Are You A Former Worldwide Collector Who Now Specializes?

I also returned to collecting after a long hiatus. I collect worldwide but my "most favored nations" these days are Germany (I majored German Lang. and lit. in college) and Turkey (I spent time there in the military, my wife is from there). I like being able to specialize and collect whatever I like.

No problem with that at all.

In a year or two you will have a better idea where you want to go.

On the contrary. I'm a single-country collector that keeps getting drawn into new collections.

U.S. (my original collecting interest)
United Nations
Canada
British Antarctica
Machins

now thinking about other Antarctica
now thinking about KGVI

A few more years and I'll be worldwide
KirkS

Some of you know the wife and I go up to Ottawa to Orapex every year at tulip time..sometimes a friend up North will ask if I mind if they have a book or packet they purchased on the internet shipped to my address and we hand carry it to Canada,,,well since they put us up...it would not be wise to refuse

I too am returning after a 30 year hiatus. And I am still collecting WW, but only until 1940. Cuts out a lot of the garbage labels by collector fleecing entities!

As most collectors I started out as a kid, hoarding every stamp I could find, but always with the Netherlands as main focus. When I picked up collecting again, I soon decided worldwide was too much, so I started to concentrate / specialize and only a few countries remained. But when the collections started to grow, thanks to internet trading, I soon reached the ceiling of my possibilities for most countries, like Canada, Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries. Only the expensive classic stamps and the most recent ones failed. Since I did not have the intention of spending lots of money or waiting patiently for the recent stamps to become available, I decided to add a new country to the list of countries I collected. First Japan, and when I reached that same ceiling again, Nepal, then Mauritius, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and most recently Peru and Uruguay. In the mean time I gave up collecting countries such as Germany, France and Spain because I did not think them interesting anymore. Apart from that, everybody already seemed to collect them, whereas the South American countries were shunned by most. This made it possible for me to obtain stamps from those countries at good conditions :)
So I guess all of this makes me a semi-worldwide collector :)

Jan-Simon, Like yourself I seem drawn to Latin America...i collected Netherlands when they were conservative with the stamp issues...then the PTT just got to be too much and they killed it for me...i still like the old first day covers.With Latin America I found Guatemala fairly easy to almost complete....Argentina seems much more challenging..and unlike Guatemala I find it difficult to find good catalogs and specialized books (in English) on Argentina. I like the old Argentina postcards with the San Martin stamps on the photo side !

Hi Kinibo;

Again, another collector returning after 30 years. My WW is sorted in a few hundred glassine envelopes waiting to go into 2 Scott Big Blues and 2 Harris Standards. As I've read I've seen that many have chosen to go with the more flexible Vario pages/binders. So I'm not sure which way I'll go. For the last few months I've just kept to my U.S. collection of mostly MNH and plate blocks. I've been watching ebay sales and picking up Albums and Album pages there to "cherry pick". I wonder when I'll get to the reselling part which will probably be the next education process. I'm also thinking it might be interesting to start visiting estate and garage sales.

Phil, I use Scott if I must (when arranging trades with other collectors overseas for instance), but Michel if I want more detail and logic. I have got the Brazilian RHM catalogue, but I am not too fond of it. I have seen an Argentinian catalogue, someone at the stampclub who also collects Argentina has one. Cannot say if it is any good.

I fully agree with you about the Netherlands by the way. My collection of it stops at the year 2000. There are just too many issues, and all in sheets of 10...

Reviving this thread as it is still an interesting question, especially at the beginning of the year when one tends to take stock.

My introduction to WW collecting was with my father's red Scott "Modern" album, with mostly Germany and Japan in there, as a consequence of him being in the army in WW II.

I then received a Harris Statesman WW album, and begged my parents at age 12 for a "WW 10,000 stamps" present for my birthday.

Fast forward to the 1970s...

I revived my interest, and decided to specialize, specifically USA 1847 Scott 1 5c red brown on covers. This was the era when it was popular to think of stamps as an investment.

Jump forward to 2011..
My brother asked me to take my old Statesman album from the family home, as the house was to be sold. I looked inside, got that old adrenaline rush, and was again hooked. !

For sanity sake, I limit myself to the 1840-1940 era, but keep feeder album material through 1966 in a secondary collection.

I'm kind of the opposite, a would-be specialist who decided to collect the world. Less than two years ago, I was a Germany specialist, who dabbled in a few other countries here and there. A little over a year ago, I decided, what the heck, I'll collect the whole darn world, all of it, 1840 to date. I'm still somewhat of a German specialist as that's still the only area where I'll spend much more than a few dollars per stamp or set, but I also collect the rest of the world now, which I house in a combination of Steiner pages, stockbooks and Vario pages.

When I say I collect the entire world to date, that doesn't mean I'm actively trying to complete it. That only means I don't exclude anything and that I'll save at least one example of every stamp I come across, regardless of country or era. My only limitation is that the stamps should at least be listed in Scott - I don't save non-listed Trucial States or the issues they don't list from Equatorial Guinea, for example. My WW collecting is still kind of haphazard as I'm not building that part of my collection in any systematic way. I don't keep a want list (except for Germany) and I'll only buy most WW issues if they're stamps I like and/or if I can get a good deal on them. I'm only a little over a year into WW collecting and I'm sure this part of my collecting will evolve, but for now it works for me.

I've never been able to specialize. I might focus on one area for a couple years but other things attract my attention. I'll see some post in a forum on some collecting area, say to myself "ooh shiny!" and next thing I know it's down to investigate another philatelic rabbit hole

I am 45, and while I took a break for about a decade, got the "itch" again a few years ago after my father passed and I inherited the balance of his collection.

Currently though I am more focusing on setting up my albums (using Vario F pages) based off various specialized catalogs. Love specialized catalogs and once I have the albums set up, it will be a lot easier to keep my collections organized in the years ahead.

Yeah, focusing is not an option for me. While I'd love to become a specialist in something like West Berlin or Austria, I keep getting pulled in other directions. As others have stated, the more I read and am exposed to, the more interesting items or areas I find and I get drawn to them. The ADHD of stamp collection I guess.

I also started as a worldwide collector but I never quit . After 60 years I decided to expand a little .....right ? ......expand a little . Here is what I been working on the last two years ,it is about half way finish and started to sort and file everything into binders . It is a FORGERY and CINDERELLA collection hope to have it done in a year or so . That set of STANDARD ALBUMS was my worldwide collection thru college days ,before the BIG BLUES and then Steiner pages ,I did keep it intact .

I've been back and forth between specializing and general world-wide collecting several times. Right now I'm back into my WW collecting phase.

What I'm enjoying about my current work on WW collecting is the ability to jump from country to country and learn some history and geography at the same time. Although I have a 9-volume Scott International set with pages to 1965, I continue to add and modify pages while at the same time creating a second collection for a combination of duplicates and issues after 1965.

I purchased a wide format printer that I use to create custom Scott International pages. In some cases I start with Steiner pages and modify them to fit onto the larger page size. I also use "Album Easy" to create custom pages. Once I got a handle on AlbumEasy I'm finding it an fast and easy way to create new pages.