Why Collections Are Abandoned

Some thoughts about collectors and their collections and why the collections are abandoned or have lost interest.

When the transportation coils started to come out, I jumped on the collecting bug to collect all the various plate numbers and I joined the PNC3 club, created my own spreadsheet of what I have and what I was missing. Over the years the Post Office created so many plate numbers and different varieties of the same stamp that it just lost my interest. The stamps became nothing more than labels to me. The collection was abandoned, though I still have it.

My U.S. classics collection is also near its end. I can't afford to spend the $$ it would take to fill those holes in my collection. The same is also true for my U.S. Revenue, Exposition Tickets, CSA Currency and a few other collections as well.

So, I became somewhat specialized in collecting the one cent 1851/57 issues with "flaws" ie. curls, cracks, blobs, smears etc. This is the only collection that is still active but not as strong, though I still enjoy finding a misidentified gem on ebay.

Unless a collector has real deep pockets, I suspect that there are a lot of other collectors that just stop collecting because the cost to collect is getting too high. Or, they become disinterested in the labels put out by the Post Office that they call stamps.

I occasionally look at these collections to see if the interest can be re-sparked. Not happening.

So, what are your abandoned collections and your thoughts as to why they get that way?

Art

Hi,
Well, you pretty well covered it....... One can get to the point that the stamps needed are too costly or unavailable. I'm getting close to that for my USA collection (thru 2000).

I've still got a long way to go on the world collection (thru 1960) however.

While not really a reason for losing interest (I am not losing interest by the way), is when I run into the stamps that were (IMO) printed to sell to collectors, and of course self adhesive stamps.

Again, I'm still well bitten by the bug, so I'm OK!

I guess I'm in the opposite situation. I've found myself abandoning collections because I'm now specializing more. As I find more and more knowledge resources like SCF, my focus is narrowing, and I'm finding more places to buy online. The haystack is growing, but I'm better able to search it. It's the thrill of the hunt that is most satisfying to me, not filling 20,000 spaces!

US Plate number blocks. When I first got back into stamp collecting a few years ago I began working on this collection that I started in childhood (mostly through inheriting my mother's collection). After a while I had picked up almost all of the common ones. Then I got into postal history.

I would still like to mount my current collection for display, though. Would cost alot of money to do, though. Still mulling that over. They aren't going anywhere.

I have collected seriously (in the past) US and UN. I determined they were not interesting (to me) anymore so gave them up. Yes I still have them as well. I moved into world postal stationery, perfins and precancels
as I find them interesting and seemingly never ending (affordable as well). There are a few other specialty niches I collect, but no need to go into that on this thread.
I collect for the enjoyment of collecting, not as an investment, others do it reversed. Some items may cost a tad more than others, but there are enough lower priced items to collect within the interest block that will keep me happy for many years to come.

Completion is a cruel master; I suspect many of us move into Postal History (and, G-d Forbid, ephemera) precisely because there is no such thing as completion when you pick one point in an Nth dimensional space and work out in a few directions.

Completion also requires buying things that are of no inherent interest, but have pages in that album.

But the biggest problem with Completion is that it is the Original Sin that got many of us started; an album with empty boxes to fill, and the anticipated joy of filling all those boxes, was the inner thrill.

Along the way, most of us pick-up some ancillary material for which that album did not have a box, be they too-nice-to-trade-or-sell duplicates, or proofs & essays & cool cancellations, or ... and this helps free us from being slaves to those still-empty boxes.

The things that destroyed our interest in a category - be they the proliferation of new issues, or that truly weird thing that happened to plate numbers - helped us in an important way: we could move out from under The Completion {expletive deleted}.

For that, we might have to be grateful.

The Great Pay Wall only matters if you're going for completion, or competition.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Well put Art. I have only purchased a handful of items over the last year and am entertaining the decision to sell the collection while I can still get some decent money for them. I'm scared that in 15 years there won't be many buyers of these things. Due to time and family I just don't have the time to enjoy them.

Besides, once your collection is complete, then what? Time to move onto something else at that point anyway, unless one is satisfied by simply looking at the full pages in the album.

Our stamp collections remain collections even if we put them away and don't touch them again. But are we still a stamp collector in that situation?

I was an avid collector in the 1970-80s time period but I was also young and just starting out. By the time the late 1980s rolled around stamp prices were climbing and my collections had appreciated to more than I had invested in them. I was young, poor, and struggling to pay for college and wanted to start a family. Although not something I wanted to do I sold much of my US collection off but held onto my GB and worldwide collection. APS membership was dropped and life moved on. New hobbies eventually developed as did the amount of time I was spending on my career.

