How Long Have You Collected Stamps And How Many Do You Have?

Wow that is a question. Iremember working with my Dad on his accumulation that he was going to work on when he retored. Sorting by country ad etc. Then he died young and his accumulation sat in a couple of bureau drawes until one rainy Sunday afternoon when I was in my late 20's I opened it up and decided it was time to get rid of them but had no idea if there was anything worth anything. So I started organizing them, joined a stamp club, bought a set of Scott catalogues and never looked back, that was about 35 years ago and now I have 10 times what was in those drawers and now I have boxes full of interesting stamps I have acquired over the years waiting to be organizied and mounted in my binders. It has been a long journey and I hope when I get to retire I actually get to retire and work on them and catch up. I buy very little as I have so many to work on now. But there are about 6 countries I collect to completion otherwie it is a world wide mix. Lots of hours needed to finish making it all a real collection but what I have done over the years I enjoy. It is a great hobby and relaxing to me. I highly recommend the hobby.
Nick

NICK -----Good to hear you continued on your dads collection and plan to work on them in retirement .Im doing the same .

I started collecting around 1980 with a Harris Pioneer Album. I got a Harris Liberty Album in 1986. I was pretty active filling up the Liberty Album when I had knee surgery back then. I really got into worldwide collecting in December 2007 and now I am up to 80,375 different stamps, with lots of odds and ends in "pending" boxes.

I'm guessing about 700. I collect MLH KGV Silver Jubilee/KGVI, but am starting to get interested in covers as well.

HOW MANY DO YOU HAVE ??????-------That is a trick question right.
Somebody with bags and bags of cheap KILO on paper is going to have the most.Ones stepping up from the low KILO group are the SHOE BOX crowd ,who have thousands of sorted stamps by country or even types ,shoe box after shoe box in a closet could have a few hundred thousand piled up .Having bags of stamps or even glassines filled shoe boxes hardly would called a collector ,more in line with a hoarder and can be featured in some news article in the regular news services as a major collector.
Those that have mounted collections in albums and or in stockbooks are the collectors that should interest us ,not the hoarder of bulk material.Who has a well organize collection and extra material in albums,binders or stocbooks and even keep excess material in a easy access manor are the collectors that the dealers and stamp auction houses offer more money too. Those that have specialzed collections that are mounted and displayed are at the top of the heap .
So from the KILO on paper crowd to the Specialzed mounted collections crowd were do you draw the line who has the most.

floortrader,
I don't think we can judge what defines someone as a collector. Whether you have 50 stamps or a million, if you see it as a collection then it is and you are a collector. If you are truly talking numbers than the guy with the closet full of shoe boxes and kiloware probably wins. You may value the well organized and specialized collection more, but the guy with the shoe boxes may value that more, nobody loses.
For the record, I have a closet full of 50 years of accumulation in shoeboxes, as well as a dresser full of kiloware to be sorted someday and over 50 albums of stamps and covers of various specialties. Some is very well organized and researched. Some is an absolute mess. I have enjoyed it all at different stages of my collecting. Mostly I have enjoyed the friendships I have made in the last 20 years of collecting and the fascinating stories that have been shared. The numbers really don't matter.

Here is something think about .

Dennis still does stamp shows. I'll ask him about this next time I see him.

It is something to think about ! How long have I collected?...probably since Gordon was killed at Khartoum !!

I find "stamp hoards" interesting. Depending on who's eye it is, we are all "stamp hoarders" really! One thing is funny is that even with 80K different stamps I can still reach my hand in a pile of stamps lying around and find one I need right away. The funny thing is the best items I have picked up from stamp hoards are Dennison hinges, nice stamp tongs and other supplies. I've dealt with a couple stamp hoards estates and they are VERY time consuming to go through to sell them. Still, if time is not an issue with the seller it is kinda fun and you get some interesting ideas. The least fun is counting up thousands of dollars of mint postage. But you have to do sweat work in order to get a better price. That stamp article is great, can anyone track down the Wisconsin state journal article?

There are several ways to go about finding what you are looking for. You can buy old collections or box lots and sift through them or you can buy just the ones you want. If you buy collections you end up with a lot of (dare I say it) useless stamps. I happen to like sifting though. It keeps my mind and eyes open to spotting the rarities and finding unusual items not in catalogs. Having binders filled with stamps are gun and interesting but there is nothing like finding the next nice one in a box of junk.

Hmmm. That article has me wondering, how would I break up a 7 million stamp hoard. If it was organized into counties of some kind you would have a shot with a middleman to get some value better than wholesale. They don't say if it was mostly on paper or off. I had a much smaller stamp hoard with 150 3 ring binders with about 20,000 stamps in them and about 50,000 loose stamps. I had a hard time selling the binders, despite there being some good stamps in them. The bulk scared people. The stamps off paper did much better. I think I wound up getting about $500 for everything to give to the seller.

I started collecting stamps on and off since 1978.
Just restarted collecting again a couple of years ago

Well yes, a well preserved and organized collection is going to be more attractive.

Parts of my collection are like that.
And parts are not.
I like to think I have close to 100k stamps. That may not quite be the case. I have a several thousand covers, too.

Been collecting since the mid-1970s.

I have never thought about adding up my stamps. Must have at least a few thousand, mostly in albums or stock books. I admit to also having a couple of plastic boxes full of stamps, sheets, covers etc. Started when my dad gave me a beginners album. I must have been about 10. Off and on for 40 some years. Just got back into the stamps about a year now. Wish I hadn't gotten rid of my first collection, who knows what gems were in it? Oh well, youth! Dan