Looking For Ideas On What To Collect

Just looking for ideas.

If you were going to just collect COVERS from 21st century (i.e., 2000 till now) what would be interesting to collect.

I am looking for things that would be unusual in some way or other. Maybe hard to find uses? Possibly with some theme but not necessarily.

Any suggestions?

Plate Number Coils have only existed since 1981 and can make for an interesting collection

Peter

OK, I am pretty new to collecting stamps. I don't know what plate number coils are. Can you explain or post an example? What specifically do you find interesting about them?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/US-2002-37...AOSwp-9c9BTD

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PNC5-32c-F...AOSw9CNeqe2A

Banknoteguy, a Plate Number Coil or PNC is a coilstamp with a plate number printed on it. Coil stamps are sold by the post office in rolls from 50 to 10000 stamps. Some stamps in those rolls will have a small letter and number printed on the face to indicate the printer and the plate(s) used.

Peter

OK, Peter, I understand. Anybody with other suggestions?

One idea I have been thinking about are covers or parts of covers for letters/packages with lots of postal markings and large dollar amounts of stamps but I don't know if people still send letters/packages that way or not. Or how to find such items. Most (all?) of the packages I get have computer generated labels and I can't seem to get very interested in that. I used to get large envelopes/packages from overseas that looked like below. I would cut off the postage and have some of these kinds of items:

Anything with a genuine stamp, and better with a commemorative stamp and a postmark would be just fine. They are becomming so scarce, as most buisness are using meters. They are tomorrows history, today.

Those 'queen's head' stamps are known as Machins and they are a popular area. Machins are abundant but in recent years, the new editions have been used less and less.

There are multiple ways to collect them. If you're interested in covers, you could try to obtain a cover with one, and only one Machin on - and do this for every Machin value ever issued.

If you are interested in pairs, there are lots of Machins from booklets which exist in dissimilar pairs (eg a 7p joined to a 1p).

You might fasten on some particular event or social trend that is of interest to you and collect covers which commemorate or reflect it somehow.

A few days ago there was a thread which started with an interesting cancel mentioning the NHS in the time of COVID 19.
https://goscf.com/t/72105&whichpage=2&
Are other countries or municipalities doing anything similar?

Personally, I have a growing interest in unusual date cancelations. For example:

• Stamps canceled prior to their issue date


• Hand cancelation date different from the spray-on cancelation's date (In theory, there is no need to be canceled twice, but it happens often. On rare occasions I see something hand canceled with a date prior to the spray-on cancel date.)


• Other date oddities, one of which I will address in a separate thread sometime in the future

Personally, I got started when my grandmother gave me at post card postmarked at her father's general store where he was the postmaster (small town Indiana). Does you family have roots anywhere in particular you could focus on?

hoosierboy said,


Well yeah, my father's family all lived in and around Clinton, Iowa. So that could be interesting.

jleb1979 said,


Also interesting. A guy showed me a couple covers postmarked 7 Dec 1941 from Pearl Harbor. I thought those were quite interesting. He had a name for them (a type of military communication to families) -- I am well cards.

Hello Bank Note Guy. As you investigate collecting areas I'd suggest you keep in mind how you plan to store and show - and maybe even exhibit what you eventually collect. If large stamps on packages, that could be a challenging storage item. Also, you might want to look into what the costs are for albums, pvc collection pages, and mounts. DM me for some hints along these lines.

CanadaStamp

Thanks for the suggestions. I was not thinking of storing whole packages just the section of wrapping with postage and postal marks. Not sure I would even consider packages where the postage and markings are spread around or on cardboard unless it was pretty thin. I'm just noodling this one around still.

As for storing/mounting, I create my own custom pages (see example below) and use archival sheet protectors in three ring binders. And as for exhibiting, yes it is something I am considering.

I would DM you but I don't know what DM means!

I would add that there are other 'unknowns' about collecting modern postal history. Cardboard mailers contain large amounts of acid, no one knows what might happen to self adhesives after 25 or more years, computer/vender postage print may fade after a number of years.
Don

That is interesting. Is there any indication or studies that show whether self adhesives have a high acid content?