Have You Ever Searched Years For A Stamp To Discover You Already Had It?

I've searched for decades for Scott #Q210a. Not a rare stamp. Not an expensive stamp. Just a stamp I never was able to find.

This morning I found two file folders stuck together and when I separated them... the picture is what I found.

I already had the stamp I searched decades for.

I did that last week with a postcard.
Bought one on eBay then found one in my files the next day. At least it was an upgrade.

Yes, I have lost/misfiled items for years only to be pleasantly surprised by my 'new' material. I usually, but not always, remember the purchase.

Many times.

Would you believe I found I had a 2nd penny black, I can only guess where I bought it. I do know when I bought my first one, but number 2????

This all sounds like a pleasant indictment of everyone's organizational skills.

But have you searched for decades for a certain stamp only to find you already had it?

Nope. A place for every stamp, piece, and cover. No boxes or envelopes full of rando things. It's all in albums, stockbooks, or cards.

No, but I have purchased stamps, believed missing, only to find them later in storage.

Had a U.S. #25 in the album for years, from before Scott changed the types and then several years ago now, I was just looking at everything and noticed a recut inner line-- yep, a 25A and didn't realize I had one. So, I hadn't been looking to buy a 25A, but found out I didn't need to!
Ray

Nearly 50 years ago, I inherited a stamp collection from my grandfather. Albums, stockbooks, cartons, glassines, etc, etc. Some was highly organized, like the albums, but there was a lot of stuff that was unorganized and unidentified. His US used album didn't have spaces for many of the 1867 grills. Omitting the Z Grill, I get - most of those are rarities that most collectors will never get, but many of the others were omitted, too. It was a Harris album, I believe, but I can't remember for sure. Years later when I was going through the rest of the stuff, I found (yet another...) glassine with a bunch of grilled stamps in it. When I went to try to ID them, I realized that those were all of the grills that were not shown in the album! I got a pack of blank pages and designated a page for each of the different grills and had plenty of stamps on them. No Z grills, though. Anyway, it is clear that the one glassine was his way of saving the un-listed grills. There was nothing on the glassine to indicate they were special, and they were in a carton of random crapola - this one glassine was worth multiples of the remainder of the carton. I suspect Gramp simply figured he would get to it someday and died before that happened.

Simple answer to the OP's question::: All the time.