Did You Ever Downsize Your Collection?

"Old habits die hard" as they say. For a lifelong collector this is especially true. Moving/downsizing looks you straight in the eye and says "something has got to go". For me, it was a lot of history books and some of my philatelic library...because books really do take up a lot of space.

While I am still acquiring philatelic material, I have cut down on the covers and postal history. This stuff takes up a lot of room, also.

A little selling experience helps with the perspective in what you "need" as a collector.

iKeyPikey: My wife passed away about 18 months ago. We had discussed downsizing several times, most recently following the death of her sister, but we always managed to avoid starting the process. Then I finally decided to start doing it ... by donating 14 boxes of books to our local public library. Some of the books I already miss, but most of them I no longer had the time and energy to explore anyway. Don't know how long I can hold out before I tackle the stamp collection. For now, it's still growing, a work in progress.

Mobilman: I've collected world wide; the Scott Internationals Parts I through 5 (1840-1965) and a little beyond for some countries; for 30+ years (out of 50+ total continuous years of collecting). I'm now down-sizing and hope to have several albums sent off for auction around the end of this month. I'm sending off the French area; the German speaking area; some full & partial sheets of Kenya & Uganda (I love British East Africa in all its incarnations, but not sheets). I am also working on a binder of Western Europe (Benelux & colonies; Scandinavia; Spain & colonies) and a binder of Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, etc) to go off by the end of the upcoming summer. I just have way too much stuff. I'll miss some of it, especially the German, since I'm part German. But, I'm also 66 (like floortrader) and it's just me around here. Closest family is 800 miles away and those cousins are older than me.

Also, it's a matter of just being able to find things. I'm already liking the look of the re-organized remainder of the collection; re-organized mostly into regional formats. These are the collecting areas that I still find exciting (North America (US, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, St. Pierre (the sole French I'm retaining)) - 1 binder; British Commonwealth - 2 binders; Portugal & colonies - 2 binders; S. America - 1 binder; Central America + Domin. Repub. - 1 binder; Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Russia) - 1 binder; Italian area & southeastern Europe - 1 binder). I fought and tried for years to be a world-wide collector. But the desire is just not there anymore.

As an addendum to my earlier post, I've just finished loading up four stock books of stamps which will be going, along with a pile of modern covers, to my dealer.
Though this sounds productive, the credit he'll give me will no doubt lead to more stuff coming IN to the house.
The circle of life continues...

Thanks everyone, plenty of wisdom shared.

I'm considering same as OP. I am a general WW collector, however the 'sticker/wallpaper feeling hits me every so often. Also I am considering to shift storage system from stockbooks to more flexible and better looking vario's. But the thought of transferring 150k seems simply too overwhelming. Hence I am in same boat as you mobilman, considering downsizing and 'cut the crap', that would make the transfer less overwhelming. My main challenge is - where to draw the line? I'm thinking along same lines as IkeyP and Area66, introducing different cut offs for different areas. If so e.g. most of Western Europe will be cut as late as 2k, whilst e.g. Eastern Europe, other communist-influenced and other typical -non-postal entities' would be cut around '55 to avoid the wallpaper. This seems easy enough, but what if a modern and genuine postally used stamp from Mongolia comes my way?

I am sure that someday I simply have to cut - and I convinced it will be days I will regret the decision. On the positive side it would free both time, shelf-space and energy to what I like the most. The gain will compensate the 'loss' - and more. Whatever age we are at, time is our most limiting asset. Use it wisely, best of luck.

bookbndrbob: If only that were so

For some of us, down-sizing says "it was a mistake" or "it was never worthwhile". Artful & I posted at length on our how much did you pay for each hour of entertainment argument. But, still, some folks are gonna feel that letting go means they are somehow reversing their decision to collect {whatever} in the first place.

And then, for some of us, down-sizing means that we are losing the person we were when we collected those items, and that can provoke a pretty severe grief/loss reaction.

If it were just a matter of space & time, it would be easy.

JLLebbert:

Ultimately - at least for me, in almost every case - a book is about the contents, and re-reading a different copy some day will be pretty much the same experience as re-reading my 'original' copy.

Unless you collected first editions - or bought & read those books with someone dear to you - such books as you may want to own again some day will be cheap & easy to come by.

Stamps are more interchangeable (perhaps why I do not collect MNHOG, the least individualized and most interchangeable of all stamps).

Covers have more character, and I would think are far more 'irreplaceable' than stamps.

In any case, rather than replicate an old collection, would it not always be more fun to begin a new specialty, instead?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Hi again,
Thank you all for sharing. I realize that especially for those of us "up in years", getting rid of stuff can be very difficult. I've come to the conclusion that for now, I'll just let things be and continue to collect thru 1960. If my remaining life is longer than expected, I could easily regret the loss of those stamps. And if my remaining life is shorter than expected, its all a moot point.

