Hindsight Musings (If I Had To Do It All Over Again)

I started with worldwide when I was in Junior High...taught me a lot about geography, countries and history than school ever did. Later focused on US & Canada.... but if I had it to do over, I would probably start a collection by year....one stamp from each country .... high light the new countries each year and note the passing of the dead ones.

George VI surprises me, Kirk. May I ask why your interest in that period?

I really like the KGVI sets as well and am acquiring them as I notice them at reasonable prices - even if I go no further with stamps of the particular country. The engraving is great and the complete sets look great in nicely mounted pages. Recently acquired both the 1938 and 1951 Montserrat sets and the Nigeria 1938 and Cayman Islands 1938 and 1950.

I really like the King George V ... especially the Australia stamps. Lots of interesting items, plate varieties, watermarks, etc. I just purchased a large batch, and am having a lot of fun looking through them. Here is an interesting one that "almost" has a cracked electro through the crown area. Would be worth AUS $450 if correct. (Cost US $0.10)

Kirk,

interesting musings, worth reading and, well, musing over. My first reaction is that I've only been collecting for 45 years so it's a bit too early for a retrospective look.

My second, less fatuous answer is that I would be less impulsive in some of my purchases (Faeroe Islands, Yemen, etc.) which have not really brought the satisfaction I would have expected. The only exception to this was an impulsive purchase of some Estonia stamps as few years ago, which has led me down a surprisingly satisfying path due to the availability of relatively affordable covers, cards, etc. These put the postal stamps in proper context and the two compliment each other nicely.

Would I collect anything different second time round? No, but (like you) I'd probably have made an effort with postal history while the prices were affordable. As I mentioned to Blaamand yesterday the cost of pre-1935 postal history for my bits of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa make building a decent collection unsustainably expensive these days.

Kirk
The GVI are attractive, and generally affordable. They also cover a relatively short time-frame. For me, the big drawback is the upsurge in philatelic money-grabbing by the issuers in the shape of omnibus issues - coronation, victory, UPU, West Indian university, silver wedding. I suspect that the issuing authorities were stuck with large quantities of the high values of the last, hence the cheap and cheerful single stamps for Liz's coronation.
Geoff

Mostly, I enjoy the vignettes of scenes from the commonwealth. And so many of them are those wonderful bicolor issues.

I do enjoy learning about geography and cultures of the world. If I had collected worldwide as a youth, I would have learned much more than I did.

Obviously, I could start now with KGVI, but I just haven't jumped in yet. And of course, the King's Speech movie put a lot of focus on KGVI.

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I agree they're very attractive. I don't know about affordable as I haven't really tried to acquire them. I did lust over the (no longer produced) SG Hingeless KGVI Albums.

With my UN collection, I have a thousand dollars worth of hingeless albums to hold a bunch of stamps with 25¢ catalog values.

Kirk

Kirk

Go on - get the lot!

http://www.warwickandwarwick.com/au...logue/139631

I know the "album worth many times more than the stamps" feeling well. In fact, in many cases, my hinges are worth more than my stamps!

Geoff

I am considering starting a new collection with the title, "Beautiful Stamps" and it will consists of all the beautiful stamps there are out there that would not normally be a part of my collection.

These would all be in mint condition to show off the beauty of the design. I found a beautiful stamp from French Andorra that just stunned me with its beauty. Now I want to own mint copies and even blocks or partial sheets. I may include some mint US stamps that are beautiful (though I only collect used for my normal US collection).

This would be the first collection I would show off to a non-stamp collector so that they can fall in love with the beauty of stamps.

Otherwise I am reasonably happy with where I am, though I know that as time goes on I may make changes.

I actually have started over, in a manner of speaking. Collected for almost 50 years since age 8: US, Austria, BNA, WW pre-1940. These interests evolved over time, but I sold the lot in 2007 and thought I was done with philately for good. Seven years later I caught the bug again, but this time decided to focus on a specialized area that had always fascinated me (US One-Cent 1851-57). What did I learn that I am now applying to my new collection? There is no substitute for quality and patience.

Like Dudley I actually have started over, sold my first worldwide collection in 2004 to help support my small business, got back into the hobby when my father passed in 2009 leaving me his collection and dealer stock. Among the things I learned

1 - Albums don't add much to the collection's value. Now I collect using Vario F pages with a layout done on a spreadsheet to tell me where to put a stamp and which ones I have. Why spend hundreds of dollars on pages and mounts when stocksheets and a bit of creativity will do just as well to house the collection.

2 - You collect stamps, not stamp gum. Now I collect mint hinged up to the late 1950s for most nations because the cost is much less and the stamps themselves just as beautiful from the front. After the late 1950s MNH is common and doesn't command prince's ransoms for stamps.

3 - Half the fun is in the search. I am building a nice library of specialized catalogues from around the world and laying out my albums to reflect inclusion of many varieties not listed in Scott. The best fun is to go through a dealer's stock and find a variety that you know is worth a nice sum but is unknown to the dealer since they only use Scott for their inventory. As they say "Knowledge Is Power" and if the dealer will not take the time to go through their holdings with a more specialized catalog to check for varieties, then that is to my benefit.

4 - Never say never. I may never own a Z grill. Or an Inverted Jenny. Or even a $1 Trans-Mississippi. But better to make space in my albums so that I can include them if perchance fortune does shine my way in the future. Easier to include everything now when I am first laying out my album pages then have to redesign whole sections (even with the ease of Vario pages) to fit a stamp I left out because I "never thought I would get a copy."

5 - The world is my oyster - I can not restrict myself for too long for one area of the philatelic universe. Perhaps it's "Collector ADHD" but I will read about some other country or collecting specialty and I soon find myself looking at starting a collection of that area. Personally I have no problem being a "Jack of all philatelic areas, master of none" since it opens many more vistas to collecting than specializing in one area or time period. Just my opinion, mind.