We occasionally discuss building a collection via feeder albums. The idea that feeder albums reach a point of diminishing returns is almost always raised. I was planning on working on the France Offices in China portion of my collection and I had 2 decent collections on International pages that I wanted to meld into my Specialized collection. Here are the pages I wanted to incorporate;




These 4 pages in International Album are represented by 24 pages in my Specialized Album.
The International pages have spaces for 183 stamps and my Specialized Album has spaces for 599 stamps.
The International collection on the left has 116 stamps and the collection on the right has 122 stamps and my Specialized collection had 154 stamps.
On the International pages there were 80 stamps common to both and 36 unique on the left and 42 unique on the right. So almost an even break between common stamps (80) and unique stamps (78).
After I went through both collections I was was able to add 56 stamps to my collection. Of these 20 were common to both collections and 36 were unique stamps. Shown below are the results;


There are more than 56 stamps because I found a few in glassines between pages.
I understand this little analysis doesn't prove anything but I was a little surprised how many unique stamps there were in these 2 similar collections and I was very satisfied harvesting 56 stamps. I'm sure as the collection grows it will get harder and harder to find stamps from feeder collections.
I am a big fan of using feeder collections. I have built my France and Italy collections using only feeder collections and my France is quite strong with Sc #21 and complete Semi Postals mostly unused and MNH after 1935. To date I have bought 35 France feeder collections but the reason this works so well for me is that after I take the stamps I need I resell the feeders on
eBay. I have actually sold the feeder collection for more than I paid, and as I always say "free stamps are a good thing".