Only in the last 5 years did I return to my stamps and I have now replaced my US collection. To be honest, and given the availability and pricing of today's marketplace, I think I made the right decision to sell back in the late 1980s. I had a few choicer items back then which would love to have back today, but most of the more common material was very reasonable to replace.

But numbers aside, I certainly missed many years of intrinsic joy that our hobby represents.
Don

I think we all get tired from time to time. I've collected off and on since the 70s, sometimes I get tired of collecting and go off to do something else, sometimes I decide I want to get back into stamps and I pick up where I left off. I got tired of it about a year or so ago, I haven't bought a single stamp in probably a year and a half and I still have a pile of stamps that I bought a long time ago that still haven't been put away. I keep thinking that, if I have time, which so far I haven't, but when and if I do, I want to get back to collecting. I still love it but it's been more off than on recently. Maybe it's time to reverse that.

I've been collecting for 50 years now without a halt. I started with mint U.S. commemoratives, moved to U.S. used definitives, then to world-wide used definitives and U.S and foreign airmail covers too. For me, there is always an interesting sideline to collect, and I doubt that I will ever grow tired of collecting some type of philatelic material. It's been a great pastime, although the so-called serious collectors probably would not rate my efforts highly. There is not much completion in any of my collections.

Don

I solved the "completion" issue by having a very narrow focus to my collection: US Airmail and US regular with something relating to aviation. There are just 150 US Airmail stamps, and in my aviation topical collection I have another 45. The US Airmail collection is as complete as it will get: I have mint singles for all 150, and mint plate blocks (or line pairs and panes for coil and booklet issues) for C7-C150 except for the four Zepps. As for the aviation topicals, I have mint plate blocks for all of them (in some cases mini sheets rather than plate blocks).

So what do I collect now? Covers with these stamps on them. I do not think there is any way to define what a "complete" collection of covers for US airmails would be. At least one of each, I suppose, and I have that for all of C7-C150 (again, omitting the Zepps). But there are lots of other smaller collections to go after within this broader category, like collecting all the airmail covers of a particular cachet maker. I could probably identify a dozen or more different such "mini collections" have going on where I have some "completion" goal in mind. Plenty to keep me occupied. If I get "bored" with one, I just switch to another for a while; I eventually get around to them all from time to time.

Started collecting in April, 1960, at age 10, and have never stopped. I've sold a lot of material over the years, after entering adulthood. I've let things lay around; last winter, I finally "got around" to assimilating the small collection of Montenegro that I bought, on a whim, back in 1975. I'm sort of with Stalizer in thinking now about selling some of the world wide collection in favor of more specialization. Not sure where that will go, but will make some sort of decision by the end of the calendar year.

I have a modest US collection, but my specialities have always been various non-US. So, have never hit a completion or cost roadblock.

I don't think I ever abandoned stamp collecting. When the kids were little and I was starting a business it got pushed aside as a low priority. In the 80's and 90's I was more into sportscards than stamps. When I got back into collecting things had changed. Most of the approval dealers were gone, Thank God. When I was younger that played a major part in how I got stamps. There were only a couple shops left. There were still shows and I found deals that I never found in the 70's and 60's. I also found clubs that were a huge impact on my collecting. In the clubs I found people that collected many different ways. When I was a kid you collected US or WW or both. The only variable I knew was mint or used. When I got involved in clubs I was introduced to so many specialties that I soon found myself abandoning stamp collecting as I had known it and getting much more involved in special areas of interest that fascinated me. Then came the internet. Research became something I could do in my underwear at the kitchen table. A cover from my home town was something that I could find in days versus years before I could find one in shops or at shows. The friends I have made through the stamp clubs and online are people that have become a daily part of my life not just people I may see at the "Big show" in the summer once a year. Some of the dealers I used to visit are now friends that visit me and many of them have been to dinner or to have a beer at my house. So, I know I suck at short stories but the long and short of it is, I guess Ihave abandoned stamp collecting as I knew it 30 years ago and I thank God I did. My life is much richer because of it.

I am at this point. Though I don't have deep pockets, I'm going to make them shallower by filling in the classic holes less often. Meanwhile I'm thinking of starting a World War II collection consisting only of "modern" stamps that I don't already have. During the 50th anniversary years, they came out with some very nice things, and more after.

I sure will miss engraving.


-IBFS

The stamp collector in me turned into collecting stamp knowledge for the hunt which is determined by the years of Australian stamps that are popular or good sellers.

I have a massive collection of modern Australia but is more stock than a collection.

But would love to go back to collecting Australia 1d red KGV's.

But my collecting area has changed to the darkside of collecting. Silver with the print of a stamp on it!