Collecting Germany - Super Popular ???

Hi,
After a 40 year hiatus, I've only been back in the hobby for the last several months, and am coming up with lots of questions. Thank you all for putting up with me...........

I have picked up some Scotts Big Blues and found that 3 of 6 had a situation with the Germany section. One had the entire section missing, one had Minkus pages rather than Scotts, and another had two pages missing. This situation was only with Germany.

So my question is, Is Germany a super popular country to collect, or what is considered special about it?

Just curious......
Mobilman44

Yes, I consider Germany to be popular, at least in part, because stamp collecting is (or was) also popular in Germany. And the German world has the Michel catalogue, the most fastidious of the major brands.

Then, when one adds the striking designs, and the WW I and WW II history, well, I would like some Germany please.

In addition, my Father (as did many Fathers) brought back from WW II German stamps.

I agree with JKblue. Germany is popular for lots of reasons, but two of the biggest reasons are the popularity of stamp collecting in Germany, and the history of the country. As the history of Germany goes, so goes the history of her stamps!

Brian

I didn't realize the hobby was so popular there, but of course know the historical impact on the Country (and the rest of the world). As with other European countries, it is interesting to see how the wars played out in the production of stamps.

My Dad was in the Pacific and I have a special interest with those countries, whose war history is also shown on their "stampage".

Thanks all!

When I was a teen my dad gave me his old collection. It was mostly US and German. Almost all of the German collection was brought with him when he emigrated from Germany in the 50's. I remember it being a pretty extensive collection. Sadly most of that old collection including all of the German, has been lost.

Though I do collect general world wide, there are a handful of countries I focus on, and Germany is right at the top behind the US.

I was in Germany when I got my first stamp album at the ripe age of 6. My father was in the military and we were living in West Berlin. I like to collect
German staps mainly because I majored in Germanistics (German Lang. and Lit) in college, as well as the cultural and art aspects. These days, I'm more interested in DDR and Inflation (Weimar) issues. 1 billion reichmarks to mail a letter... who would have thought..?!

Mobilman44, if you're thinking of starting to collect Germany let me know as I have tons of duplicates mint and used that I would let go for very cheap.

Thank you! I have finally pulled/sorted/soaked the stamps from 2 Scotts International part 1 albums, and two International Juniors, and just yesterday started putting them in the keeper Big Blue Part 1. I also have 3 Part 2s that I will do likewise. Right now I am loaded with stamps, and it will take awhile until I know where I stand.

As an aside........ I'll bet when Hitler came to power "his" stamps suddenly became the ones to use - or else.

Similar to other remarks, philatelists in Germany as a percntage of the population is quite a bit higher than most other countries. I don't collect in that area but their stamps have caught my eye on more than one occasion!

For what it's worth, I have probably integrated 7 or 8 Volume I's (and Minkus Globals) and never found any pages for Germany missing. But Germany is one of the countries that seems to always have the highest percentage of completion in the Internationals I see on ebay. Now, German Offices and Colonies--not so much!

stallzer...i'm trying to fill some spaces in my collection of Germany from the Third Reich period. (1933-1945). Do you have any mint duplicates from that period?

German stamps are a bargain compared to 15 years ago..the big yachts and the better semi postals sell for a fraction of what they used to. I imagine a lot of people in Germany collected and as they pass on their collections come to market !!

A big side note on German stamps ,is that the high quality stamps stay in Germany and a lot of what you get in the U.S. and on ebay are of lesser quality but are sold showing the catalog value of very fine material .All the better material finds it way back to Germany for higher prices .Every stamp auction lot of German States are reduce quaility or are fakes/reprints than I seen here in the U.S. for the past 20 years .When Rasdale Stamp Auctions had a undiscovered lot consign to their stamp auction ,four or five big name German auction houses flew in to fight over the material and dozens of U.S. and other country dealers just look on in awe of the prices being thrown around .

When I start another country, it will probably be Germany, although it looks quite complex. I have an almost new Michel simplified German catalogue and it is very thick. Probably should have purchased the 2 volume specialized. There are quite a few German stamps stuffed away in my unsorted trays, so I probably have a reasonable start. Is it possible to circumvent the problem of German stamps being repatriated by buying off the German ebay site?

I seem to remember seeing used German stamps with higher prices than when mint. I reasoned that after the war, German mint postage was taken by the Allies by the trainload and dumped onto the collecting market. Therefore, some issues that were rarely used for actual postage are quite scarce. Is this a reasonable assumption?

"I seem to remember seeing used German stamps with higher prices than when mint. I reasoned that after the war, German mint postage was taken by the Allies by the trainload and dumped onto the collecting market. Therefore, some issues that were rarely used for actual postage are quite scarce. Is this a reasonable assumption?"

I was told years ago (and my source could have been wrong, but he was a German collector and expert), that the reason that during the period between the two world wars, the inflation in Germany changed the rates often enough that when printed, only a small amount of the stamps were being used before they were obsolete/out of date/insufficient to cover postage leaving a huge glut on the market of unused stamps. I was able to buy some mint sheets of 1930s German stamps from German dealers in the mid 1980s for next to nothing which I sold a few years later for a small profit. Germany has always been one of my favourite countries to collect.