Looking For New Country To Collect

PostmasterGS...thank you for the time and effort you put into your study. Very interesting. Also, I truly enjoyed the rest of your sight, especially your gorgeous album pages. I have bookmarked your site for future reference.

A couple of suggestions, first how about Lebanon, attractive stamps going back to French rule, plenty of affordable sets. Second, a personal favourite of mine is Austria.

I thoroughly enjoyed putting together a collection of used Austria back in the day.

You're into the Falkland island... how about the other British Islands in that area.

The Channel Islands are another possibility.

It looks like for most countries there is always at least one stamp that will cost much more and/or be very hard to find. Someone once told me to collect (British) Ionian Islands stamps since only three stamps are needed for completeness.

Rather than a specific country, how about an area, such as the Caribbean? Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, Bermuda, Barbados, Antigua, Grenada, etc. Beautiful classics, nice early 20th century, not a lot of wallpaper later 20th century. If you stay away from the real rarities, you can have a nice collection without obliterating your bank account.

This would have been a good start:
https://db.kelleherauctions.com/php...t=358&lang=1
C.

Try Cyprus.There aren't that many stamps to collect about 1700, but the British period can be quite challenging with all the overprint/plate number varieties on British stamps. The Republic period is pretty straight forward but one can expand to include all the watermark orientations for the early issues.
Subsequent issues are by and large mostly 'Cyprus related' and the Cyprus Postal Authority follows a rather conservative issuing policy with most years hovering around 30 or so stamps with a few exceptions

Here's another suggestion - How about USA Airmails or Ducks?

Jack Kelley

Coastwatcher suggested Portugal's African colonies, which I second. But there are paper and perf varieties in the classic issues.

Mozambique is a member of the British Commonwealth, so maybe just that one. Mozambique also has a lot of district issues, like Inhambane, Zambesia, etc..

I picked up Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Portuguese and Italian colonies. I've avoided British commonwealth in country collecting, but Trinidad and Tobago would be my first stop there (I do collect the 1930s pictorial definitive set).

PostmasterGS that is a very useful resource, however, I think that there might be a calculation error somewhere.

I chose "Broad IAs - Mint (#)" and randomly clicked on a page. By chance, the page I selected contains both Basutoland and Bechuanaland, two areas that I collect and am fairly familiar with.

The total Catalogue Value shown for Basutoland is €42,721 Bechuanaland is shown as only about half of that at €22,096. Yet, Bechuanaland contains almost twice as many stamps.
Also, (I use Gibbons), Basutoland only contains 2 or 3 stamps catalogued at over £100, whereas Bechuanaland has quite a few in excess of £100 and a number of them well into the thousands of pounds. So, unless I am missing something I think that the Total CV, for at least one of these two countries, is probably wrong.
Clive

Clive,

Keep in mind that the Broad IAs table combines all areas (postage, officials, postage dues, etc.) of that Issuing Authority into one. If you look at the Detailed IAs table, you can see where the disconnect is:

The Basutoland Officials that are skewing the numbers are this set (image is from Michel online, so these are Michel's current CVs):

Not counting that set, your assessment of the relative CVs appears to be spot on.

Thanks for the explanation Postmaster.
I had long since forgotten about the Basutoland Officials, probably because I had completely put them out of my mind as anything vaguely collectable. €41,500 for a set of 4 stamps is not for the average collector.

It was quite by chance that I chose Basutoland with this enormous anomaly - one small set of stamps, and in this case, they are not even regular postage stamps, are catalogued at 40 times the combined catalogue value of all the remaining stamps issued.
I wonder if there are any other countries with a larger or as large a ratio for a single set?

Regarding the OP's original question, other than the 4 officials, Basutoland and some of the other smaller Southern African countries such as Swaziland and less so Bechuanaland are very collectable and fairly affordable to collect to completion. Bechuanaland does have a few very expensive stamps, but If one doesn't mind a few gaps, it is also worthwhile collecting.
Clive

Thanks so much for the really great suggestions, I am leaning now towards various colonies and small countries mentioned above. I will let you know how it turns out!
Also, thanks for being so kind and accommodating to a board newbie :-)

Hi.
It has to be a country?
A designer, an artist, a theme....
Something related to your work or studies.
Now I have much to look for, but I have long thought of collecting all the world's heritage with a stamp of every motif issued by the country itself.
Regards.