How Do You Collect And What Do You Collect ?

TheArtfulHinger,
How do you house your collection?

Lately, my current projects are 1) filling a Scott Specialized British America album from first issues to 1950s, 2) slowly adding to my American 19th century collection, and 3) more quickly adding to my US airmail collection, which is now complete but for C3. My cut off for collecting US stamps is 1959 and mid 1950s for the rest of the world. Generally speaking, I try to fill my albums with material that I find interesting and/or beautiful.

On a mix of Steiner pages, stockbooks and Vario sheets. Most of Europe and a handful of other countries (Japan, Australia, NZ and a few others) are on Steiner pages, the rest being in stockbooks and Vario sheets. For the countries I have in Steiner, I generally switch to Vario pages after a certain point, usually about the time stamps started to be issued primarily in souvenir sheets. I collect mostly used, and Steiner pages generally only have a space for the entire sheet. Mounting singles in those spaces looks kind of dumb, so I just put those on a Vario page, which saves space as well. I plan on using strictly Vario pages for all future expansion, although I wouldn't rule out printing the occasional Steiner page here and there.

I just started collecting and right now I'm using a Scott International 1840-1940 International ALbum. I'm planning on collecting worldwide to date. If you have any advice, please, tell me.

Thanks

Hi Stamping 101,

The best advice that I personally can give you is to try to get the better stamps in good quality with very fine centering first, and then later get the more common stamps.

The better (i.e. more expensive) stamps almost always go up in value over time, while common stamps are pretty much always going to be common.

Most collectors do it the other way around, and buy all the "easy" stamps first, and then ultimately they lose interest in the hobby because they can no longer afford the better stamps that they need.

But, years ago (or now in your case), maybe they could have.

Jim

Hi, good advice, if you can afford it, buy dupes of the better stamps, makes great trading material later on

Worked for me.

Stampmaster

Thanks for the advice!

Here is the perfect place to start:

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/

This blog (written by one of our members here) goes through the entire Scott International 1840-1940 album country by country, with informative write-ups about the country (or colony, as it may be) and its stamps. There's even a checklist of stamps needed to fill every space, along with helpful info about catalog values, etc. It's probably the best resource on the web for an owner of that album, and for classic WW collectors in general.

I started collecting when I was 10 years old (1966) and accumulated a healthy collection of stamps with help from my mother. When my 22 year old brother passed away just shy of my 12th birthday I was gifted his stamp collection, he used to show me his collection of world stamps, but the stamps that attracted my attention were the Australian stamps, especially his coronation and coat-of-arms collection; though all of his pre-decimals were used I kept the album without adding anything else.

At 16 I was getting into serious studies and had no time for stamps and didn't get back into collecting until I was 20.

When I again looked at my late brother's collection, those coronation and coat-of-arms still attracted my attention, so I started collecting again. When researching on what would be the better option in stamps.

I realised that mint unhinged issues was the best way to go, and as a rule, I would stick to collecting mint unhinged condition unless something out of the blue warrants me to divert.

For instance I have one solitary mint lightly hinged block of 4, ½d kangaroos from 1938, that was an exception, it is known as a very early state of plate crack, and there is 3 to the set – very early state, early state and late state, I have all three. There is only one very early state of plate crack ever recorded, and I have it, and someone hinged it; and as it is the only one the very light hinge mark has not affected its value.

I also have a set of cancelled 1927 Canberra stamps, in blocks of 4 and much larger blocks, all stamps were cancelled at Parliament House on the day of it's opening on May 9, 1927; very historical

When the opportunity avails itself to me I always upgrade what can be upgraded to well centred and superbly centred unless there was no other option. I eventually added varieties and specimens; today I own a unique combination of King George VI stamps, nearly complete with well centred and superbly centred mint unhinged stamps.

Not including the proofs of Queen Victoria, George V and George VI. My Queen Elizabeth II collection is complete from 1953 to 2017 with all pre-decimal and decimal specimens, but I am continuing adding major varieties.

I do have selected NZ and British stamps as well, and complete sets of occupation stamps of WWII.

99.99% of my collection is well centred to superbly centred mint unhinged.

I have a specialised collection.

TheArtfulHinger

That's so helpful. Thanks so much!:)

Rob,

That's quite a story and you have quite a collection. I have the Australian issues in my KGVI MH collection. KGVI is a great era and I collect country by country. I actually lived on an RAF base in England for two years in the 1960's. Using Dennison hinges as I did when I was a child is really fun and those KGVI engraved stamps look so much better than my USA MNH Showgard-mounted stamps.

Jack Kelley