Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

floortrader, your posts provide needed entertainment and inspiration. I wish that 2026 shall allow everyone to complete (or at least start) some of your Someday projects. I know I have a few.

Some day for me is when I get to retire. Then it's stamping all day

I have just spent some very enjoyable long holiday hours reading this thread through - and totally enjoyed all of it.
I took some notes along the way then decided to share them - not in a particular order but my big takeaways from this thread so far ...

General stamp tips
Make sure that you move from accumulation to collection.

Collect what appeals to you and buy for enjoyment not as an investment.

Don't confuse "collecting the whole world" with "completing the whole world"

Do not get caught up in 'treasure hunting', the hobby has more to offer than seeking something 'rare'.

As soon as you can make a want lists of what you do not have.

Choose the album carefully as it is a pain to switch albums. Steiner pages means you are not locked to an album system with non-standard size pages and expensive binders. With Steiner pages you can adapt, remove and replace of pages which the other systems don't. The "D" ring binders keep the album flat when open.

Concentrate your collecting to one country at a time in order to focus efforts and perhaps get "to the stage where you can retire the country" before moving on to the next. Also a country at a time focus means that want lists are easier to manage.
Aim to buy complete sets where possible.

Inpirational quotes from Floortrader

"Stamp collecting isn't about what you have. Plus it is not about what you can spend. It is about what your doing with what you got."

"… we are in a hobby that you can still enjoy yourself and still build a decent collection for $10.00 a week."

"Stamp collecting is a journey, It is not a race. Because in a race there are many who are faster and have much more money than you. Your goal should be to always move forward and enjoy the steady progress at your own speed."

"The goal is never to finish, but to see how far one can go down the path of a Worldwide Collection."

Thank you sharonb for the recap. Lots of wise words in there :)

Stamp collecting is a diverse hobby. For some, the acquisition and accumulation of stamps is the main joy. Cataloging, printing album pages, and mounting stamps is considered tedious rather than enjoyable. They may claim that SOMEDAY they will get around to organizing it, because that is what stamp collectors are supposed to do, but it never happens because it would be a chore rather than a fun project. Those unorganized accumulations that auction houses sell could have brought great joy to the original owners and more joy for the next owners who eagerly await to sort and organize them. Collect, or accumulate, however makes you happy.

I am one of the few collectors who also cares about value; what was spent and how much will I get back when I sell or my heirs sell. Many times I still buy a stamp knowing I will take a bath. Other lots I bought because it was a great deal. Stamp collecting can also be for enjoyment. Most of my collection is identified properly in an album, but still have boxes of someone's accumulation.

The other interesting task is creating more than one WW collection. For example, you can have scott blues but HE harris WW vol1 and vol2 as a side collection

Getting good value is sage advice for anything someone spends their money on. The problem with stamps is nobody knows what stamps are going to be worth 10 or 20 years from now. Unlike collecting gold or silver coins, there is no intrinsic value in stamps to keep a minimum floor on prices. If new generations of stamp collectors don't materialize to prop up prices, who knows how low stamp prices could go in the future.

I assume that most stamps will be worth less (catalog may continue to dream) except for the classics.

"I assume that most stamps will be worth less (catalog may continue to dream) except for the classics."

I can't remember how to quote someone, but regarding the quote above from angore, I would agree with that as I assume the number of collectors (thus demand) will continue to decrease as the years go by. It is unfortunate.

Good to have you back on board, Chris.

Classics - by which I mean pre-1900 to be generous, are often common. Mint in fine condition is another matter. However, if the market keeps shrinking, even your mint QV £5 orange will become a less and less sure "investment".

GeoffHa - Very true. Mint classics, especially the high quality certified and graded ones, will mostly likely retain their values better than most, but they aren't immune to the law of supply and demand.

Not be too morbid, but there is going to be a lot of stamps coming onto the market in the next 10-20 years as the Silent and Boomer collectors pass away. Combine that with dealers closing shop as they lose their customers to the actuarial tables and you could see a lot of price pressure on stamps, even "investment grade" ones. Unless stamp collecting gets rediscovered by a new generation, and they have the disposable income to purchase the more expensive ones, there seems to be nothing but downward pressure on stamp prices.

