New Country? Need Suggestions

I've been collecting primarily U.S. stamps for almost 50 years now, off and on, and have gotten to the point where I have pretty much anything relatively easily attainable. I'm a handful of stamps short of a complete collection between 1920-1993, where I stopped, and once I get those, I'm just filling in expensive holes.

I really want to start collecting another country, but am unsure of what to do. There aren't any that particularly leap out at me, I've looked through the Scott catalogs and while there are some that look interesting, all of them seem to be problematic in one way or another.

There are some criteria I want to keep however.

1. I want stamps that are relatively easy to come by, where I don't have to search high and low to find anything to buy. I'd really like to have a good number of dealers for these stamps in the U.S. or at least the western hemisphere. I've seen far too many dealers with shipping costs far above the cost of the stamps they're selling and absolutely far above the actual cost of shipping.
2. I want the stamps to be interesting and varied. Page after page of monarchs or whatnot don't interest me (although certainly, classic stamps tend to be that way and that's fine).
3. I do not want a country that is screwing the collector, which may be the hardest criteria to meet. Most modern stamps are released in such absurdly huge numbers, specifically to gain money from the collector market. I'm somewhat flexible here, but countries that release hundreds of stamps per year, especially those wonderful CTO countries, can be removed from consideration. I'm collecting stamps, not funding your economy.
4. I want MNH stamps, at least in the modern era.

I had initially looked at Australia and been very impressed and interested, then I started looking at the availability of stamps. On places like Delcampe, the majority of stamps are used and the number of dealers with decent selections in the U.S. seem virtually non-existent.

Any ideas? I'm just afraid that no matter where I look, I'll have the same problem. It's funny, I was talking to my wife about stamps, she collects Japan (don't suggest that one, BTW! :)) and when we go to local shows, no matter how awful they are, hardly anyone has any U.S. It's wall-to-wall foreign stamps, yet finding online dealers of foreign stamps in the U.S. seems quite difficult. For Japan, my wife has a few dealers who carry the country here, she's pretty much raided their stock and now has to face finding dealers elsewhere, again at high shipping costs, because there just aren't that many people here that handle it. I really don't want to deal with that kind of fruatration, at least not when starting a brand new collection.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

What about Canada? The stamps are beautiful and good quality. The are many Canadian SCF members to buy from and trade with. And the stamps are beautiful and good quality. You could even take a road trip north once in awhile and buy at the source.

Karen

hey cephus you could always look to South Amercia - plenty to chose from and relatively cheap as well

I can't speak as to the availability in the US, but what about France? Beautiful engraved issues produced way beyond the 60s, which seems to be a cutoff point for engraved issues from other countries. Interesting culture, with stamps that reflect that rather than obsess with monarchs. Language that isn't too taxing for a non speaker. And then there's always the colonies if you want to spread your wings a little more.

What about Sri Lanka (not the old name of Ceylon), that hasn't been around that long under that name , so it should be relatively easy to complete the set (I think).

Steve

Cephus wrote




My first collection was my home country Germany, which I started when I still went to school. When almost all of the holes were filled in I thought about what to collect next. Germany being the home country, that choice was kinda obvious, but what about other countries?

What countries did I have a closer relation to, what country did look interesting both countrywise and stampwise? For instance, what countries did I appreciate a lot during a vacation?

Just like in your case, there weren't any that particularly leaped out at me, so I looked for other ideas. The first was stamps worldwide issued on my birthday. The next was stamps depicting a mailman. The next was one stamp per country showing a typical scenery of that country. The next was stamps relating to my job, which is drilling for and exploration of oil, gas and water.

Collecting a country means collecting by catalogue numbers, which I for one tend to find somewhat boring. For those collections listed above there is no catalogue, and in the last 4 cases the catalogue is made by myself, I decide which stamp is going into the collection and which is not, which obviously does have an impact on what I spend for this hobby.

Availability in my case fortunately is not a problem, my local stamp dealer has almost all countries MNH in stock, and a good deal also used, and for what he cannot provide I buy online.

Just some ideas.

Klaus

How about Switzerland, the stamps are just stunningly beautiful.

Israel? Starts in 1948, easily obtainable, and not printed for the collector market

Unfortunately, I really don't have any local stamp dealers. Oh, I have two places that claim to sell stamps, one is almost entirely coins and precious metals, with a few stamps scattered around the shop and the other one, I swear is a front for some illegal activity, it's crammed full of junk and everyone who works there is rude and doesn't want you in the shop. My only outlet is online.

I've already got some topical interests that are so limited that they rarely get anything added and honestly, for most countries they tend to come from, I have to buy 10 stamps in a set to get the 1 stamp I care about, I'm really tired of that. Also, I really don't want to pour over catalogs, looking for stamps that fit into the topic and never knowing if I have a complete set. I want a collection by the numbers, where I have a goal, I have a list and I know when it's complete. Money really isn't an object, fun is. It's not fun being frustrated, not being able to find anything to get. That's what I'm trying to avoid.

I've no idea of their availability in the US, but you might like to look at some of the Australian territories: Norfolk Island, Australian Antarctic Territory, Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. They're pretty generally available, and have, by modern standards at least, fairly conservative issuing policies. It shouldn't be too hard to assemble MUH collections of most of them.

If just for fun maybe look at a small area state or territory as Tmac suggested or for speculation the south american seems like a good bet and can be easily acquired in lump lots. Could always go thematic which could take you around the world in many ways. Ships planes insects and animals. Guess it really is a matter of fun vs cost vs how much completion you intend to have. With any of the bigger countries it'll be simular to the US where most can be easily obtained but then there are the 10-20 stamps that will cost a mortgage payment to fill the holes. Canada BOB in my opinion is an undervalued area but again gets quite intense as there are many 100's of unique ones.

Cephus wrote




For me too, that's an issue, in particular when MNH is concerned, but my local dealer is very helpful in that respect. But also online I manage to obtain the one stamp from the set, not always, of course. Delcampe dealers are quite good at that.





I admit that without the German Michel online catalogue I would have never attempted that kind of topical collection. You can search that catalogue with keywords, which considerably reduces the time you need to establish a list for the topic. Maybe that Scott etc. provides an online version?





Fair enough. For my one-stamp-per-country collection I finished making the list of countries (country, or rather issuing authority, as defined by Michel), considering only those with own stamps, which excludes stamps from the same or other countries with overprints. I total that's about 650 countries, difficult to chose from for a new collection by-the-numbers. If you think this list (in German, but can translate into English, if needed) might be of some help, drop me a mail.

Personally I was tempted for quite some time by the British Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney), nice stamps, and we were there several times for vacation and liked it a lot. Islands in general look interesting, what about Finland Aland, or Denmark Färöer?


Klaus

How about collecting modern Russia (since 1992)? In the last 20 years around 1500 catalogue numbers only (plus some varieties), occasionally freaks and misprints (very hard to find) and practically no CTO (unlike in the Soviet time). In the last few years most stamps were printed somewhere between 200 000-350 000 copies only (compare with Germany selling its tens of millions of stamps like hot cakes). Dealers should be easy to find too. Catalogues avaliable almost everywhere.

I collect US as well, but have some little side collections going. How about early Austria (the art nouveau influenced stamps are beautiful) or some of early Central American countries have some pretty impressive engraving - El Salvador, Nicaragua?

I have had fun with Newfoundland - like Canadian stamps - but no new ones being issuesd so it isn't a moving target (e.g. fill 10, 20 new ones issued!)

I can only offer my completely biased opinion and suggest that you start up a revenue collection. U.S., worldwide, state revenues, there's plenty to pick from and lots of them are very affordable!

Kurt