Totally Worthless To Purchase Country Mixture Or Kiloware

Lately I'm finding Japanese kiloware to be a great joy. The stamps are nearly always lightly and neatly cancelled, and they soak off readily. And since Japan has issued such a huge number of stamps over the past couple decades, you can get pretty large batches of it and still not end up with many duplicates.

Where do you get your Japanese kiloware from?

Lately from ebay sellers based in Japan or Thailand. Even with shipping, it's still relatively inexpensive - a couple dollars an ounce or so when buying several ounces or more. And the sellers do a good job of using current commemoratives from their respective countries on the mailings. I'm waiting on about a pound and a half of Japanese kiloware from Thailand now, hoping it arrives this week.

At some point buying mixtures or partial collections is a point of diminishing returns where you send up more and more duplicates and less usable (meaning completes a collection) stamp.

Anybody buy any of the Harris WW bags at Hobby lobby lately? Anything new in them or just the same old?

I pick up a WW bag at Hobby Lobby occasionally (2-3 times a year). I guess you can say they are still the same: mostly low value on-paper stamps rolled up in a piece of cardboard. I recall getting a couple of stamps in the $2-$4 value range in the last year or so.

Robert

When selling kiloware by weight sell with double paper (front of envelope paper with stamp and back of envelope paper without stamp together) and when buying kiloware by weight buy with single paper (front of envelope paper with stamp).

Another nice thing about Japanese kiloware is that the stamps are almost uniformly very close clipped single paper, leading to a pretty high yield per ounce. I normally figure it takes about 3 ounces of "average" kiloware to completely fill a 6-page 8.5"x11" Desert Magic drying book from front to back. That falls to about 2.5 ounces for Japan, a difference which adds a good 2-300 more stamps per pound than average.

Months ago I bought a packet of 200 stamps of Ireland from ebay seller whitetigercat. I found in it a $15 cat. value stamp and also a $12.50. Total cat. value reach about $240 with few duplicates. Try this seller, he is still selling packets. Daniel

I've found my best bet for bulk is going to a local dealer (I've been fortunate enough to have two within easy driving distance of my house). I've bought all three kinds of Harris bags from Hobby Lobby, and they're like Trainwreck said. I have found a few low value 1880s stamps in the gold US Bags before, but that's about it. That being said, Harris does make a "Mystery Stamp Cube" that is WW that's a lot better than the stuff at hobby lobby. 200 stamps, all off paper, and usually a good mix of countries and ages (I've found early 1900s stuff in there before.)

Although the stamp cubes also have a lot of the same general areas of new stamps: 70s-90s Hungarian space stamps and Romanian shorebirds. Still, less of a mess than the WW bags, and you're not going to end up with ~200 US forever stamps or less than ten year old Canadian stamps in a "world" bag like you might from the Hobby Lobby bags.

I love kiloware. I don't expect to find complete series or high valued stamps. I get it for the variety. It's just the joy or interest of finding a pretty stamp I didn't have. It's just fun. In addition it gives me a supply of duplicates to add to my trading packets.

When getting what I want I have to spend money and that's not as much fun. A 100 dollars will get me one stamp as opposed to several hundred plus in a kiloware. I guess it really boils down to expectations and what you want.

I agree even if I don't need most of them any more I really enjoy going through them and sorting by country, I then put them is plastic tubs so I can mount them at a later time (when I retire mainly) 10 years. It is very relaxing and reduces stress.

KIloware never pretends to offer complete sets of stamps, and why should it? Kiloware is collections of stamps used in the ordinary mail. You're going to get ordinary stamps every time, not higher values. It may or may not be true that sellers of kiloware skim off any higher values they see, but I doubt it very much. For one thing, a lot of kiloware is not packaged by dealers but by postal administrations or other sellers who sell to dealers. And most dealers have far better things to do than go through boxes and boxes of common stamps looking for a rare few high value stamps. Kiloware is for the fun of looking for stamps, not for finding higher value stamps.