How Much Do You Participate In "Flyspeck" Philately?

If one "flyspecks," it depends on how it is defined and what you are collecting. Floortrader makes good points.

Two of my several specialties are Portugal & Colonies, and Mexico. In the P & C "department," my favorites are the 1914 to 1930 Ceres issues. For the colonies, there are all sorts of plate frame breaks, shifted values, and color shades, to attract one.

For Mexico, a good challenge is collecting the various overprints, for post offices and sub-offices, of the classic stamps. Perhaps unique among nations, Mexico has records of how many stamps were sent to which post office and how many got returned, back to the first issues in 1856. Some of the District overprints are quite rare (see note in Scott Classic catalogue).

I enjoy "fly-specking" when I have a specialized catalog that lists the varieties (ACSC for Australia Roos and KGVs), or I have a large amount of a particular stamp, and lots of time. I posted my previous adventure into flyspecking a few Newfoundland stamps in this thread:

https://goscf.com/t/59181

Some of the pages got a little busy showing the multiple copies, and I never really figured out the cause of some of the ink splotches, but the plate scratches were interesting and consistent.

Happy New Year to everyone!

I do...a lot.
Essentially it is a means of finding every stamp worthwhile.
Take Stamps on a Roll (SOAR) which are the current Irish definitive and available via computer terminal in every Irish Post Office.
I guess there have been around six series of Mammals/Fish/Bird stamps...maybe 48 (six series of eight stamps), about ten years of Christmas stamps (say 20 stamps) one year (16 stamps) on Easter Rising and so far at least two years (16 stamps)on the theme of 100 Irish Objects in History.
So that's maybe 100 different designs so far. However a stamp can be printed in any denomination (national, airmail, package, "top up amount"), bears a unique coded date, a number from 1-600 showing its place on the roll.....and a unique 14 digit number the first four of which is a code for the individual post office. For example the General Post Office in Dublin is 0235 and Galway is 1745.
I have a collection where I am trying to find at least one stamp issued in every post office. So far I have 915 from a total of 1428 on a list issued several years ago. Many post offices have since closed.
I also travel around Ireland on a travel pass (I can use any bus, train, tram etc on the island of Ireland totally and absolutely free) and I take pics of post offices.
Then I mount the pic of the post office and underneath I mount stamps issued in that post office.
Obviously there are still stamps to find and many small villages with just one or two stamps.....but also places like the GPO in Dublin or Galway....or Cork, Limerick, Waterford etc where I have scores of stamps.
"Flyspecking" is a means of finding differences in stamps, clour, perforation etc. Its a means of finding more stamps "useful" than is apparent to a quck glance.
Likewise with SOAR. There is always the combination of several designs and the fact that I have a stamp issued for Euros36 (I cant do the Euro symbol LOL) or just one cent.

I also look out for SOAR issued by Emma who is on Counter Number 4 in a post office near Dublin City Centre.
I also use as many used Irish commemoratives as I can. Thanks to kiloware, I get thousands of stamps a year. What else would I do with Duplicates.

My U.S. collection is pretty much dictated by the Scott Minuteman album, which means major Scott numbers (those with or without a capital letter suffix) and no minor varieties (numbers with a lower-case suffix), except for the very few instances where the album accommodates them, which I think is limited to five imperf Farley singles.

My Esperanto topical collection is also generally limited to major distinctions in Scott, except where there are obvious minor varieties, especially imperforate versions of stamps normally issued with perfs. There are a number of Esperanto stamps like that, especially from Brazil, Hungary, and the USSR, and the imperf varieties aren't always listed in Scott.

I avoid the term "flyspecking," since it is derogatory in origin, but since my collecting activities these days are limited to the US One-Cent 1851-1861 issue pretty much all I do is look for plate varieties, including minute ones.

Inasmuch as one of my major collecting interests is double transfers, I look closely all the time. But I don't consider it "flyspecking", since they are usually major varieties.

i do not flyspeck per say but any odd looking stamp will get a closer look until I can decide what drew my attention to it.

Well it depends. For Canada, I do pay attention to varieties listed in Unitrade (not sure I'd call that "flyspecking", but I do care/collect based on tagging/perf varieties). For world wide classic, not at all. I typically - with a few exceptions - collect one per Scott # and that's it. I feel it's too broad a collecting area to get much beyond that - until of course I collect them all :).

My collecting interests are pretty wide - firstly I focus on Malta, then GB & Commonwealth, and then rest of the world. I collect both postage and revenue stamps from all these areas, and I also collect postal stationery from Malta and GB & Commonwealth.

For Malta and GB & Commonwealth, I do collect watermark and perf varieties etc. However my "rest of the world" collection is sorted using the SG Stamps of the World catalogue which has a simplified level, without taking into consideration such varieties. I don't collect plate varieties etc, since I find such collections too specialized for my taste (although I understand and appreciate the effort (and money) collectors of such items put into these collections).

I am not into flyspecking but I am into constant (plate) varieties. If you look hard and close enough, you can usually find something different from other same looking stamps. Flyspecking is finding very minor small variations in stamp details that are not constant. You could say that every stamp no matter how much they look alike with other same looking stamps may have some very slight difference when examined very closely.

As we see everyone's definition is a little different.

I don't tend to fly speck per say, unless there is a spot on my album page for varieties. Out of curiousity I will sometimes examine more closely that I have multiples of.

Dianne