What Would It Take To Collect (---) Country Today...

Many years ago in one of the weekly/bi-weekly/monthly magazines - maybe it was the Stamp Wholesaler, someone published yearly what it would take to start collecting a country from scratch.

For example, they listed how many regular postage stamps were issued to date, the total face value had you purchased them mint when issued, and what the current total catalog value be for those same stamps in used condition.

It certainly wasn't the most accurate reference by any means - but it was interesting to ponder. Today's data might be just outright scary to see!

I realize that Linn's lists some general data for years 2002-2014 I believe, but not total stamps and values. Does anyone recall who created those yearly lists and is there anything like that being published today?

I'm going to give this a bump on the off chance that someone who knows the answer didn't see the original post. This is a topic I'm very much interested in, but I don't remember ever seeing these articles mentioned.

The APRL catalog returns 349 citations for Stamp Wholesaler, most of which are to individual articles, but in scanning the list I didn't see anything on this topic. (But the index is obviously incomplete.)

Thanks - and I'll have to add that during that period of time I subscribed to Linn's, APS publications as a Junior member, Meekels, Western Stamp Collector, and maybe another one or two.

Not that this kind of info is critical for anything - but it would be notable when talking to potential collectors in particular.