What Was Your First Major "Evolution" In Expanding Your Philatelic Interests?

Whilst Maury's France catalogue seems to have moved into an annual publication cycle since it was bought by Spink, the other areas have not, so availability of earlier volumes, which are split by area, is limited. Yvert includes all colonies in one volume, but DOMs (eg the former West Indian colonies, Polynesia etc) are with Andorra and Morocco in a separate volume.

I think for me, it has been a series of changes rather than one defining moment.
The decision circa 1965 to move away from a pre-printed "junior album" to a loose leaf (spring back) album made me feel very grown up and I was now a kindred spirit with Franklin DRoosevelt.
In October 1970 (aged only 18) I made the decision to specialise in Ireland and initially I felt I could do this alongside the "world" and gradually by 1980s I was not interested in the world at all except for one stamp from any new country.
By 2000, my interest in Ireland had become too intense and the decision to give up was because I was not enjoying it any more.
This led to a 12 year hiatus and the ultimate evolution of deciding that I was still a stamp collector after all and even if it took me four whole years to obtain Irish new issues mint and used in that period 2001-2012.
Perhaps the greatest evolution was realising that I should be less obsessive and that it was possible to enjoy the seriousness of single-country collecting alongside the sheer fun of the world.

"as a side note, this seller is still around...Brian Dias, Bombay Philatelic......" Wondering if Brian is son or nephew of John F. Droucette or Doucette Dias of Bombay Philatelic? I bought from John in the 1970s. Last I heard, and this has been some amount of years, Bombay had moved from New York City to Florida.

Hard to say what my first major evolution was? Maybe moving to an H.E. Harris Senior Statesman album in 1963, from my dad's 1940 vintage red Scott Modern album, three years after I began to collect at age 10 1/2. After going through a few other Harris US & Canada, and Minkus British, albums in the 1970s, settled on the Big Blue Scott Internationals in the early 1980s. Those '70s Harris & Minkus albums are long gone. Still have the Modern album and the Senior Statesman binder

I picked up this cover . . . and developed a life-long love of postal history.

@smauggie That's a truly fascinating cover - traveled twice across the Pacific. Some nice postmarks - particularly the two 'pointing fingers' (return to sender marks) - I have never seen them before. Absolutely postal history. Any postal markings / arrival postmarks on the reverse?

I collected stamps as a youngster - totally without any sense of direction, just whatever came to hand. Then in the 1970s, my father split his collection between myself and my brother. I got his Australia, New Zealand and Canada, so I concentrated on depth rather than breadth.

Now I have the problem of what to do with them as Father Times seems to be pushing on. There is nobody in my family who would appreciate them, or even know what to do with them. So I set forth on the path of disposing of my stamps.

Last year, I joined SCF and now have a new direction. Selling stamps is, as I often say, collecting in reverse. To get the maximum value from your stamps you need to know what you are selling. I got so into this that I have decided to continue collecting, but Australia only, and then only the best quality stamps that I can afford. I shall leisurely divest myself of my Canada and New Zealand and, when the time comes, those left behind should have a relatively easy job disposing of Australia.

And all of this is due to the friendliness and combined knowledge of SCF members. Thanks in particular to Rod and Rob.

Fitzjames, there are a number of dealers out there who offer year sets for countries like Ireland. Was this method not an option for you to obtain some or all of the later stamps?

Steve, I think that was Brian's dad. Brian moved the company to Delray Beach FL around 1993. A couple of years ago he moved back to NJ but I am not sure if he is there year-round or splits his time.

Shermae, yes and no.
I re-started in March 2012 and the initial resource was the Philatelic Shop in the General Post Office in Dublin. At that stage, they stocked Year Packs for some previous years...the earliest as I recall was 2006. So initially it was about buying two packs of each year (and keeping up with new issues of course). And one pack would become "used". It took maybe two years to have 2006-2012 complete mint and used....not forgetting miniature sheets and booklet stamps.
The years 2001-2005, I bought about 90 per cent from one excellent dealer.
This means that I am now more or less in exactly the same position I was in 2000.
The wants list stamps are pricey but I can probably add a few each year.
And I have become more relaxed about never being fully complete.

Blaamand - Strangely enough, no. It's all on the front.

It was the first time I had seen a "T" postage due marking.

Finding, and deciding to splurge on, the diamond stamps of the Somali Coast was my own personal Rubicon.

I come from a stamp collecting family. My grandfather was a heavy-duty collector from early in the last century. He died when I was just 5 or so and all I remember of him when I visited the house is that he was always sitting at his desk working on his stamps. As a result some of his kids and many of my cousins collected stamps. My father inherited my grandfather's collection and sold most of it to pay for college education for me and my brother and sister. It basically paid for all of that.

Of all the cousins I was the only one who stuck with it and I got all their collections. None of us had much of great value but there certainly was a lot of stuff and oddball back of the book items etc. I still don't really have a handle on all the material. Somewhere in the 90's I stopped trying to collect every single stamp the USPS produced. From about 1971 through the mid 90's I tried that and ended up with some cool stuff like this page (and the rest of it):





and some oddball pages, (but I still like them) like this:





I basically stopped collecting for a few years after that. I had started doing some focus on older stamps - starting with the 1920s. Here's the first page I tried really hard to complete in those early days. I didn't know anything about regumming and frankly I haven't revisited this page but I think they are all NH and really nicely centered. One day I'll be brave enough to investigate.



But after probably a 10 year hiatus I got back in and zeroed in on older US material. I basically tried to work backwards from that page to the early stuff and that is still where I am.

I still like the reams of stuff I got from my cousins, the sheets of Olympic stamps I was sure would be collectable, and the weird random old Christmas Seals, Battleships, and envelopes that I frankly still don't understand. But my focus has become more narrow. I'm thinking of taking on France. That may be my next evolution (my father's family is from there.)

I started as a youth during the early 70s with US, but between the jumbo plate blocks and some of the ugly gravure printed designs I became turned off and my first evolution was switching to some British Commonwealth countries that were in exotic locations and had attractive designs.

I wandered into a small flea market and found a shoebox full of mixed condition covers, mostly east coast large cities. That was the seed. 15 years goes by, and pure happenstance has me park in front of a small stamp and coin shop. A friend and I were in Ukiah to play golf, but he wanted to have his VCR repaired, and that shop was next door. I went into look around, and eventually found several covers from Mendocino County. Been chasing them ever since!

Shermae: thanks for your reply regarding Bombay Philatelic.