Where To Get Common Worldwide Stamps

I've just run into a problem. I managed to convince a friend to pick up philately as a hobby after telling him the story of the first Latvian stamps and he got really enthused at putting together a pre-Soviet collection, 1919-1940. He had an ebay account, I got him set up on HipStamp and Delcampe and he went to work.

Except he can't actually find many stamps to buy. Most issues simply aren't available, at all. It isn't like they're expensive, they're not even uncommon, there just aren't any dealers who handle it. So I went looking for dealers off of the auction sites and I'm coming up empty too. Even dealers in Europe, they have some modern stamps but nothing older and that brings me to a problem that my wife has been having, the opposite issue.

She just came back to stamp collecting Japan and she's having a hell of a time coming up with anything more modern. Her collection stops in the early 90s and she wants to continue her collection. She has a lot of the older material, just nothing modern and there just doesn't seem to be anywhere out there that she can go. There are a few pieces here and there, but since all of this is cheap, issued in the tens or hundreds of millions, most dealers don't bother.

I'm really at a loss on what to tell either of them. For my wife, she'd love to just order entire year sets for modern-ish Japan and she can't find any and for my friend, he'd just like to be able to find anyone selling chunks of old Latvia and there doesn't seem to be any.

Ideas?

Not sure what your wife wants to spend but Lot 315 in the upcoming Aldrich sale fits the bill for Japan:

https://stampauctionnetwork.com/B/b13016.cfm#83

I have a good time with APS circuits. Has either of your "clients" tried any of these?


Peter

For Latvia try European auction houses. Look at lots 14529 - 14540 in the upcoming Gartner auction:

https://stampauctionnetwork.com/CG/...276.cfm#1156

I was going to post this same question. I've been working on Scott International 1840-1940 for about 2 years, have bought tons of feeder albums. Decided to focus a little bit and wanted to fill out first pages for Latin America countries. I've been working on Panama and there are about 5 stamps (all catalog value $1 or less) which I cannot find anywhere. Not listed on hipstamp or ebay (been searching for about a month). No Panama collections (or singles) currently listed on SAN. Some album pages on ebay which sometimes have 1 stamp I need (plus 99 that I don't). I'm almost at a loss how to proceed. Other LatAm countries similar. I think Colombia will be even harder. Nicaragua at least is easy though.

That's fine and all, but my co-worker (friend) doesn't even have *A* stamp, much less is going to want to spend hundreds of dollars on stamps. How the hobby thinks it's going to continue if absolute beginner collectors can't get even common, inexpensive stamps, I have no idea.

Hmm. Most of my lots sell at around a penny a stamp. . Latvua's relatively obscure in collecting terms, so you probably find fewer good-sized lots atlow prices. This seller seems to have cheap modern Japanese stamps

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/shokita3...tml?_ipg=200

Would one consider pre-soviet Latvia a beginners area? Even 40 years ago when you could have walked into Gimbels and bought stamps in their stamp dept you would have had a hard time finding much on Latvia and Japan. Even though these stamps may be low catalog value easy accessibility has always been an issue in some areas. Perhaps the challenge of the chase is what will make collecting these areas satisfying.

Have you looked at Stamporama? They have approvals of modern Japan for 5 cents to 10 cents per stamp. You need to be a paid member to buy.

TBH, I think your search skills are suspect . There are plenty of prewar Latvian stamps here; took me two minutes:

https://www.delcampe.net/en_US/coll...amps/latvia/
https://www.philasearch.com/en/dose...n&postype=PH
https://www.ebay.de/b/Briefmarken-a...5/bn_2388426
https://www.sandafayre.com/latvia-stamps?g=1

As for modern Japan, your wife may have much better luck buying year sets instead of looking for individual stamps. Most modern issues are best done this way. Here are some resources:
https://japanphilatelic.com/
http://www.japanese-stamps.com/
https://isjp.org/

I don't know that I'd consider pre-Soviet Latvia a beginning area, but I didn't pick it either. Chances are excellent that if he can't get what he wants, he'll just give up and go elsewhere. We do live in a modern Internet-enabled, worldwide economy. It just seems absurd that it's so hard to find cheap stamps that ought to be widely available. I guess it's back to looking.

Here is a HipStamp search with results filtered to show only listings for Latvia between 1918 and 1940, as well as showing only one search result per seller.

https://www.hipstamp.com/category/e...h_per_seller

When you click on the link and get to that page, every stamp shown is from a different dealer. "71 listings found," means there are 71 dealers with listings for Latvia. Above each stamp image is a tab that says, "xx more from this seller" There are 5 sellers with 20 or more listings maatching Latvia between 1918 and 1940. When you click on that listing you will be taken to that dealer's store. Unfortunately it shows you the entire store inventory, so you have to conduct a similar new search within their store.

In the store search box, on the left, put in Latvia. Then, again on the left, select, under Categories, Europe.
Next, again on the left, scroll down to where you see the heading Year of Issue, and put your beginning and end dates in the boxes below it, and press Enter (there is no clickable button).

Above the right-most stamp in the top row is a dropdown box to choose your sort criteria. The ones you will probably be most interested in are Country/Catalog Number and Price Low to High.

That should get your friend started on finding Latvian stamps.

TTSC

Exactly what is being sought for Latvia and Japan?
• In the case of Latvia, packet-type material at a penny a stamp? Maybe GeoffHa has some, otherwise, older Latvia has been somewhat harder to find than that. Its stamps were never as common as you seem to think. Your friend is perhaps not looking at all the options including ebay auctions and also perhaps needs to look at the Scott catalog in the library for some guide to pricing.
• All MNH? That's going to be difficult for pre-Soviet era Latvia. I have seen a number of small to very small mixed mint and used collections broken out from worldwide collections. I bought a small one at ebay auction a couple of months ago.
• MNH collections at 10% of Scott? Not going to happen. There are plenty of used lots of post-1990 Japan for sale/auction on ebay. I have seen MNH, used and mixed very modern groups and collections on HipStamp in the recent past. Since recent face value of Japan stamps are about US50c or US80c and there is no glut of postage as there is in the US, there are no great bargains possible with very modern Japan.
• What Gibby01 said. Gimbels, etc. (actually, there was a franchisee for the stamp dept.) probably had a Latvia packet listed but it likely wouldn't have been in stock after the first "run" was sold out.
• "Common worldwide stamps" is the title, but that's not what's being sought here.

Find someone who collects Stamps from the Pre war Baltic States, but doesn't act as a trader. then ask ifthey have any surplus to get rid of. I wanted some map back and banknote issues and couldn't buy them. Though I didn't explore every avenue. I was sitting next to a guy in an auction and heard him say he collected the Baltic states. After a brief chat I got the stamps I needed for the cost of the postage. MNH cheap is probably a contradiction in terms.

hy-brasil is correct, Gimbels had Latvia packets. If we could only transport back to Westchester 1964.

hy-b: if I had Baltic States to get rid of, I might get more than a penny a stamp . Sadly, it's mainly western Europe, Australia, US etc - lots on the market, cheap to build a basic collection. Having said that, when I collected everything, I acquired a reasonable Baltic collection from auction purchases without spending the earth.