I feel like downsizing my US collection. I collect any and all USA stamps, but anymore I feel like it is more of a time sink than anything else going through stamps of the 80's until today. I'd rather focus my time on earlier US issues as well as my other collections. I am thinking about culling my collection at 1950.

In the early 2000s I sold my entire worldwide collection in order to help fund a business venture I had begun. Provided me the capital to keep the company running for over five years, until changes in the marketplace due to technology made my product line (I was selling vinyl records and CDs to DJs via the internet) pretty much obsolete. I had a great run with the company I created, but selling my first collection and going pretty much "cold turkey" on philately made me feel like I had cut off an arm. But at the time, downsizing my collection made the best financial sense, and so I went ahead and did it.

Fast forward, now I have a new career and a disposable income to resume collecting, and combine that with the remnants of my late father's collections and dealer stock (he was a small part-time dealer in NY's St Lawrence Valley) I am back to enjoying the hobby.

But having downsized to nothing once already, I can not really imagine trying to do it again. Thankfully it will likely be many years before my collections reach the point where doing some downsizing might seem appropriate, especially since in my current home I have a nice dedicated part of my "man loft" (a man-cave but it is the upstairs floor of an old Cape-Cod style house) with plenty of space to expand the collection for the forseeable future.

Funny, funny comments!

Mobilman, I vote that you downsize your collection ONLY if you have a solid goal in mind.

I am working up the nerve to sell my older US Classics with the intent to treat my wife and myself to a well-deserved vacation with the proceeds. Time will tell how that plan goes!

Let's face it, stamp c-o-l-l-e-c-t-o-r-s are by nature accumulators of historical stuff.
I have spent the last 5+ years building an above-average US Classics collection.
My initial focus was from Scott #1 through 1940. But along the way, as many have already commented, I gathered
nice stamps from the 1950's, '60's and beyond -- usually in albums purchased at auction.

As already mentioned, many of the more modern issues are gorgeous designs. As I see more of these I get tempted to select issues I like graphically. Of course I wasn't aware of these newer stamps until I either received them in a purchase or viewed them in a catalog.

Postscript....

My rationale for selling my US Classics is simply the fact that I am hitting the financial wall.
I can not continue to complete stamp acquisitions for many of the most valuable US stamps. Recently I completed several US groupings by adding costly high-denomination stamps to complete my Columbian Exposition series, 1869 Pictorials, Trans Mississippi Exposition series, Zep set and others.

Frankly, I don't have the budget to acquire many more rare issues. So, it makes sense to enjoy the collection a while longer and then turn it into something new and enjoyable. That's why I have embraced building a British Commonwealth collection.

While I've sold thousands of duplicates, I've never downsized my actual collection. In fact, just a month or two ago I decided to expand the scope of my collecting immensely. I had been collecting about 3 dozen countries on Steiner pages, but as of this moment, I'm officially collecting the entire world to date. No, I have no illusions about completion and I really don't intend to work toward completion of any given area (except Germany, which I'm more serious about). But I will keep at least one copy of any face-different stamp I come across. I'm getting Lighthouse stockbooks on Amazon for free or nearly so, using reward points on a credit card that I use for all my shopping and bill paying. Once I realized storage costs and space wouldn't be huge obstacles, I decided to take the plunge. I've been having a ball ever since.

In the early 1980s, due to financial pressures (3 young kids), I sold most of my collection; mainly a nice pre-1950 mint Canadian collection. It provided enough cash to solve a few financial problems at the time; but, in hindsight, it would have been far better to keep the stamps and struggle through the financial issues. I've since rebuilt the Canada collection and extended it by quite a wide margin and it has cost a lot more in real dollars than I realized from the earlier sale.

Would I consider downsizing now? I don't need to from a financial viewpoint; but the collection is starting to take up quite a bit of room and is growing fast. As some of you know, I have been giving away some stamps - these are mainly from collections I've purchased containing stamps of countries in which I have no interest; so I will be doing more of this. However, no plans to sell anything; although , if I had more time, I would consider selling some material on ebay just for the fun of it.

NBSTAMPER, enjoy your return to collecting! Years ago I sold my WW collection on ebay thinking I would focus only on US Classics. Now I wish I had held on to my older British Commonwealth and Latin American.

So, I realize that I may end up having the same "seller's remorse" if I do part with my US Classics. But I took out an insurance policy.

In order to buffer the potential loss of my old US friends, last year I jumped into collecting British Commonwealth with both feet. I figure that my 11 albums that cover the UK and colonial era should keep me busy enough moving forward. I also plan to keep my US BOB and a nice chunk of US Revenues await being placed into their albums as well.

I downsized my collection to 2000, but when I happened to get later stamps, well, first I stored them somewhere as I couldn't give them away if I didin't have them, then I started sorting them and then finally arrange them better. Later stamps are growing more and more, and I wouldn't be able to cope with them if I didn't try to organize them somehow, but that is betraying my initial purpose of downsizing my collection. I can't resist a stamps I don't have, I must keep it even though they sometimes really look like stickers.