Do You Collect France ?

I forgot to say that I also collect French Southern and Antarctic Territories. These stamps are Extremely beautiful.

I have a substantial amount of France duplicates, mint and used, semipostal, postage dues etc from all periods upto 1980ish.
I am looking for a number of items if anyone is interested in trading.

Can you please be more specific as to what you are looking for in trade?

I mail covers and stamps to France on a regular basis. Stamp collecting is very well and alive in France. One of these days I'll actually get around to scanning my French postal history. I recently acquired a large number of covers from Paul Court of Dijon who was a well known wine producer and dealer in his day.

Here's my want list on Google

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...&usp=sharing

I collect mainly used up to around 1945 then mainly mint.
MNH 1960 onwards.

France is my main collection with the USA and Germany as seconds.
Have many duplicates and I am still missing a few. Have many Canada and Newfoundland to trade for what I need. My complete want list and have list are listed here Under USER ''DrPhil''.
http://www.philateliefree.fr/

I collect French stamps used in Memel.

http://prahanoaki.blogspot.com/sear...istration%29

Thanks for this site:
http://www.philateliefree.fr/

I was unaware of it, and I see it could open a whole new world of French collectors. Alas it will take a while to figure out how to navigate it. It is, as the French say, "vraiement tres simple" which means "completely baffing".

I collect France and her territories. They're beautiful.

also a collector of France.

I might suggest that people interested, and maybe even not interested in France, might want to get a recent book published by the France & Colonies Philatelic Society (GB). The book is entitled "The Sower, A Common Little French Stamp" authored by Ashley Lawrence. Its a super introduction to the La Semeuse series and is one of the better books of its type. Calling it an introduction is really not fair because although it presumes little to no prior exposure to the Sower series, it does go to some reasonable depth. Very readable and easy to access. You'll learn a lot about French philately and not just about a single stamps series.

-Larry

Hi,
to answer the question: Yes, I do.
40 years ago my employer sent me for some months to Paris (France) to help in the newly established brancvh office there. I saw the stamps on the incoming letters in the office and found them wonderful. So I asked if I could have the stamps or the envelopes and of course I got them. This was the modest beginning. About 15 years later my boss offered to sell me his mint collection of France. After some haggling I bought it and now I have a mint and a used France collection. The mint one goes from 1923 until 1999, with quite some unused stamps before 1923. The one of used stamps is quite incomplete and will remain like this.
I do not buy mint stamps from 2000 on; they emit more and more.
But I am always looking for my still issing unused stamps before 1923.

France lacks those maddening series of regular issues that are almost impossible to distinguish without experienced use of a watermark detector and attention to subtle differences in papers. The closest for France is maybe the two types of the Sage/Peace and Commerce issues but a magnifying glass will quickly identify whether the N is under B or U.

Hi Greaden,
That is oversimplifying it in a way that a Scott catalogue might but I agree that France in general is less complicated than some countries.
Even for the Sage series there are type IA-C, type IIA-E and type III.
Along with the almost infinite number of shades make this an interesting start but nowhere near as complicated as the sowers.

I am beginning to collect France modern personal stamps and also the spray-on ink-jet postal code cancellations, just from different departments for now, and learning about more and more cancels, and modern stamps together.

I find the collection fascinating brcause this way I learn and see about different regions and departmemts that I have heard of in books and movies (cinema) but have never visited or experienced myself.