Hello From Iowa

hi all,

I'm Karen, and I live in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

As a pre-teen I was given a small but very interesting international stamp album containing a few stamps, and a box of on-paper stamps to start my collection. I had fun with it for a few years, then lost interest until about three years ago.

now 62, I've been collecting u.s. postage stamps, and have really enjoyed myself. I purchased a Mystic Stamp Company Heirloom album, and then got myself a few dozen kiloware packages (off paper) from ebay. I had a complete ball sorting those thousands of stamps, finding them in my 2008 Scott's Catalog and placing them in 3 x 5 glassine envelopes, one envelope for each Scott number.

I now have a fairly good start on filling the first (earliest) volume of my album with used stamps. I limit myself to pre-1980 stamps.

I have a small monthly budget to spend on stamps, which goes to buying the most inexpensive used stamps from Mystic to fill in the remaining holes in my album.

now I want to start an international used collection, but I can't seem to find a good place to start. I want to purchase an international album, similar to the one I had those many years ago, but those don't seem to be available any more. I would love to start buying and sorting international kiloware, but need to purchase a used set of Scott catalogs to look stuff up in first.

I look forward to learning more about stamps and collecting. this seems a really neat forum.

Karen

Hi Karen and welcome. Looks like you have a plan and are carrying it out. Can I make a suggestion? See if there are stamp auctions in your area - and take one in. You will find that kilo lots go very cheaply at auctions because (a) not many people have the patience to go through them and (b) they are very expensive to ship. If looking for a place to start look around the stamp auction network - URL is just their name .com

Welcome to SCF.

Mystic tends to price on the high side of things but it is convenient.

Stamps2Go.com has individual stamps or sets from hundreds of individual sellers with a standard shipping charge of 1.00. One can search within the offerings of one of the larger sellers there and buy enough at one sitting to make the $1.00 s/h a negligible factor. You do have to pay attention to the scans of the stamps and the sellers' descriptions of faults so that you know what you are getting and whether the asking price is decent. It has none of the auction bidding problems of ebay. It's heavily oriented toward US, which I take it is what you are concentrating on finishing up right now.

But you are right, for building a general worldwide collection at the outset kiloware makes sense and is fun. Individual volumes or full sets of the Scott Standard can be had cheaply if you are willing to go back 3-5 years and ignore prices (for entry level they are mostly $.25 anyway). Or buy two volumes and concentrate on the countries in those two volumes for a year or so, then add two more volumes (creating a ladder of publication years, so that when you get all six not all will be as far out of date). Or get a "late-model" "pre-owned" 1840-1940 Classic Specialized and have all the countries to 1940, then slowly and cheaply acquire the post-1940 Standard volumes. Good kiloware will have stamps before 1940 and you don't want to build a collection solely post-1940 anyway, so the worldwide 1840-1940 Classic Specialized might be a good idea as a first catalogue.

There's a forum here on kiloware, if you haven't already discovered it.

Whatever you do, have fun.

thanks for the warm welcome! :)

yeah, mystic is a bit pricy, but my collection is in this weird place where kiloware doesn't make sense because the stamps I need are not common enough to warrant many purchases, but at the same time, not really fitting for stamps2go (cool site!) because I can get 20 or 30 of the exact stamps I need from mystic for 15 cents to $1 each at one time and fill the exact holes I have.

also, at least with these less expensive stamps, mystic has a policy of sending something better than ordered. in my last order, I got two mint condition stamps (price less than 50 cents) in lieu of two used stamps. I like that deal. also, so far, the quality of the mystic products seems to be pretty high, meaning good condition stamps.

I am looking to get a scott catalog set from somewhere around 2008-9. for the stamps I collect, that should be more than sufficient. ebay is a good place for that.

there is a local stamp club, and I should get in contact with them again. I joined a few years ago, but my health made me more or less a shut-in, so getting to meetings pretty much ended my relationship with them. but I can chat via email, and maybe they can point me in the right direction. they also have a bourse (I think its called) several times a year, but again, I can't get to them.

where I seem to get really stuck is in the album area. scott numbered international albums seem to all by one country-one album, and the cost of circa $150 each. that's a large expenditure for me, especially to cover only one country.

thanks for the information about stamps2go and stuff!

Karen

Welcome our stamp community, Karen.

All good points, Karen; you've been there, done that as far as comparing suppliers is concerned.

There are several threads here dealing with albums, including designing one's own pages. The Steiner pages are not expensive for the pdfs (but add in the cost of paper and ink/toner, binders, and time spent printing--depending on all these they can become a bit costly but not the level of Scott Specialitys). You can print out countries and eras as you need them. There's a space for all major Scott numbers, so depending on how complete your collection is for a given country, you'd have more blank spaces than with a selective album like the Scott Internationals or Minkus Globals. But you mentioned the Scott Speciality albums--they have spaces for nearly everything and a less crowded layout than Scott Internationals and thus would be comparable to individual Steiner countries as far as comprehensiveness is concerned.

Steiner page layout is plain, very simple border etc. Scott Speciality have a more ornate, traditional "album" appearance. But they also have a much more "ornate" price tag.

Palo Albums pages basically are licensed from Steiner with illustrations, hingeless mounts etc. added.

But this stuff actually belongs in one of the other forums, so I'll stop with the bloviating already. Besides, you may already have done all these comparisons yourself.