given things away on occasions but buying and selling isn't me. I am just too busy organizing. In the scheme of things I am fine with that but maybe one day... I can simply let go of the excess which is quite literally "excessive". I don't normally talk stamps with anyone, I don't get magazines, I don't go to shows, I don't belong to a club, and likely I am missing out on all that stuff but you see I simply don't care if I have the greatest collection on earth or whether I have every single set from a particular country. I do research a lot, have very good software and Scott's Catalogues and a lifetime of experience at whatever I am not quite sure. To me though stamps are all works of art with a story behind them and all worthy of possessing; even the Cinderellas, fakes, CTO or what some people refer to as junk. I do throw the damaged ones out but otherwise... Anyway that's my story I guess.
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Paul, if I was to remove the disable part, it would me who wrote that message! I call myself a freelance collector, don't belong to any club either, shows are not for me but when it comes to stamps I am a packrat. Great to have you with us.
Tony
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re: What do you collect and why?
Paul,
Welcome!
And if I may, I would suggest to NOT throw out the damaged ones;
better to send them to a worthy cause, such as the HOLOCAUST STAMPS PROJECT!
Please check out the link below, and consider sending them your damaged stamps.
Thank you!
http://www.foxboroughrcs.org/students-families/frcs-holocaust-stamp-project/
Randy
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10:14:33pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Thanks Musicman...had no idea about the project and I will be sure to send some stamps in. I have plenty to spare them.
Paul
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Welcome Paul! I don't do the show and club thing either. Used to, just not for me anymore. I've been collecting since I was about 9 yrs old and I can't stop. I just love this hobby. Great fun.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Like many here, I started my collection with a Harris album when I was a teen. I have come back to stamps after a hiatus of almost 40 years. I still enjoy collecting worldwide, but I don't collect anything past the 1960's since that was when I stopped collecting. I'm not interested (and have neither the time nor money) for complete sets of anything or complete countries. Rather, I prefer a sampling from as many countries as I can of different eras, which gives me a sweep of a country's history, events, and memories. In addition, since I grew up in the restaurant business, I have started a topical collection of food, by which I mean cuisine and prepared dishes, not raw materials, such as vegetables. It doesn't seem as if there are many such stamps printed about this topic, which is good because I might be able to keep up with what's there.
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10:39:01pm
re: What do you collect and why?
We started collecting about 45 years ago. Once our boys were in their teens we also started them in the hobby but they had very little interest and everything was put into storage. Now that we are both retired and our sons both have their own families we picked up again and can't quit. The boys laughed when they realized we still had all the boxes
We have collected worldwide along with plate blocks of Canada and lots of Olympic sets. We do belong to a local club but not very active. Have learnt alot from them as well as from SOR. We are slowly progressing thru the boxes by sorting stamps by country and stamp number - putting them in envelopes and the mint ones in albums and glassine envelopes. We have a long way to go and wonder if we will see the end of this task. But like others it just seems to keep our minds and interest going.. We use Stampmanage for world wide and EZstamp for Canadian as far as databases go.
Happy sorting everybody!
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re: What do you collect and why?
Bumping this thread because I think everyone should re-read it!
Never hurts to remind ourselves about what others collect here -
after all, we are a club first and foremost!
I am updating the list I keep on hand of members' interests -
some of you might want to do the same.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I don't think I ever posted to this list, so here goes . . .
Ireland is my main collection. I'm one seahorse shy (not counting a few recent issues) of a complete used collection. I'm very interested in the early overprints and I'm always looking for interesting cancels, perfins, watermarks, plate varieties, multiples, copies with attached selvage, covers, booklet varieties attached setenant pairs, Cinderellas, stationery, cut squares, FDCs, mint sets, booklets, overprints, revenues, postage dues, railway issues, - you name it, I'm delighted to get them! Only exception - no interest in the modern self adhesive issues.
FYI I'm currently trying to convert all of my bulk trading stock into Ireland material to study. I'll be back trading in a month - contact me then if you'd like to take those duplicated, common stamps that have been sitting in your stockbook forever and swap for something new. I am uploading scans of trading lots I can offer in return
When I broke up my worldwide collection, I wanted to keep at least one country from every continent or major geopolitical area. I selected these to keep:
Austria
Bermuda - looking for key plates and I really like Bermuda postcards
Canada and Provinces - Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Is, Br Columbia & Vancouver
Hawaii
Guernsey - Alderney and Herm Cinderellas, Jersey, Isle of Man and Lundy
Japan, Ryukyu and Manchukuo
Tannu Touva
Vatican City
Venezuela
Virgin Islands and Leeward Islands
Scandinavia:
Danish West Indies
Denmark - I really like Danish Advertising pairs
Faroes
Finland
Finland also Aland, Aunus, Karelia, North Ingermanland
Greenland
Iceland
Norway
Sweden
I mostly collect used singles, but mint are sometimes OK. I'm trying to prune my mint because I live in the tropics and, while we have excellent air conditioning and humidity control, I would rather not store a large mint collection here in case of a hurricane.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Theresa, I hear you re: the humidity. I love fully red, uncirculated copper coins but I know better than to even try to collect them here in Florida. The album would look like 101 Dalmatians in no time!
