New Member Joined Recently

Hello, just joined this morning after poking around google a bit and finding this site. I'm a new collector too, but value is far from my mind. I always liked looking at stamps when I was little, I just had other things I was doing in my life as a kid (videogames mostly - lol) and I didn't give them any attention, but now I think I should.

It would be fitting for me to do, since my late father put in 30 years of service to the USPS, so I'm sure he would have loved to have encouraged me to do so even though he hated having a cluttered house (he died when I was 10, I am 25 now).

Welcome! Did .your dad collect a lot of stamps?

Unfortunately he did not, likely because of the position he worked at the company. He worked maintenance rather than a desk clerk, so there is a handful of other USPS knickknacks and stuff scattered around the house and in closets from when he worked there. There is a lot of electrical switches and outlets installed in my house with industrial grade parts mysteriously installed that he pocketed when he had to change them out, and just used them to fix up the house when needed. Have an ancient 1/4 horsepower floor fan and a snow shovel as well he brought home too when they were deemed garbage among other things.

My mother is a bit of a hoarder, and she has all kinds of letters and postcards she saved from her older sons from the 70s and 80s that still have stamps on them but I don't want to bother with trying to get those stamps off, they are common I am sure and I can get them separately on ebay if I want to. I just recently found a few modern stamps from 5-8 years ago forgotten in a desk drawer, I added those to my new collection. Also I order stuff on ebay a lot, a few times a year someone uses vintage stamps on the packages they send me. I wish I would have saved the rest of the stamps I got in the past in 2009 and 2010 in the mail but I wasn't a collector then.

I ordered a cellphone on ebay once in 2010, and someone used an entire sheet of NASA space shuttle stamps - including the artwork for the booklet - to mail the envelope. They got thrown out sadly as I didn't know any better. I did just recently find some stamps on some cardboard from a package I ordered from Russia a few years back, saved them before tossing the box out. They are the kremlin series or something like that, I forgot.

But yeah I am excited to see what kind of stamps are in the box I ordered, and I think I will have a good time in this hobby. Don't worry, I am not one of those people that pop up here, ask for value, then leave. I found out years ago stamps are worthless! I don't care about having the rarest either, so I am in it just to have a good time and admire them.

edit: forgot to mention I ordered a random shoebox heaped with stamps off ebay for $15, that I think is a good starter pack for me to keep me busy for awhile and learning as well.

Welcome !

It is good to hear you know about some aspects of the hobby = most stamps are inexpensive and that is a good thing!

The $15 stamp hoard was a good buy! The oldest stamp I found was from 1919, the newest a 2014 Forever stamp, so looks like this person recently stopped collecting or was deceased. I say this is a hoard rather than a collection, because there are heaps of duplicates of the same stamp 100 times over, like they saved every single stamp they ever saw.

It looks like the person was some kind of business CEO (based on a envelope cut out for a USPS stationary stamp) and was wreckless at removing stamps from the 70s-90s, but earlier stamps are more cleanly removed and pristine. A lot have black splotches, tears, paper color bleed, or are thin. All are used, most have cancel marks, a lot do not.

I have found so far....
+USPS stationary envelope stamp cutouts
+1930's stamps with "MA" in a dot-matrix style hole perforation
+bulk rate stamps
+forever stamps from up to 4 years ago
+Postage due stamps for several denominations
+what I believe are called "coil stamps" - pairs of 2, 3, or more stamps still joined together, but used
+stamps that still have their sheet borders still attached
+USPS Eagle A,B,C postage rate stamps

It's certainly a lot to process, it took me all weekend! I have no idea how many stamps are here, I never counted and I dont think I want to know. lol I found a lot of amazing ones in here, like the big Apollo/Soyuz 1975 space mission stamp, a 1970's "It all depends on the zip code" mod-style stamp, The Simpsons stamps, and almost all 50 state stamps

I won't buy anymore for awhile as this is pretty much a mountain!

Welcome to the site! I joined about a year or so ago and have found the knowledge of a lot of the members to be invaluable, as I'm sure you will.

Like you, I don't necessarily collect for the value of any particular stamp, but I do collect for the beauty or history of the stamp. However, I have also discovered that some stamps I purchased in the early 1980's at very affordable prices have since become moderately valuable. The biggest change in a set that I can recall offhand is a set of China People's Republic butterflies that I paid about $12 at the time, that now has a catalogue value of $525 (as of the 2014 Scott Catalogue). So yes - collect for the fun, the history, the geography and the beauty of the stamps and enjoy every step of the journey. Eventually, you may or may not have some valuable stamps, but more importantly, you will have enjoyed yourself along the way.