What Part Of Australia Do You Collect How Did You Start Why Does It Interest You

Would be great hear from others about their Australia collections. kg5

As you know John,
I collect everything passes my desk.
So All Australia, currently 14 Albums if you consider, inc the territories.

Being able to locate something fast, needs organisation.
Australia Folders A to E

Thank you Rod. Nice to see your way of collecting Australia.


Anyone who collects Australia should have a good story to share.

Australian colonial, pre-decimal and decimal in MUH and well centred condition, although there are exceptions when there are used copies on cover that are considered rare.

I used to watch my late brother collect stamps, so I started collecting stamps, I was 11 (my brother passed away the following year at 22 years).

Stamps will always interest me, I will always be addicted to a life of stamping.

I also have all my stamps inventoried. The red indicates stamps to locate.

What part: I collect the earliest Australia ... the Kangaroos and KGV heads. Others are collected if they look interesting, blocks, special varieties,etc. I've stayed away from the States, but will get there sometime.

How did I start: My daughter moved there, and sent me a letter or two. (You know, mail with a stamp on it.) I then stumbled upon a very good auction buy of earlier Australia, which had lots of varieties hidden here and there. I was hooked.

Why does it Interest me: The biggest draw is that Australia is still very affordable and accessible. Plus, I love the ACSC catalogs and their immense details on varieties.

Like others mentioned, I use a catalog system to help keep things straight. According to that system, I have 1,832 stamps/covers, not including about the same amount of duplicates, (which usually end up in giveaways on this forum.)

My current task is how to better display what I have so that a story is told. Having nice stamps displayed in Catalog order is one thing, but since I collect those varieties, I have to work on better showing the details of each. Plus, that's the only way I can convince my relatives that my stamps are of interest, rather than just a hoard of old paper.

Take care.

KGV,
Bought a full book of these rose 'scratch & smell' stamps when issued but could never remove & send at least one, the sealed storage area smells like roses even though none have been scratched !!

Started collecting 60 years ago but stopped for a number of years with travel, family and kids! Restarted when retired.

Collected Australia because my father from Victoria and I was brought up in the UK. Now living in NZ.

General collection of Australia pre decimal plus extensive collection of KGV varieties and an album of Roos.

Main focus on Tasmanian Pictorials (about 30 folders!) including plating varieties and different watermarks, printings, perforations and shades. Author or co-author of a number of the plating guides for these.

Currently working on NSW 1d shield varieties with a couple of plating guides published and more to come.

Sideline collection of the numeral cancellations of NSW and Qld.

Tasnaki

I enjoyed collecting Australia from 1973 thru about 2015, but after joining a 'down-under' forum and having a bitter experience, I put it on the shelf and not returned to it. And while this door closed for me, it has lead me to other areas of philatelic interest.
Don

Join the club, a very large one I would think.
I lasted about 3 days, never returned.

I started collecting Australia as a young boy. My father collected so obtaining material was easy. He had lots of duplicates.

By the time I was in my teens I was collecting New South Wales.

It's grown from there, into specialisation (De La Rue and numeral postmarks for my area) and postal history.

I have a deep love of history, so that's the centre of the appeal.

I started in the summer holidays in 1977/78. There was a bag of mission mixture that you would buy at the supermarket for $2. Soaked them off and tried to arrange them in a stockbook.

Soon after I bought a box of stamps at a local Sunday Market. It included a cigarette tin of Australian postage dues (I still have the tin). I sorted them with the assistance of my Seven Seas catalogue.

In 1984, Australia Post issued a pair of stamps to commemorate the sesquicentenary of Victoria that cost over $5 to get all the variations of a pair of 30c stamps. That was it for keeping up with new issues. I sold my Australian collection to focus on postage dues.

In quick time I located an SG D108 (cv $50) and an SG D110 (cv $250) for cheap.

Adding to my library the handbook on postage dues by Hyeronimus (1980), making contact with other specialist collectors, the ACSC loose leaf edition of 1988, the new specialist catalogue for postage dues in 1999, the internet from 2000 and subsequent editions of the ACSC in 2014 and 2020 have expanded information available to me as my holding and knowledge of postage dues has increased.

They are still an under-studied area and the more I learn, the more I realise there is to learn. The road has opened up in front of me and kept me engaged.

From 2015, I expanded my collecting interests to Tasmanian Pictorial letter cards and stamps, Victorian numeral cancels and anything Bruny Island related.

I collect Australian states, early Commonwealth and pre-decimals. My interest was piqued by my grandfather - and thirty years later I inherited his collection. Moving into proofs, essays, colour trials and the like given that most of my vanilla gaps are difficult to fill. They are the items that are extremely rare, unaffordable, only occasionally available, or for all intents and purposes non-existant in private collections.