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02:10:59am
re: What do you collect and why?
I had this whole bloody thing typed out and hit some wrong key and it all bloody disappeared so now its condensed ... I knew an old guy who lived nearby and we played crib and scrabble and he had a pile of old books, stamps and what have you... he had no kids and every time i went there he gave a me a stamp or two once i had shown interest in them... so by time i was 10 i had a virtually complete collection of newfoundland without having any real sense of what that entailed. But I kept things that seemed relevant to me and so i still have them. We moved as we did so often and i lost track of that old guy who was a doctor of some type tho i dont even recall his name. I do recall him telling me about his dad who was a collector. He had sheets and sheets of every old newfoundland stamp. He lived in this gigantic house near Bowring Park across from the lt gov's place. I had a good friend who lived nearby on military road who's dad shot himself when we were both about ten. Apparently he was dying of cancer. These are things that i recall about stamp collecting as a kid. That and the old GPO on water street which later became the courthouse. I still have my mother in laws centennial box somewhere from the expo. That year we went to the travelling expo and got hit head on by some drunk in a datsun drag racing on the road to trepassey. My brother was the only casualty , putting his head through the windshield. He lived to the ripe old age of 53 sour as ever. I do however have some of those cancellations including some helicopter mail. Yes so callous. Well thats another long story. Anyway our home was always open to whatever happened along and so political judiciousness lead to prosperity and I can always tip my hat to the PC's without whom I would have had to strive much harder than i did, however liberal i might vote. Consequently i have a fine collection of ministerial cancellations from everybody up to Joe Clark. I even have a personal letter of recommendation from John Crosbie who got me my first job after my mom campaigned for him for many years. I did return the favor by milking Acoa of several hundred million working in the private sector to fund offshore fishery patrols, aerial photography, engine machine shops and what have you, for several of his buds. Such is life and a reflection on the fact that life does NOT change. If you doubt me i challenge you to take up a copy of the 1920's papers and show me what is new. This was my morning starting at three later the post office listen to these lines because they hold eternal truth for the accepting/common? man... To which i will only add one comment ... all that cod they shipped worldwide was soaked in DDT to keep off the flies... was much safer slurping the cod liver oil from the drum or grabbing a bit of fresh cod off the flake... and thru all that those early years of rowing 15 miles a day; of misery; of cold; and poverty; and frost; and a saturday bottle of bacardi: this was the song my dad sang to my mom ...on every occasion worthy of a draught
(Modified by Moderator on 2019-12-29 06:06:20)
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re: What do you collect and why?
I have a US collection but stopped when the stamps were getting too expensive so I switched to British Asia (Singapore, Malaya, etc) before going to worldwide British commonwealth. I focus on pre-1980 (mainly the pre-Princess Diana and Disney phase). Given the breath, I tend to buy collections to get common material rather than one at a time. Steiner pages broke the tie to expensive binders and pages and gave me the freedom to create my own pages. The Internet has also been a big catalyst so I can see what others are going. Some of follow parallel paths.
I have always been interested in stamps and went through usual phases of activity and inactivity but actually subscribed to Linn's off and on in the post college years. My Dad was big into coins but never liked the coin hobby. There is no history in coins.
I have no interest in financial aspects and no hoping to find that rare stamp in some collection or bragging about the big deal. It is a hobby you can mostly do by yourself at any time. It works for an ISTJ type.
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re: What do you collect and why?
"... There is no history in coins ..."
Ouch!
There is as much history in any coin as there is in any mint stamp ...
... history in the design, manufacture, usages, etc.
Find the cheapest coin of an Islamic reign with a would-not-work-for-a-necklace hole, and you may have found a good luck charm that was nailed onto the doorstep of someone's home.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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My main collection is the Ben Franklin 1 cent green of the Series of 1902 (see my avatar!). I started collecting this one stamp as a specialty back in the early 1970s when I was 14 or 15. I went to the major NY metro shows in those days and was enthralled with all the exhibits of studies on early US stamps, only expensive ones! So as a kid I decided to emulate those collections, but with a cheap stamp.
