Filling Spaces On A Page

i became a stamp collector not too terribly long after I began to read books....its dawned on me recently..that in my world wide albums I am basicly just filling spaces....i do wander a bit more afield on specialized collections...does anyone else have this guilt feeling about just filling spaces ???

Hi Phil.....

I never felt guilty about it but it bothered me to the point that I gave up trying. I wanted a collection that was not just a cookie-cutter copy of everyone else's. I have found that the way to do that is by just collecting the sets or stamps that I really like and by collecting covers. Covers are just about always unique.....very few look exactly alike....some can be quite similar but few are identical. It's been well over 10 years and I am more excited about finding new material than ever before. There are basically three levels to my collection....Hi-vals...moderate and common.....and the satisfaction I feel when adding to any of them are about equal.

If you're at a point where you're just not getting the excitement or satisfaction from what you collect or if most of what you need is out of your budget, covers may be just the thing to re-invigorate the need to actively collect.

Being a newbie, filling spaces is exiting for me still.


Dianne

Tom, I am in your corner with the covers..almost always a unique collection !!

I had been a space filler for most of my collecting years. I'd say in the last 5 years I have drifted away from that. I have several years of pages I have stamps for but haven't even opened the supplements to place in my albums. I got interested in my Abraham Lincoln topical collection, which consists of a lot of covers. Then sending away for pictorial postmarks caught my interest, from that I begun making my own cachets. You can't get much more unique in cover collecting then designing a one of a kind cachet. I should take some time and fill in some spaces just for old times sake. I think my cookie cutter albums miss me.

I have my collection set up by the years that interest me. I do have spaces to fill but I go after those stamps with deliberate intentions. I also find a great thrill in collecting covers.



Butch

I am in the same boat as Dianne, just filling spaces in my album is pretty much all I do. I will probably branch off later but just finding that one stamp that fills another blank spot is very satisfying.

The way I see it.....It's a huge puzzle and I fill in the pieces until it makes the whole picture.

What a great way to put it sharksfan

Dianne

I like it!

Dude, I glad that I have the worldwide albums to fall back on when not too much is going on...i fill in the little inexpensive stamps that are also a part of a collection..thats the puzzle part for me !

I pretty well take the sharks position in the main but I also have some specialized collections that allow me to do pretty much my own thing.

I tried a world, preprinted album, but I find I prefer stock books so I can continuously rearrange my items!

Most of the time I just fill spaces in my collection, but it definitely doesn't exclude me from doing deeper philatelic "studies". Especially for a worldwide collector like me it is somewhat easy to find EFO's (Error/Freak/Odity) - and include them to my collection to give it some spice up.

But in the end it's all about what makes You happy.

I have two collections--my US and my Great Britain. The GB is by interest. Only those issues which interest me.

The US is by space filling, I guess. As a youngster, I began collecting US, and because of limited resources, it only contained common material. I always dreamed of the more, shall I say expensive, material. In the past few years, I have begun getting the "good" stuff. As much as I get, I still want just one more stamp. This past summer, I sank what for me was a substantial sum into US stamps and got a bunch of those stamps I always dreamed about. It just whetted my appetite for more!

I found filling spaces was great up to the point that the next space to fill emptied my bank balance! So I've realised that I'll never fill all the spaces so why try. Now I go for the issues that really interest me.