Sorry to hear that stamp collecting is dying , I hear that around 1970's and seen the same around 1990 . Stamp Collecting was on it's last leg .

It was terrible
I would attend a Rasdale Stamp Auction and buy huge mixture lots at the opening bid . Many lots I would not bid because I had enough stamps for years . At check out after everybody left . Both Kevin and Kim would help load my Chev Blazer{this was back when you could throw a full size bathtub into the back }.
After my purchases were loaded all those old bulk lots that were left over were loaded by Kevin and Kim into my truck ,sort like clean out the auction room and FLOORTRADER will haul it away .

Yes that was when stamp collecting was dying mid 1990's .

So I stacked all these boxes along one wall in the garage so after a few auctions I had my wall of stamps ,I even had to consolidate the boxes just to get more boxes into the garage .

Terrible stamps dying and me building a 25 ft wall yes it went pass my work bench . That was with the extra bedroom closets were filled too !

Had enough stamps for the rest of my life . Albums by the ton .

Then this PEZ collector decided to sell his Pez collection around 1997 and the stamp collecting hobby changed . What I was selling at $8.00 a cigar box thru the mail was now getting at auction $25.00 to $48.00 sold I listed hundreds of them and just got tired of it ,so my wife helped sell all these boxes . So I purchased her a brand new car for helping .

The hobby came back to life .
Now the question is will the hobby do it again . ?

Yes but it will be different a lot different .

Why because your not looking in the right place . Your looking at cranky old men . That's why .

The ART world ,Silver and Gold and coins are Maxed out , but they keep printing dollars both here and around the world . Do you know more paper money is printed around the world than the value of all the stamps ever printed . The whole world of stamps does not equal one day of money being created .
So we now got 25,000 different groups around the world who if they decided to buy every stamp in the world they got the 300,000,000 dollars to control that market .

How big do you think this market is ? not big enought to stop anybody from taking it over .

So as long as they are printing fiat dollars I will keep buying stamps as enjoyment , the day will come when things change .

Floortrader - I don't think gold and silver are maxed out. Precious metals have seen their biggest year since 1979, especially silver and platinum. Why? Because of inflation, fiat currency devaluation, and the fiscal irresponsibility of government overspending. Unless those factors change, they should continue to do well.

A personal story: In 1986, 13-year-old me saved up his small allowance to purchase a few Ameripex '86 SS sets for $7.92 each. Today I MIGHT be able to sell them for what I originally paid. The problem is that with almost 40 years of inflation I would need to sell them for $23 to break even. That same year my dad purchased a 100-ounce silver bar for $630. It is now worth around $7000 and only needs to be worth $1863 to have kept up with inflation.

If stamps were an asset class that were seen as protection against inflation and currency devaluation, then one or more of those financial whales you mentioned should have already cornered the stamp market.

I'm guessing you're referring to a run up in prices (speculative bubble) that has blown up and popped sporadically? There's no arguing that the number of stamp collectors these days is way less than it was even at the bottom of the market in decades past.



APS membership keeps sinking; even if it's not a perfect proxy for the hobby as a whole (and it isn't; the argument has been made that an increasing percentage of collectors eschew organized philately), it still provides a reasonable estimate of the 'trend line'.

There's a difference between a periodically slow market, which has happened in the past and is often accompanied by people saying the sky is falling, and a long, slow decline that we've been seeing for many years now.



This is spot on. Stamp collecting isn't getting rediscovered by a new generation, and all the well-intentioned efforts to try and bring kids into the fold just aren't working; or, at least, aren't working to the extent necessary to stave off this outcome. There will always be the market for a Penny Black or a dollar Columbian, but most stamp values are going to fall precipitously in the next 10-20 years.

And personally, I'm fine with that. Frankly, it's nice to have a hobby where there's no inherent value in the item collected (bits and scraps of old paper). As has been pointed out elsewhere, there's a price floor to coins based on the value of the metal contained. If I had as many coins as I had stamps, I'd need to invest in safes, alarms, etc. No need in the philatelic world, at least not for the material I have!