I always admired Ben Franklin as a kid, so when I first saw this stamp it just clicked. I thought the classic engraving was beautiful, and I started to amass stamps and covers. And I continue to this day. Shown here is a rare Covel private perforation on this issue.
My next collection also dates back to my teens. I started collecting New Jersey postmarks on full cover. I found a lot of older ones at shows in the cheap cover boxes. Then I started visiting post offices as well as writing by mail. When I got back to collecting a few years ago as an adult, I found the box of covers, along with the old paperback zip code directory I used as a checklist.
Armed with modern tools like eBay I started it up again and now have close to 1,000 town varieties, only 42% of what's possible according to the enormous spread sheet I have put together from every source I could find. It's housed on two pocket clear pages, in 10 thick binders! Below is an example of a page in my collection. The top cover was one of those I mailed away for in my teens!
I also have maintained my general USA collection that I started back then too. I decided I didn't care if I had a single, block, pair, interesting multiple, first day covers or interesting usage. It would all go in one binder to represent that stamp. So again, I employed my 2 pocket pages, and have amassed a pretty complete USA collection from the 1920s to 1980. Past 1980 I save what I acquire, and have those in stock books and a cover box, just in case I decide to move the end date back.
My first page in my Airmail album, the first series of airmail stamps. C1 represented with a cover, C2 as a single and C3 as a plate block. I consider this page complete.
National Defense 1 cent stamp of 1940. I considered the margin stamp with "100" on it kinda rare and deserving to be here! This was no doubt the top sheet of a stack of 100 sheets. I also had a plate block, and this type of collection allows me to include interesting collateral material such as this related slogan cancel. (I hadn't noticed the typo on the word "LiberTy" until now, gotta fix that)
And I do have an album called "Cool Stuff" where I keep other interesting items I find.
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re: What do you collect and why?
My primary focus is the Danish West Indies.
Was a generalist as a kid in the 70's and 80's, but always leaned toward Scandinavia as we had family there and I would keep envelopes, post cards, and stamps from family in Sweden and Denmark. Worked for an auction house while in college, and decided to focus on DWI as it was a smaller, somewhat overlooked area, with a lot of varieties and printings, plus had a family connection -- the pharmacist in St. Thomas -- who was one of two pharmacists who regummed the 1st issue as many of the sheets had stuck together on the voyage to the islands. He also created the "Royal Navy Rum," which Cruzon now makes.
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re: What do you collect and why?
I'm still looking for a stamp depicting "The Larch"
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07:45:20am
re: What do you collect and why?
Hi everyone! I thoroughly enjoyed reading and rereading everyone’s responses. I posted in 2015 to this thread under hs2o. I think it’s time to give an update.
Since then we sold half of everything we owned, but not the stamp collection (!), and moved halfway across the continent. We decided to have new wills drawn up and were asked about valuables, such as stamp collections. That got me thinking. Since 2015 I have focused in on Canada, including perfins and revenues. I have a burgeoning Christmas collection. Plus I’m working on a textile/handwork collection. I prefer postally used stamps, but won’t turn my nose up at mint! I’m collecting Canada because I live here. I collect Christmas because I am a person of faith who loves the magic of Christmas. I collect textiles because I’m a textile artist in real life.
Recently I bartered some stamps for a piece of my artwork and started a small Newfoundland collection. I was also given a couple of collections. As a result I have more worldwide stamps to either sell or gift away.
I did have some success in the past selling on Stamporama, and plan to get back to it in 2021.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Jean,
Thank you for bumping this thread back to current status!
I know we have had a handful of new members this year and hopefully they will add
their interests to our ongoing list.
To all the recent SOR members, please don't hesitate to post what you collect and WHY you
collect!
Lets keep this thread rolling!
And to all those who have joined this year - WELCOME ABOARD!!!
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09:32:49am
re: What do you collect and why?
I've been collecting stamps and postal history since I received a Minkus Worldwide Album for a Christmas present, in 1966.
My Danish heritage, and the inheritance of my uncles' stamp collection in the 1970s, led me to focus on Denmark. From there, I branched out to the few Danish colonies (Iceland, Danish West Indies, and Greenland), primarily focusing on the earliest issues up through independence. That got me interested in other Caribbean colonial powers, and the intricacies of maritime interactions between Spanish, French, Dutch, and English colonies as well as the private packets.
Another interesting diversion for me has been the stamps issued by Schleswig-Holstein prior to and including the 1920 plebiscite which divided the territory between what is now Denmark and Germany. And, you've seen some of my Christmas postcard topical diversion.
You can see how Denmark forms the backbone for all these collecting areas.
