How Much Time Do You Spend On Your Collection?

2-4 times a week for 2-3 hours at a time. Since joining my local club I've really gotten the "bug."

jrodriguex - welcome to the forum - good to see you've been addicted


Ha ha, exactly. Whenever my wife ask to go away my stamp-demon inside always shout a (mute) big 'Yippi' - but I try to keep my face neutral, let her believe I will be bored without her. Truth is I never have - and never will - restricted her from leaving the house.

Time spend varies quite a lot from week to week, I guess average would be approx 2 hrs/day. Would love to have much more time tough.

This winter we will go to Thailand for a 4 week vacation. It will be awesome - at the same time it will mean no time for stamping at all for a terrible long time, almost like a 'correction facility' Hopefully the wi-fi will allow me to see what you guys are up to at least! Guess that could be topic for another thread - how to get around when you have time off but cannot access your stamps

Sdtom - great thread

gillygaloo: welcome to the web site and forum. Hope you find a lot of good information here.

Thank you, ArtfulHinger, for posting the stamp collector's 12 step program.

1. Admitted we were powerless over our collecting habits, our wives had become unmanageable
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ebay could restore us to sanity
3. Made a decision to turn our want lists and our checkbooks over to the care of dealers selling at a steep discount
4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our collections
5. Admitted to another collector which of our stamps are faulty
6. Were entirely ready to remove these faulty stamps from our collections
7. Humbly asked God to remove these faulty items
8. Made a list of all stamps we had damaged and became willing to repair them all.
9. Made direct repairs to all such stamps except when to do so would defraud others.
10. Continued to take inventory and when we found faulty stamps, promptly removed them
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Stamp Gods as we understand them.
12. Carried this message to other collectors and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

So what do we do with those faulty stamps that were acquired in our early days of collecting, when we believed every flowery word written or spoken (or NOT spoken) by those nice sellers? When we also learned the bitter lesson of careless handling?

Do we burn them? Put them out of their (our) misery? Offer them for 99 cents on ebay?

I say 'Nay'! Frame them in a collage (Gad, were there that many?) to serve as a reminder of our misspent youth ... a reminder of our need to instruct others in the WAY ... knowing full well the dificulty of their learning and profiting from the mistakes of others.

By the way, I spend about 5 or 6 hours a day on my addiction.

Blamaand, when you have time off and wifi, but cannot access your stamps, that's when you work on your want list!

amccleaf1 - Good plan!
- as a plan B one could alternatively spend some qaulity time with kids or wife (after the want list is complete)

I have uploaded whichever electronic catalogs I own to DropBox, which includes my original set of Scott 2009's, the last year they sold a fully electronic catalog you could also use offline Copy.com is also very useful in this regard and allows more free storage.

I also keep my wants list (in excel) in DropBox so I can access it from my cell phone wherever I may be.

Shermae - you're giving me lots of good reasons not to follow plan B (above)

I'm using skydrive for similar purpose, excellent. I guess there is never any excuse not to spend a few hours a day - every day - even if you're 'out of office' e.g. on the beach