Are You Still A Philatelist If -----

I've trashed or shredded stamps with catalog values of $15 (US Scott #11A) or more. When I started collecting in my teens, I trashed hundreds of undamaged US Scott #1393 definitives from an on-paper bulk lot I bought because I didn't see any potential for me to sell them (this was at least 10 years before Internet access was common).

I've shredded several 1851-3-cent imperforates because their condition was so poor that I saw no philatelic value in them.

This year I bought over 1200 Hawaii #75 (cat value:60 cents each) for a plating project, and shredded over 200 of them, because they were badly damaged, had no useful cancels, and had no useful plating marks. I shredded them because I didn't want to pass damaged stamps on to another philatelist when I re-sold them, and I didn't want to risk a negative feedback from the sale.

I've never shredded, thrown away or recycled stamps although I've received a pile of particularly hideous North Korean stamps in a bulk lot recently that have almost caused me to purge them in revulsion. The Pinterest and Etsy crowd is apparently looking for stamps for art-like projects. I ran into a crafter at a stamp show this fall who was seeking stamps for a pontilist project of some tremendous scale. The YouTuber at Exploring Stamps did an episode on stamp art a while back. There are some cool examples featured, but if you're thinking about viewing it be warned- it features (gasp) actual cutting of stamps. Here's the link for those not faint of heart or subject to have delicate sensibilities offended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sZ...i73pg6ulb6fq

I hold on to everything unless it's damaged. I have a friend whose son (age 12) recently started collecting and I went through a bunch of my duplicates and gave him around 2,500-3,000 stamps. Most were probably worthless but you would have thought, from his reaction, that I had given him a pot of gold. As an aside, I put together a used set of 2012 Scott Catalogs on ebay recently and gave it to him for Christmas. I had very little invested in them but his dad told me that he spends hours at a time identifying and looking up the stamps I gave him. The moral of this story is to not throw anything out. Even though the number of new collectors is not what it used to be, there are some out there and would treasure what you may consider as junk. Remember, they are the future of philately.