Because I like airplanes, aviation pioneering and the early transatlantic airmails are another area of interest for me. I prefer to collect items that are not philatelic or ceremonial, because the stories they can tell are more interesting to me. Again, the presence of multiple players in this arena (e.g., Air France, Lufthansa, and PanAm) and their interactions adds interest for me.
I generally prefer collecting used stamps and covers, because the varieties and vagaries of how, why, when, and where they were cancelled adds a lot of dimension and interest.
Even more generally, I admire and collect items that can tell a story about where they've been and why they went there.
PM me if you want chat more about these collecting areas!
-Paul
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re: What do you collect and why?
I accumulated a small pile of stamps about 15 years ago, and I recently started trying to get it into some sort of order. As a part of that process, I've managed to buy some random assortments of stamps from eBay, so I'm probably moving toward less order rather than more.
I initially thought I would be collecting US stamps, but once I started, the thought of distinguishing the very early stamps turns a hobby into a job (see another recent thread about distinguishing ABN/CBN/NBN stamps elsewhere in the forum for an example). So, I may try to collect the various designs, but I don't think I'm going to attempt to find all the Scott numbers or anything like that.
Somewhere along the line, I acquired two old beginner albums which had a few stamps from a lot of places, and when I learned about the collect-one-from-every-country idea, I thought I would try that, since I've already got stamps from a variety of countries, and I don't want to go whole-hog and try to collect worldwide in a serious way.
Then, I had an idea for a collection that displays the tree of life as portrayed on stamps (a version of which Don implemented on Stamp Smarter). That's my primary focus. The why? I don't expect to ever have to hunt down a very expensive stamp for this collection; there's probably another stamp with a design that works.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Capn Ed...above is a snippet from the HE Harris catalog for USA. I bought a copy in 2016 because it's spiral bound, so it will sit flat, plus I like all the color images and other aspects of their presentation and layout.
The Scott catalog assigns each image a number, then you have to go hunting through all the little text to find the stamps that correspond with the image. What I like about Harris, as above, they tell you right out the stamps that are represented by each image. That brings me to the way I'm collecting early USA, so as not to drive myself variety crazy, which includes hefty prices on some of them.
So basically all the US stamps issued between 1847 and 1861 can be consolidated into 7 face different stamps. Find the cheapest version of each and you have all the stamps the post office intended to produce for that era.
As it goes, for instance the issue of 1847 is just US 1 and US 2 the five and ten cent values. 3 and 4 aren't even stamps in my book. They were printed as souvenirs at the 1876 Exposition and not even valid for postage. Ironically, they catalog higher than the originals... and you know what? I don't need them.
Some of the early US catalog varieties come off the same sheet of stamps! Early collectors, probably because there were less than 100 US stamps to collect at the time, went crazy finding all these varieties that Scott then listed.
As far as "Face Different", I can go as far as collecting the imperf and perforated value, but I don't have to go crazy for all the minute details.
I hope this helps.
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05:41:44pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Yes, it is key to depart from collecting Scott numbers or space on album pages.
For the US, as with BenFranklin1902,I found it more satisfying to collect face-different stamps. I ditched my grandfather's old Scott National album and placed the stamps in Vario sheets so I could see what I have and not what I don't, and don't even want.
Those blue one-cent Franklins should just be one major number. Some of the others belong in the same category as plate flaws.
I bypass the Washington and Franklin headaches altogether, but as for the banknotes, I do collect the secret marks. They are face different, even if you need a magnifying glass to identify them.
I collected France according to an album, but then realized that some were never issued, so are not of interest, while others did have interesting variations not recognized in the album.
As for the German area, I take a different approach and go full Michel: chasing plate flaws and shade differences.
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06:23:59pm
re: What do you collect and why?
Countries I collected with albums were places I lived as a kid, or had some family connection: US, France, Canada.
Collecting areas where I have gotten bogged down in the weeds were initially problems I faced and decided to resolve. Wondering how to distinguish early French and French colonial issues led to a collection of French Colonies postmarks. Sorting out how to distinguish genuine German states stamps from the forgeries led to an interest in some of them.
Academic work led to dead ends in academia but did lead to perspective on areas I studied, which in turn provided context for collecting French African colonies, especially Morocco.
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re: What do you collect and why?
Started off thinking WW but too overwhelming. Quickly focused on Germany and anything related which is pretty extensive given how much they loved other countries (at least to occupy).
Recently thinking of collecting WW just for my birth year. I could easily parse my Steiner pages to create a customized album. Anyone else do that?
