The 100,000 Stamp Club

I call that 'hitting the hobby wall' and it can occur in any collecting hobby. It is some kind of unwritten law that you collect one area until to have acquired everything you can given your financial level(s). You then have one of two choices; you either put your collection on the shelf and walk away or you find a new area to collect.
Don

Hitting the wall, eh? I thought that was what I was doing every time I got outbid for an item I REALLY wanted at auction....

The way I'm collecting U.S., I don't foresee myself ever hitting the wall, at least in the manner you meant, Don.

Meanwhile, I'll just keep pounding away at it as those elusive lots slip out of my grasp...

"hitting the hobby wall" was not a factor for Worldwide Collectors . I started out with a paper route income and having $20.00 a month to spend on stamps. I started buying country all different mixture packets .For example , The $20.00 went for $10.00 mixture of France and two different $5.00 packets of a smaller country . I really was happy after a year or two to see how my collection developed.

Years later as my income improved the purchases got bigger and it was a joy to see it grow and develop . So overtime I started to have a decent collection.

So to sum it up I will always find something to buy and expand the collection without hitting the wall.

200K is about 25% of all stamp issues 1840-date, if we're only counting major catalog numbers.

To give you an idea how many of the modern issues there are, 200K different would be about 80% complete for the world 1840-1980. I'm far more complete in the pre-1940 and 1940-1980 time periods than I am post-1980; there are just so many recent stamps. I've made a point to obtain some of the harder modern material though: I have stuff like UN admin of Kosovo complete, for example (these were never offered directly to the philatelic market), and for most countries I primarily collect modern issues postally used (more difficult and IMO much more satisfying than getting the new issues mint).

I've been enjoying reading this thread a lot. Personally I'm nowhere near qualifying for a membership, but maybe someday. I'm just going to get there one stamp at a time while enjoying the journey, and time will tell when I'll reach stamp number 100,000.

And if continuing this line of thinking, 200K would equal 80% completion for 1970-1999 era (likely the most plenty and cheapest of all options out there), or 60% completion from millenium to date (in theory cheap, but the stamps don't move out a lot yet)....

Re, hitting the wall.... The part I like about worldwide is that if leaving out the Victorian era, then 90% of stamps catalog for less than 25€, and about 400K stamps have got catalog value of 1€ or less. So if looking at catalog values only, then the worldwide collector may easily end up putting more money into storage accessories than on stamps, LOL.

-k-

My experience over the many years has not been buying stamps but the vast amount of duplicates that come from buying the bigger collection lots . Let me explain it this way ,if you purchase three huge worldwide collections by the time you get to the fourth big purchase your buying 99% duplicates .

Another problem is, as you build that 100,000 all different or even a 200,000 all different collection you find out many countries fill up fast but there are those countries in your collection that looks naked.

Another problem that worldwide collectors face is the cheap stamps that never seem to show up ,your collection for 20 or 30 years will have those blank space unfilled and your catalog shows them as mimium value ,I always wondered how can the catalogs carry them as very low value but I never seen them and they only show up in collections that you need to spend hundreds of dollars for .

Another problem is the handling of your albums ,those binders are not made and don't last over 10 years in my case ,you just can't reach over and open your album for each stamp or even a full set of stamps . Those binders look crappy within a few years from handling them . It is common to see albums held together with duck tape or cloth tape due to the handling . If your handling those binders once a week your handling them too much .

I could go on ......

Maybe you can ask Scott what dealer price list provided the data for these minimum value stamps you cannot easily find. Good luck.

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but for me the biggest advantage to being a worldwide collector is that you're very close to being a dealer, by default, and thus you can make a lot of money while collecting. All those duplicates that floortrader moans about are a good way of generating cash to fund further purchases.

Floortrader. Are your binders the padded vinyl type cover? I find they do split after a while, too short a while. I use springback binders which hold individual pages by pressure alone. all my binders are secondhand they range from immaculate to slightly dogeared and I doubt any were less than 10 years old when I got them. I like the flexibility of seperate pages and they don't have the weakness of a hole that tears.
I don't think I'll join the 100,000 club because I'm too busy collecting to count what I have.
Could I count the torn stamps and too common garbage I use to make collages towards a !00,00?

No such problems with (white-paged) stock books :) My oldest stockbooks are now 30+ years and they are pretty much in the same condition when bought.

The biggest failure I have encountered with stockbooks relates to time when I bought some black paged stock books. The glue holding individual strips started to fail pretty rapidly, and eventually those stockbooks became a nice looking set of paperweights that I used when flattening soaked stamps. Needless to say I have not bought black paged stock books ever since and likely never will (Lighthouse/Leuchtturm says it was due to bad patch and newer products should not suffer the same. That said, collectors I know have reported the issue still persists to some extend).

-k-

NOOCASSEL ---To answer your question ,my main collection is in the Scott Big Blue Binders ,purchased another set of the Big Blue International about three years ago as a working set. Working set means I fill it up for a few years and then match it to my main set ,after removing what I need ,then will consign it to a major auction house ,then buy another set of International and fill those over the next 5 years repenting the process .

I am thinking of buying a naked set of Internationals and repunching the holes to fill a normal three ring binders and making each binder lighter and easier to handle on a desk while working with it . Has anybody try this ?

SCB----Agree with you about the problems with the black stock book pages they seem to get brittle as they age . Surely not a bad batch

STEEVH ----I have to disagree with your statement about "making a lot of money" by reselling your duplicates . If your buying for your hobby and buying to increase your collection .It is totally different than buying for resale . Not sure how other collectors do it here but the extras that I sell is a small fraction of the cost that I buy at .

It seems like a lot of work to be constantly disposing of duplicates if it involves scanning and selling individual items.