The 100,000 Stamp Club

....bump!!!

I've not seen this thread until I 'accidentally' came across it today - very fascinating discussions indeed - cool idea for a thread Landoquakes

I'm curous - what happened with 'the club' after December 2012, seems it had a sudden time-out?

Only a few of us around here are dedicated (crazy?) enough to WW collecting to have that large a number of different. scb's used-only collection is over that number. Mine's approaching 200K now (I'm bonkers enough to keep a full inventory). Floortrader I'd guess has around three hundred thousand. That's all if we're counting by Scott/Michel/Stanley Gibbons numbers.

There was some large collection put together by an US East Coast M.D. offered by Harmer-Schau for a couple million bucks a few years back that was missing only around a hundred major Scott or Michel numbers to 2000 (I think was the cut-off) so somebody out there is over 500,000 different (yikes!) I do recall it had a lot of SPECIMEN overprints, reprints, fiscally used, and a fair number of other space-fillers, though.

Wow! And I thought I was a madman with 51K U.S. only stamps and covers. Good thing I didn't go WW! I'd need a large warehouse!

Some of us have had repeated difficulty in getting out of our stamp study room.

k

The 'club' is alive and well; and growing (I've acquainted with dozen+ new "qualifying collectors" this year alone)... The more I learn and meet other worldwide collectors, the more certain I am that the number of "large" collections out there is way beyond our wildest dreams. Even the half-a-million stamp landmark is not as unique as I once imagined (there are at least four active collectors approaching that landmark alone).

-k-

Haha, good one khj !!

I am just quite an ordinary WW collector. The last few years I have not updated my WW inventory in terms of numbers, been rather focusing on transfer my stuff from stockbooks to cumstom made pages and Vario's. Was closer to 200k than 100k back in 2015. The last years I have got less fascinated with chasing the number of stamps tough, at some point it got kind of boring to try to fill new slots for countries like Burundi.

So I am not a 'numbers-chaser' any more, rather focusing on getting more familiar with the classical stamps and varieties/curiosities. Making your own custom pages to accomodate this has the benefit that one do get more familiar with all of that. And wow, there is much more out there than referred to in the major catalogs being named in this thread! This kind of collecting is not the route to go if the aim is getting the numbers/percentage up tough...but I find it much more interesting

....did I say much of my time goes to identifying postmarks from different places? That's also much more interesting for me than the likes of filling empty slots with CTO's etc. However the 'postmark-effort' adds no numbers to the inventory what so ever, and is as such useless if the aim was chasing numbers. Maybe EdziuM should start a separate club for those with more than 100.000 different identified place names on postmarks? I believe that club would be quite an exclusive club - he would be the only member I am aware off - as yet

I agree - it's not that difficult to get the numbers up if the high numbers is the goal in itself. Just takes time, not necessarily much funds.

Edit:
...oops, I misread that statement "half-a-million stamp is not as unique". For some reason I was considering the number 250k. The suggested 500k - man, that's really ambitious! And that would definitively require some funds!!

And of course the 'analyst' inside me has estimated the time required to collect half-a-million stamps...



The interesting part is that one could start even in the 'old age', and still easily reach big numbers if spending 'long days' with stamps.

-k-

Haha, that's an ambitious calculation!
Probably 2 min for finding and identifying stamps you do not already have might be a bit though when passing the say 250-300k treshold? One would need quite well organised and useful feeder material to achieve that, might need to invest more than chips to maintain that pace

Still working on my Worldwide collection . It has gotten bigger over the past 6 years since posting here .

We know! The suggested 300k is astronomical. It's about time you consider it a 'decent collection' by now, isn't it Floortrader?

I think I have been a collector in "phases".
1960-1970 World Wide juvenile status
1970-1982 Specialist (if Novice) Ireland and wanting at least one new stamp from every UN nation.
1982-2000 Specialist (Medium) Ireland and minimal interest in the World.
2001-2012 Totally gave up Collecting.
2012-now Specialist (fairly Advanced) Ireland and back to basics collecting the world.

My philosophy is that collecting Ireland drives me insane.
Collecting used and useless stamps from the rest of the world keeps me (more or less) sane.
The secret to Life is...Balance.
Yet when I stopped in 2000 I only had about 15,000 stamps which seemed a very poor reflection on nearly forty years collecting.
As I had always maintained an accurate breakdown of stamps from every country, there was always a sense of "could do better"...eg I had maybe 1 stamp from Brunei and about 5 from Korea.

As of May 2018, I have 23,300 stamps which is still very low. And over 5,000 are Irish. I have set myself targets in respect of every country. I think there are numbers that all world collectors can reach thru direct purchase, kiloware or exchange of duplicate stamps. I think the setting of individual national targets appeals to me more than a great overall total. But certainly it seems possible to pass 25,000 by the end of the year and certainly possible to reach 30,000 by the time I reach 70 years of age (May 2022).
And maybe 40,000 by the time I am 75.

To some extent, not collecting at all from 2000 to 2012 has actually helped me because its easier to identify used stamps that I don't have...eg World Cups and Olympics, those with a value in "Euros" and the proliferation of stamps linked to memorabilia and nostalgia and popular culture.
The problem for all world wide collectors is that all "mint" stamps can be ignored, CTOs are pointless and the dubious issues of subjects like winter Olympics and Royal weddings from Pacific islands and Central Asia.
The real challenge is that the Stamp Collecting world moves in different orbits...."Commonwealth" nations turn up in the London orbit. "Asian" nations turn up in a Tokyo orbit and the Americas turn up in the New York orbit. Former French colonies will only ever show up in a Paris orbit.

French Colonies are showing up all over my house!

I must say I would have no idea if I had 100,000 different. I'm guessing it must be something like that.

Too busy buying more to sort them all out!