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re: What do you collect and why?
capn_ed:
"I initially thought I would be collecting US stamps, but once I started, the thought of distinguishing the very early stamps turns a hobby into a job (see another recent thread about distinguishing ABN/CBN/NBN stamps elsewhere in the forum for an example). So, I may try to collect the various designs, but I don't think I'm going to attempt to find all the Scott numbers or anything like that."
I am the one that started that thread, but it was because I only wanted to attempt to ID which version I had. I agree that every Scott number is crazy!
This may be of interest to you:
http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/philosophy.htm
Cheers!
Lars
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09:09:47am
re: What do you collect and why?
I started collecting US in the early 1970's when I was much younger and had lots of patience. I can remember spending a full afternoon identifying a couple stamps. I really wouldn't have the patience for that now, the early US really can be a chore sometimes. I really am looking for each Scott number and not counting BOB, with a 1976 cut off, I am down to needing 148 stamps. A lot of these are not attainable but I have a very good collection that I worked hard at and am quite proud of. If you want a more attainable area to collect that you can almost finish try Ireland, Australia or some of the African areas. The stamps for Nyassa and The Mozambique Company are very attractive and affordable. I also started North Borneo and except for some of the early issues the country is quite affordable. Stamp collecting should not be a chore, there are several areas that are easier but still fun and challenging!
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09:56:23am
re: What do you collect and why?
Nothing personal to anyone on SOR, but I feel like I've 'evolved' past the stage of needing to fill every space in an album. Can I get sufficient gratification by simply examining a high-quality image of a stamp, rather than the stamp itself? YES!
In the early days, I justified my interest in stamp collecting because I saw the product as a finite collection. Contrasted with say, collecting candy dishes or elephants or pigs or postcards where the potential size of the collection is infinite. The idea of completion was attractive and comforting, and a concrete objective. Turns out that "complete" is not so easily defined.
Then, as I matured in the hobby, I began to think on dimensions other than a stamp's designated catalog number, or of corraling it with all its brethren. I began to think about an individual stamp's intended use, and the quirks of the range of its actual use. I guess that's what you call "specializing". Anymore, the utility of Scott numbers is simply to distinguish a stamp from its fellows in a relativistic sense, for example: "Was this stamp issued before than that one?" Even Scott numbers are notably flawed in this respect. The example that jumps to mind is that Denmark #2 was actually issued before Denmark #1.
I certainly "get" the attraction of completing a collection, and I have a few small complete collections. But, I've (mostly) come to terms with the burdensome obsessiveness of 'completion' and have been able to find more enjoyment in researching the stories an object (of which, the stamp itself is often just a small part) can tell in the context of its actual use. And, this opens up an infinite range of dimensionality that is not really accessed by filling spaces in an album. In fact, I've never acquired or created an album after that first one, given to me in 1966.
This is also the principle reason I am much more attracted to used stamps than mint stamps. A little 'battle damage' can contribute to the historical context, and it mutes the idealistic while amplifying the practical.
-Paul
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11:23:05am
re: What do you collect and why?
Thank God we're all different - what's good for one is not necessarily good for the other. I've always been a collector! I know very few collections can be completed, but I like to try to come as close as possible! Not everyone thinks that way, but we're all different!
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re: What do you collect and why?
Harvey wrote:
"Thank God we're all different "
Yup... someone once said that if we were all the same we wouldn't fall in love.
David
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re: What do you collect and why?
Since I last posted in this thread a year ago. my colleting interests have not changed much except I got into Machins as well after purchasing a GB collection.
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07:58:48am
re: What do you collect and why?
I mainly collect the old states of Germany. For those for whom these are not familiar,
they are: Baden, Bavaria, Bergedorf, Braunschweig, Bremen, Hamburg, Hannover, Helogland,
Lubeck, Mecklenburg Schwerin, Mecklenburg Strelitz, Oldenburg, Prussia, Saxony,
Schleswig-Holstein and Wurttemberg. These are all to 1871 (except Helgoland to 1890).
Also included is the mail system of Thurn & Taxis, the Confederation of North German
states (1868-71) and German occupied Alsace & Lorraine (France).
I am a member of APS, Germany Philatelic Society, Peninsular State Philatelic Society
(collecting society of Michigan) and serve on the APS expert committee for the old states
of Germany.
I have authored nearly 50 articles on various subjects (you may have seen one in AP) and
in various venues. I have done but two exhibits: one frame online (first issues of Helgoland), and a 5-frame Helgoland exhibit earning national Gold and Large Vermeil at
the World Exhibition in New York, 2016.
I would post articles here, but the system does not allow easy uploading of a document.
If anyone is interested in any of the above, please email me at: Lawrence.mead@usm.edu
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