What's The Best Thing That's Happened?

For me it was last night when my 9 year old daughter asked me if she could start collecting stamps with me.

i wish I had a mentor when I started collecting and over the years..for me learning was beating my head against a wall...sometimes I would see knowledgable collectors at a meeting every two weeks...but there were a thousand things to learn..it just takes time !!

Sfgoda, get her signed up here.

In the coin forum we call them YN's, do we call them YP's here?

We should start a kids club.

Steve

THE BEST THING that happened to me today.....the doorbell rang
and there was a large, heavy package on the porch.
I carried it in and unwrapped it to find that Triggersmob had Tom send ME--little ole me--the set of Scott Catalogues he won last month!!

Thank you ,Thank you, Thank you, Triggersmob!! From the bottom of my heart! And thank you Tom for mailing them!

I will be smiling for the next 10 years!!

Gussyboy1

So that's where Phil is getting the stamps he is sending me-oops! ha
Bob, you are so funny!
Thanks for making me smile and laugh!
Gussyboy1

Bob

You look like I feel today!! I been here since 7am and havent had a break yet

3 more hours to 8 pm

My pleasure, Gussyboy.
Happy Birthday. LOL

Steve

i dont know if its the best thing..but it was good for me ! around the millineum we were at a flea market in a Masons front lot..my wife was looking at foreign post cards for 25 cents each looking for stamps and she pulled out a German postcard..she asked "do you want this and I said for a quarter sure....when I got home I noticed the stamp was one of the small Kaisers yacht stamps from German New Guinea...then it gets better..i noticed it had some kind of a Seepost cancel on it...i had noticed a lawyer in San Francisco had been bidding on that type of material on ebay..so I scanned the card and sent him a scan directly..bypassing ebay...i get an e mail back saying its a $220.00 cover ! Duh, Phil the guy offering you $220...i thought it cost 25 cents..if I say its yours for 150.00 I was making 149.75 ! Well you never saw a check for 150 dollars arrive so fast from San Francisco....the card was not worth anywhere near that to me...but the 150 dollars went to improving my own collection !!

Phil, I can give you that story in reverse. From about 1959 to 1961 I had a Korean pen pal with whom I was exchanging stamps and letters. He had sent me a Korean comic book from 1959, which of course I couldn't read. I kept the thing all that time and about a year or so ago offered it on ebay. It got one bid from a Korean, in San Francisco, I believe, and it sold for .99 or 1.99. Maybe a couple of months later he wrote me asking if I had any more, telling me that the he sold the Korean comic book he bought from me at an off-line auction for $800. He later found out it could have been the only copy left in existence, and he was sorry he had sold it for that. I was happy for him. If I had held onto it somewhere down the road someone cleaning up after me would have probably trashed it. And there probably wouldn't have been any copies of that comic book left.

Well folks, I would have to say the best thing that has happened to me is actually two things. #1 is my Fiance and my best friend both wanting me to help them with getting started in stamp collecting so that we are all learning together about this wonderful hobby. #2 I was going thru my USPS Stamp Guide and checking all of my FDC's I have picked up and found they have a 2002 value of approx. $166 which I think is amazing considering I may have $30 - $40 tied up in them. I wish I could find out about some of the post cards I have because I'm sure they are worth more then the stamps I got them for..LOL