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

Was hoping to hear a more positive report on the Minkus albums . The collection was a impressive work of 27 volumes but if made up with a lot of blank pages then it takes away from its appeal to a reseller .

I see this a lot with country collections , you get a few hundred stamps on the first 25 pages of a country collection then you get 100 or 150 blank pages for that country collection . I don't want a bookcase full of blank album pages . This is what Ken is seeing with these 27 volumes ,maybe the whole collection could of been better presented at 13 volumes .

This falls right in line with a previous posting when I posted that when I buy some of these 25 boxes huge lots, that 5 boxes of trash goes out my back door the same day !

This is one of the best world wide threads I have ever read. Very informative. Keep up the good work. world wide collecting is the best.

What are the top 5 countries (dead) that are the hardest to collect in world wide collections?

What are the top 5 countries (alive) that are the hardest to collect in world wide collections.

Hey dragon-- are you asking based on most difficult due to lack of availability, or due to affordability? Big difference (but Tuscany could be considered on both sides of that coin)....

Thanks, Ray

Welcome to this chapter of the Stamp Community and your kind words .

Everybody will have their own list of most difficult to collect or to find for their collection . Items do come up for auction but price becomes the biggest factor .

There are many countries listed in the catalog but 99.5% of the time are not found in Worldwide collections ,these would be places like Niger Coast Protectorate , the New Republic , Swiss Cantonal Admin . , Mariana Islands {Sp.} and Zululand

good point.

I guess price and availability. Looks like stamps with overprints on them. I can see how those would be missing. Pay 100 dollars for a stamp with an overprint or buy the original thing for 10 cents. The problem with overprints is fakes. It's just too easy to forge. South American stamps used an overprint for anything and everything. Same with Hungry. Much of the British, French, Portugal colonies have overprints. I always wonder or question how much expertise Kheller or DCA ect.. check for forgeries over 100 stamps in their lots.

The New Republic , Swiss Cantonal Admin - never heard of these countries or territories. They must be hard to get a hold of.

One more interesting thing. New to this forum but if I understand the site, 22,000 people have read this thread but there are like only 10 or so active posters. It's like a world wide stamp TV show.

I really like how Steiner pages consolidate stamps, with more than 20 per page in most cases. I've seen a lot of pages here in the forum where perhaps 12 or 15 stamps are needed to complete the page. Just not my bag. Paul's Fr. Morocco page above has 27 and how great does it look fully populated? Andyrich has shown a bunch of similar pages that are full and look wonderful as well.

yeah nice page. I like Steiner pages too.

I must disagree. The page looks horribly cluttered and detracts from the attractiveness of the stamps. The 1933 set should have been given a page in its own at least. The bottom line, with three vertical stamps then a horizontal, is particularly messy. I suspect that Steiner understandably doesn't have the time to lay out pages with due care to appearance, and it shows.

Agree with Geoff. The bottom row bothers my sense of balance and symmetry. At least move two vertical stamps to each side and place the horizontal stamp in the center. The closeness (crowding) of the rest of the stamps doesn't bother me as much but is heading towards a stock-book feel. For me, I look at these as little works of art. You would not place art on your home wall crammed together like that (at least I don't think you would). Still nice to see the sets together and complete though. The French colonies omnibus issues in particular are some of my favorites. How are the Colonial Arts sheets mounted?

The above is not a Steiner page. It looks like a Scott International page.

Lets back up for a minute , the page above is a Scott International Page ,let me go and get the same series of stamps from the Steiner Pages album .