Australian Stamps??

Anyone know of a site specifically for Australian stamp collecting? I'd like to branch out from just early US collecting.

abutt1 are you an ebay user if you are I have six sites that you can use for Australian stamps,
these are

aggv (Canadian site)
north*shore*stamps (Aussie site)
pittwaterphilatelicservice (Aussie site)
stamps_australia_online (Aussie site)
25stampede (Aussie site)
8479smacma (Dr Stamp) (Aussie site)

Just two more for you,

abells (Aussie site)
alfastamps (Aussie site)

All these site you can access through ebay search engine,
hope they do help.
regards Harry

sorry I had to change the stanps to stamps_australia my bad

try acestampauctions.com

Check out austamp.com. You may find it helpful.

This is my first post, so hello!

To start off, just some advice with collecting Australian stamps. If you're a serious collector, get an Australian stamp catalogue or Stanley Gibbons Australia (or British Commonwealth which includes Aust) and not just Scott. The Scott catalogue is not detailed enough when it comes to early Australian stamps. It's fine for most usual issues, but if you're into early issues, there can be vast differences in price for a different perforation or shade etc, and Scott doesn't list these as separate. It can be quite frustrating sometimes (since US sellers usually only quote Scott), and quite beneficial at other times. Take a stamp I just purchased online for example (only arrived today actually.) It's a Victorian State stamp, listed simply as Scott 219 MNH. If you look up Victoria 219 in Scott's, you'll see at the start of that group of stamps, it just lists the perfs as being 12½ x 12, 12½, or 11. It doesn't distinguish between them. I paid US$4 for this stamp. Imagine my delight when it arrived today and I discovered that it was the much rarer perf 11, valued around $100 (CV that is), as opposed to the common perf valued around $5. The seller's only mistake was that he relied on Scott, which only lists the one value for all perfs (the low common value.) He had the correct Scott number, but that number covers around 12 different varieties of the same stamp (all of them listed in SG). So be careful relying on Scott for early stamps. :)

If you're interested in early issues, what most philatelists refer to as "Australian" stamps starts with the 1913 issue of the Kangaroo & Map series. Stamps were issued in Australia from 1850, however at that time Australia was made up of colonies, who each had their own government and issued their own stamps. So if you're really interested in a very challenging and rewarding area, look at collecting colonial issues. Probably best to specialise in one State, Victoria being the most numerous and by far the most difficult. Another advantage to these issues is that they are vastly undervalued compared to scarcity - this is simply because it has been traditionally regarded as too difficult to collect and so most collectors just collect Australian stamps from 1913. This has kept the prices down. I wonder if it will always be so though ;)

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Balf

Thanks all for Aussie info. Especially nuggethill for ebay listings.
Allan

Welcome to the forum, MmmmBalf!

Thanks for the welcome. I had put in some sites, but didn't realise you couldn't put in the whole address which made it a link. Here are the sites again:

The best two auction sites:

pretigephilately.com
millenniumauctions.com.au

Another good auction site:

tsauctions.com

Stamp shops:

michaeleastick.com (pay pretty much full price though)
stampsaustralia.com.au

Info for Victorian Stamps (info only, not a selling site)
stampsofvictoria.com

Balf