Goodness, This Hobby Can Grow On You...

Hi,
I was working on an album and it struck how much this hobby has grown on me......

About four years ago I decided to get back into collecting (been away for 40 plus years) and determined I would just collect USA stamps - from the beginning thru 1950. I started with one Scott National album. Well, that is now three Scott Nationals as I expanded thru to 2000, plus many BOB categories.

About three years ago I decided to get into worldwide collecting, but would only do the Classic era. I got a nice 1947 Scotts International album for the job. Now, I've got seven Scotts International binders, going thru to 1960.

So that brought me from one album to ten.............

And then there are the cataloges........ I started with a "pocket size" Scott USA cataloge. Now I've got the full size Classic era cataloge, the USPS catalogue, and a full set of the 2012 Scott International catalogues.

So all you newbies out there............ be careful!

Its a sickness. Thank God I'm out of money.

Jack Kelley

What does that have to do with it?

Never stopped the Federal government from spending. Why should it inhibit you?

When the Fed prints money it is Fiscal Policy. When you or I print money it is 10-20 in the Big House.

Terry

Jack Kelly, thank you for the laugh. I needed that.

Doesn't mean it's not true.

I re-started collecting about a year ago. US only - military, space, postal service, Christmas, and US stamps I like for some reason or another.

Now I am collecting Christmas worldwide, and new Canada and Great Britain. And then Titanic stamps.

Now I am going into Germany 3rd Reich.

I feel like Steve Martin in The Jerk - "All I need is this lamp."

I've been "back" collecting for about 3 years now, and it's pretty amazing how far my collection and my collecting habits have progressed in that time. The catalyst was when I discovered Bill Steiner's pages at stampalbums.com. I went hog wild printing pages for about six months, to the point where I now have 52 binders (40-2" and 12-1") full of pages for about 3 dozen or so different major countries and several smaller ones.

If I had it to do over again, I probably would have stopped at about half that many pages. That's not because I don't want to collect the stamps of a given country, just that I don't have time for them all. I've basically since figured out which areas I like the most and they get most of my attention. However, I may not have figured all that out had I not had album pages available, so no harm, no foul. I'm only out the cost of paper and a binder, which in most cases wasn't more than $15 total, with a standard office binder. For the parts of my collection that I'm more focused on, I've since upgraded to Vario binders, which are a bit more expensive, but well worth it - a much better value for the money than office binders.

As one who never left collecting, let me welcome all of you back to the world's greatest hobby. It even beats hiking and mountaineering. Steve

I posted this in another (obscure) thread: Do you feel it ... or is it now just an obsession?

I like looking through the album and collections offered on ebay. Seeing those old albums from the 1930, 1940, 1950 and '60's just carries me back to when I started collecting stamps and experience the thrill of discovery.

Now 60 years later the spaces are mostly filled. The drive is to find the missing ones at reasonable prices. But I miss the thrill of discovery .... new lands, new counties, beautiful issues ... cancellations from exotic Pan Am flights, tin can mail, French and English colonies, etc.

Stamp collecting made me a standout student in junior high and high school geography and history classes. Alas ... a time far, far ago...

Oh, it's definitely an obsession. I probably spend more time on stamps than just about anything, possibly including work. If I'm not working on stamps themselves, I'm reading about them, talking about them online, shopping for them, etc. On weekdays I spend at least 2-3 hours on average either directly working on my collection and/or pursuing knowledge and/or stamps online. On weekends it can be double that or more. And that's not counting the time I spend reading about subjects that I only became aware of because of stamps. I putter around at some other hobbies here or there, but always come back to stamps.