Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

Floortrader,

I enjoy collecting different things as well. This was part of a box lot I received sometime back. I thought since the previous stewards of this went out of their way to carefully save everything, I should too. The writeup is included and reproduced for readability. I'm not claiming or stating its rare, just reproducing the hyped write up.

"Tristan Da Cunha scarce booklet variety.
1958 Issue QEII complete exploded booklet (including covers, interleaving & even the thread)
with all panes CDS cancelled on first day of booklet issue. Each pane also has the FULL Waterlow & Sons inscription in tab (never seen this before). A lovely showpiece. SGcat SB3 as booklet @ #40. Estimate $60."

GT350Anny ---- Nice page , interesting write up and display .

It has to be written that the old masters and giants of the past ,only had 1,000 to 1500 stamps to display ,their collections maybe had 2,000 items they could display . But today you and me have some 2,000,000 items that can be written up and displayed on a album page . So today a life time of collecting will only be a small fraction of what can be done .

I have spent the last several days reading the 156 pages of this discussion, and I am eager to read and learn more. My appreciation goes to all of you who have participated, but obviously special appreciation to FloorTrader. I am a world collector of used stamps up to 1965. I started collecting early on as a kid and then sporadically until I retired. I wake up every day eager to work on my collection. I am in the midst of moving my collection from 13 Big Blues to umpteen number of office supply binders, which are being filled with Steiner pages. I love the Steiner pages, so much more complete, and with D ring binders everything is much easier. My real challenge, however, is how long it takes for me to complete a page; I need to become faster.

I'm not sure I've read all 156 pages, but I often dip into this thread, and always find something to delight me.

The Tristan da Cunha book is the 1960 issue: earlier and later issues were stapled, not stitched. Being cancelled to order would make it less desirable to some collectors, more desirable to others. The Waterlow imprint would appear once or twice in every uncut sheet, so it's a nice thing to have, but not a rarity. Despite the seller's hype, the asking price isn't unreasonable, I think. Current SG price (for mint, unexploded) has increased from £40 to £50.

Ike -Good to hear you expanded your albums to include the Steiner Pages . That kind of tells me your into the "long game " of stamp collecting ,meaning it is going to be a life long effort .
Too many other collectors start the same way but after a few years or even a decade they lost the drive and throw up their hands and walk away . I believe your attention has to always be changing , thru all my postings here you can identify those changes like ------a stamp from every country ,my interest in forgeries ,then building a Cinderella collection , then buying stamps others miss in their collections , then buying complete sets , then filling completed pages . So as you have already seen staying true to worldwide stamps but as the years change always working on something different .
Thinking two or three years out I would someday start planing to buying key stamps ,these are the 100 or 200 stamps that identify a major collection . To me it would be the icing on the cake like -------U.S.1893 Columbians, the 1 and 2 pound Roo's ,the Rhodesian two-heads , the Zepplins issues , the Candian Jubilees , the WIPA sheet and a few dozen others .

One of the effects of reading this long discussion has been the treat of seeing so many beautiful pages of stamps. Though clearly FloorTrader has shared the most, and I am grateful to have seen all of them, others have contributed their completed pages as well. What I had not expected from seeing them all was that they would cause me to question my own collecting habits. Maybe ten years ago, when I returned in earnest to collecting, I decided to collect used stamps only. However, continuing that practice is becoming harder as I realize there are so many stamps that will never make it into my collection, particularly those of French, British, etc colonies. I am interested to hear from others on their decision to collect just used stamps, just mint, or a combination of the two.

Ike --- Each collector does what they are comfortable with . As a young collector back in the 1960's ,I was told back then ,to collect the world was impossible and it is too many stamps . These were good intention experience collectors telling me what they believed .
I was in high school and at best had $20.00 a month to spend .So with that amount of money it was clear how I was going to collect and enjoy my hobby . At the time I advanced from a 25 cent album thru 2 generations of bigger stamp albums to a $12.00 CITATION STAMP ALBUM .

That was the period in life I was enjoying the hobby and had many of my best times as a collector . I was driving my car to stamp bourses and stamp shows and you could find me at the 2 cent table and buying a $20.00 mixture box to enjoy .

Little did I think or understand what was coming in my future for collecting stamps . I stayed with my goal and that was to see how far down that path I could go and still tell everybody, I am a worldwide stamp collector .
So the choice of what to collect or how to collect , is better if each of us make our own path .

Yes. In a way, it's always going to be "impossible". I have a two-volume fastbound Imperial album for BC 1840-1936 (in fact, I've just bought another, unused copy). Only Ferrary could ever have filled it (assuming the period up to his death in 1917). Fortunately, the rest of us can have lower sights!