What Is The Best Type Of Collection ?

What is the best type of collection ?...possibly one that has absolutely no intrinsic value to anyone else ! Like My Favorite Stamp for example..i have a stock book full of Guatemala scott 118 from the 1902 Waterlow set...its a beautiful (to me) orange and blue stamp depicting Lake Amatitlan. I buy all I can at 10 cents apiece..but its not the type of stamp you will find a glassine full..i wish ..you hunt them down one at a time ! Like many Waterlow plates the ones for this set were destroyed during the London Blitz..i am no expert..but I do have the books on Guatemala stamps from 1871 to 1999..so I Can look it up !

The best collection is the one which is the most fun to put together and provides a lot of satisfaction, pleasure and/or a sense of accomplishment.

Here is one for you Philb.
I love this design, I think 1920's

Mike

Image: Guatemala-1.jpg
48.91 KB

Thanks Mike, thats Scott #15 from 1879...i like the large Quetzals..also known as the National Emblem..they started in 1886 and were overprinted many times..Guatemala was constantly running out of the lower value stamps so they had to overprint the higher value guys..i really like the overprints...as to the Quetzal..they say it can not live in captivity..have not seen any in the Bronx Zoo !

Thanks for the information Philb. Quetzal, havent seen any at the Lincoln Park Zoo either, but we may be a bit too far north.

Mike

Mike when I was a kid I probably would have popped one with the 20 guage if I saw one...i would never do it now !!

Describing the best collection is like describing the best wife! It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

I like my German collection as my "serious" collection. I like my topical collection (triangles/circles/diamonds) as my "fun" collection. My U.S. Airmail collection (that I haven't worked on in quite awhile) is my "investment" collection.

I love MY collection, although, like you said, it has no value to others. Someone once asked me how I would feel if I lost my collection. I didn't say much, but I had tears welling up in my eyes. Not bad for a grown up man, hey.

Steve

I agree

I love my collection not because of it's worth but because of what it's brought me; back to my youth and that sence of exitement of getting a really cool stamp.

I Guess I'm just a kid at heart.

Dianne

Hi Everyone, thanks for the posts to the topic...i guess the kids will divi up my stock investments...sadly I do not know what will happen to my room of stamps...i have seen widows take 5 percent from dealers or truck it down themselves to the auction and get a bit more..can not stand the thought of selling them off myself..what would I have left ? Just my Tacoma pickup truck !!

Hello everyone.....

The best collection ????.........As a life long collector my collection is the one thing that has remained a constant in my life. I still get the same thrill when looking through a mystery box as I did as a kid....."There could be anything in there!!"

Some fifteen years ago or so, I decided that I wanted my collection to be a little different from everyone else's. My thought was that collectors everywhere were filling the same albums with basically the same material and when it came time to sell dealers took one look and generally offered 5-20% (if you were lucky) simply because it would take them years to resell the best of the collection and the bulk of it would be severely discounted or given away.

To recreate my collection I decided to sell or give away 90% of the lesser value material and hopefully end up eventually with an album or two of Hagner hingeless pages filled with material that most collectors would see as something special. Because I've had a penchant for mystery boxes I have a lot of material that is collectible, in decent condition but is generally thought of as common worldwide material. Honestly, when I started revamping I could have easily filled a half dozen Citation Albums. As I've been selling on line and elsewhere, I've used that income to buy some things that I could only dream of as a kid.

The results have been that I now enjoy my collection more than ever. I still see nothing wrong with using any of the albums on the market. I have several hinged foreign country collections on homemade pages that I add to occasionally. ( not everything deserves to be in Hagners and I found that I really missed spending time relaxing hinging stamps in an album)

I think the main thing anyone can do to create a collection that is different from others is to collect postal history covers. Starting with recent covers and working backwards as funds and interests allow. Many newer items can be had for just a few dollars each or less. Most of my worldwide covers are valued at about $10.00 or less. Remember, today's common mail is tomorrow's postal history.

I am not advocating that everyone should do what I'm doing, all collectors need to decide for themselves what they want in their collection. There is no wrong way to collect or any postal material that is not collectible.

I think the best collection is one that is active, after all, "collecting" is an action verb.

A good thread with interesting comments. Stamp collections are personal. Stamp collecting is active. But when the time comes, I want to be able to sell-off what I have. The thought of the possibility of it being virtually trashed by someone with no appreciation for stamps is just a bit too scary for me.

Its about family, and passion to fill that empty box on the page.

I am the proud conservator of 8 collections.
Great grandma x 2 - Great grandfather x 2 - Grandfather x 1 - Granduncle x 1
Grandma x 1 and Father x 1

I have come to grips that I will sell my collection starting the day I retire, or hope to pass it on to the kids or grand-kids.