Why Do Not Collect US !

I caught the stamp collecting bug at age 9....my allowence was 35 cents a week which in my currency was a Saturday movie feature with cartoon and two packages of candy...still I managed to have 15 cents or so available for stamps...the local hobby shop sold modern U.S. at twice face value 6 cents for a 3 cent stamp...the approval houses like Jamestown and Garcelon would sell me colorful French colonial stamps for 3 cents...even at 9 years of age I could see that going back and buying earlier U.S. stamps was something out of my price range...so a worldwide collector was born !!

I had just as much fun collecting the US modern issues (post WWI) then as I do now picking up classics.

As a ten year old, I started collecting stamps for the first time and like you philb, I had a very limited allowance and came to the realization that world wide was the cheapest and best way for me to enjoy the hobby. Now I still like world wide stamps but have narrowed my interests to those half dozen countries that I liked the best as as kid (Cda, US, UK, Ireland Germany and Australia).

I started with US, but now I WANT IT ALL!

A friend of mine got me hooked on stamps when I was 12 years old. I remember my parents buying me a 25-cent album and a bag of 1000 stamps on and off paper for a dollar.

I lost contact with my friend who started me on stamps in 1960 but, glad to state, he found my name in a society I belonged to in 2004! We have kept in contact since.

Chimo

Bujutsu

I'm with you butterfly, with one exeption, I started with Canadian.

Dianne

Nice story Phil.
I was also a worldwide collector but it had nothing to do with expensive back issues ! At the time I was like Butterfly, wanted it all.
Then I discovered the weird and wonderful world of Cinderellas....and was hooked.
And I still have a box of hundreds of US stamps, totally untouched !

Thanks Philb !

Londonbus1

Londonbus1,

I'm sure there are a few SCF members that DO collect U.S. who would be more than willing to relieve you of the burden of that box if you were to put it up for auction.

Steve

Butterfly -

I also collected world wide as a kid, or to be more precise, whatever came my way. However, I soon closed in on one country (Norway) and one topical (sports).

I started at ten years old when I met a small dealer who was a customer on my paper route. My job(s) gave me the extra money to spend on stamps and I went wild. I got my first specialized album (Scott Minuteman) at age 11, then followed up with an equivolent Scott Canada album, Minkus Poland and West Germany albums, then a couple of used Scott International Junior albums ... all of which, I still own. Although I collect world wide, I still enjoy classic US and Canada the most.

I started collected in July of 1983. I was on vacation with my family and visited an old Air Force buddy in New York to introduce he and his family to mine. I hadn't seen him in about 20 years though we always kept in touch with each other. it was great!

The job I had was very stressful and I had a bad ulcer that wouldn't go away. He showed me his U.S. stamp collection and I didn't think about it too much. After we got back home my wife visited a stamp shop in Charlotte, NC and bought a catalog, an album and a few handfuls of stamps (her description). I started looking at the older stamps, read about the engraving and then got interested. It took me about 4 months to notice that my ulcer had gone and I attribute that to stamp collecting. It provided a release for the stress or something. Today, I still collect U.S. but also Hawaiian, U.S Federal & State revenues. I send him all my foreign that I happen to come across.

Today we still keep in touch with each other, bragging about our grandchildren, stamp collecting, hunting, fishing and other lies.

I started collecting as a kid when some breakfast cereal, I think it was Shreddies, gave away packets of stamps in their boxes. I had a uncle who had an amazing collection, and he got me pointed in the right direction...told me about tongs, the 1893 Columbian broken hat issue, everything. That got me hooked. I collected everything I could get my hands on.
By the age of 17, girls and beer took over, and my collection went unattended.
Last summer I turned 50, and my wife told me to do something with those dusty albums. So I started back up again, but now I only collect US and Canada up to 1960 (an arbitrary year - my birth) so I can be more focused.
But I've got to confess, with all the other great stamps I have accumulated in the past few months, that I sell, it's getting hard to stay focused. Expanded to Confederate States, Hawaii and US in Phillipines...but there is sooooo much more.
I'm sure eventually I'll expand some more.

i was just reading in the American Philatelist a blurb from an old British magazine...along these lines...almost all boys of a certain age collect postage stamps...girls however find them too impersonal and are not interested.. I think most of us collect according to our means..it would not be realistic for a former wage slave like myself to be able to compete collection wise with say a senior vice president of Cisco !!

when I was 13 I rode my bike around town and had a network of businesses that saved their letters with stamps on them, banks, insurance companies, newspapers ect, and once a month I would visit and get all the letters and soak them off-- I got alot of good stuff.

I got started around 10, there was a local store, I think it was either Nordstroms or Macys, that had a stamp counter and I used to ride my bike down there a couple of times a month and buy stamps. I quickly graduated from that to attending local stamp shows and filling my albums. I've stopped and started collecting several times over the years, have gotten my wife interested and she has her own collection now, and I've just jumped back into collecting after paging through my albums again.

What is it about stamps that keeps dragging me back in over and over? Nothing else has been able to do that.