Hello/Help, From Central West Virginia

I am new to ALL this stamp collecting stuff. I have no idea how to even start. Over the weekend my dad gave me a decent size box - a stamp collection that had been passed down through the family. I have seen dates from the late 1930's - early 1970's.

Any tips or advice is welcome!

Hi butterflyws6,

Welcome to the group!

I'd suggest the first thing to do would to be to look through all the stuff you got and just enjoy it. See if there are any particular types of stamps that catch your interest more than others.

Are your stamps loose or mounted in an album or something?
Are they used with cancels on them or unused with the gum still on the backs?
Are they USA or from around the world?

Cheers and let the fun begin!

Dave N.
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From what I can tell the are both new and used. They are US and from around the world. The collection has lots of "first day of issue" envelopes and stamps that go with. It also has lots and lots of loose stamps.

Stamp collectors have an inherent "sorting" gene.

Look through your stamps and see if,
as well as a fascination, you find you are
drawn towards knowing where each of these little scraps of paper come from.

If then you have an itch to sort them into countries
as you identify them, then I'm sorry to say
you have the makings of a fine philatelist. :)

Go to your library and look through a few stamp catalogues
You will know if you want to carry on. :)

BTW collecting is the world's largest hobby,
people from all over the world, from Nagaland to the
Southern Orkney's.

So your thread title "WV" may be lost on some,
but being a stamp collector, I guess Western Virginia.

Hello butterflyws6, welcome!

Stamp collecting or the study of stamps (philately) (not the true Greek word origin meaning but the general meaning) can be done in so many ways as there are people doing it.

You can sort them by Country or topic (birds, planes, ships, shapes, colours, royalty, bugs, chess, etc, etc or even by cancellations (cancels / postmarks) like I do. Every way is the right way.

Stamp catalogues (in libraries in the uSA by the name of Scott) list stamps by country and date of issue and number them and price them by how dealers sell them. More specialized cataloges (usually printed by country) than the big general world wide types are needed to delve deeper into the details of stamps, their perforations (edge holes), paper type, colours and shades, errors of printing, mint (new), used (cancelled), gum type for new, centering of the design on the stamp, condition of the stamp (rips, tears, creases, thins, etc devalue stamps a lot) and prices for these varieties.

You can collect without getting into the cataloges of course but as you get further and further in you will find a catalogue gives you information you might have been wondering about, if certain areas interest you, as Rod mentioned.

There is lots of information on Stamp Community but sometimes it is nice to have a glossary of terms (or just ask, questions are welcome here) and a few sites have lists of terms and explanations of what is what. Or read the first pages of any major catalogue and they explain things quite well usually.

Don't get bogged down in all the detail possible (and there is a lot for some), just have fun doing what you like to do and learn as you go. We are all still learning here and it is wonderful to have so many people who know about so many things look at stamps in different ways to bring some deatil or area to light that others have not looked into yet because they did not know about it.