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

This post isn't to show off a great looking page, but is more in line with the theme of "sets that aren't in most collections".

I picked up a San Marino country collection in an auction recently, and bought it because of the Garibaldi set. I have the unused stamps for the lower values, but I already had them used, so I put the unused ones up on HipStamp. The collection also had C1-6, also a pretty nice set.

Just thought I'd show these, Ray

This is one thing I like about this thread, I take a look at my battered old Scott International 1 and compareto the pages posted here. I have exactly one of these San Marino stamps!

Ray ,Nice page ,see your looking at complete sets .There is something special to opening your album and seeing a complete set .It doesn't matter to me if it is valued at $1.00 or $500.00 it has a certain satisfaction to it .

Guess I don't get much reaction to my statement about buying and building a collection by adding complete sets . I just got a thing going on to fill my albums with a lot of complete sets ,sort of my thing right now .

Floor every stamp I've collected is in a complete set, a single variety like perfs, papers, and shades, or a partial set acquired knowing I was going to complete the set. At this stage, with almost 40,000 stamps in my collection, I have fewer than 20 incomplete sets. Some just need attention, e.g. modern Canada where I may have 1-3 stamps needed to complete very long definitive sets issued over several years time. Others, I sometimes buy incomplete sets where a complete set is too difficult to find intact. When I do this, I only buy units that have a high percentage of the cat value of the complete set. It's easier to buy groups of high values and complete the set with the low values than the other way around.

I have had to put together many sets from Mexico and Argentina piecemeal as I have not been able to find almost any complete sets from these countries. There is a fair amount of material around, just not in sets. All of this said, I can see where enjoyment could be derived from acquiring whatever the collector can find, filling up spaces along the way. For me, collecting a lot of stamps I simply don't like just to fill in spaces has never been an option, so I stick with complete sets of what I do like: DADO - definitives, airs, dues, officials.

floortrader - I like complete sets too! The bigger the better. One day I will count how many stamps I have.

Floortrader, you have a wonderful collection, and I'm sure that all of us would love to see it someday!

Complete sets don't always work, as you know, at least for those of us trying to complete our 1840-1940 Big Blues. In the past when I was specializing in 2 US stamps, I couldn't see myself as a WW collector, but I did think that it would be fun for after retirement.

Well, I have found my old boyhood joy again just filling those spaces-- even though it's much more than just filling those spaces (Like when I filled that Syria 106c space a couple of years back!!)

But I still really appreciate seeing a great set, and have followed every one of the hundreds of posts in this thread, one of the best on SCF, and will continue to do so as long as you keep posting!!

Thanks for all of your efforts, Ray

Ray thanks for the nice things ,you posted .

Stamp collecting is a journey for anybody , the path I took is the same as many other collectors . It seems like many just quit and / or found other interest or other reason they left the hobby .I just stayed with it .

I got to talk to people at Kelleher Auctions ,they said some interesting things about the stamp market and they are positive about the future . They also gave me a positive comment about my collecting .

Hey @floortrader, I can also say I love watching this thread and seeing what you will post next. Although I have more than 100,000 different stamps, I don't have nearly the collection you have. And since my WW collection is still relatively new to me, the huge jump in stamps came only 5 years ago, I haven't done anything specific with trying to complete sets that I would really like to have. All I have really done so far is organization and remounting what I have on Steiner pages. I'm probably gonna stop serious remounting when I hit the end of 1959, but there are definitely some sets and decent value stamps beyond that that will deserve a remount on a nice page. I just can't see myself remounting everything from the 1960s and 1970s. The only thing I have done as far as acquiring more stamps is working on my bucket list for the U.S. I acquired #1 and #2 last year and this year I am filling in blanks for whatever 19th century U.S. that I can away with (i.e. what my wife won't yell too loudly about). I posted in another thread that I would really like to fill the U.S. spaces from the 1947 International Part I. This won't be cheap, but it's probably doable.

Nick ---Wish you the best with finishing the U.S. part of your collection .Hope you scan and shown what you done on completetion .

Where does the stamp community goes from here ?

What we lost in 2023 and 2024 ?

Other writers say we lose this or that famous person ,a writer or researcher or activist . But we are losing something bigger and more important .

We are losing the beginner collector ,the person who buys the albums,stockbooks hinges ,mounts and the nickle and dime stamps ,basicly the buyers on ebay . That is the GREATEST LOST .

A lot of collectors who buy collections and larger lots from the auction firms .they take out their wanted material and sell the rest . But that "sell the rest " is not selling . So that limits their buying new material because of the backup of their excess material . This hurts auction sales and limits their desire to buy more .


So now even ebay sellers don't want to carry material , the stamp dealers if you want to call them that ,want to buy on Saturday and sell on Monday ,no reserve inventory don't want to build inventory they want to sell ,if they have a reduce sales month they are not buying more .

That is where we are at in 2024 looking into 2025 .

Funny you should mention that today, @floortrader. We were chatting at our weekly stamp meetup when one fellow said he wanted to pare down his collection. (Nothing 'world class', but a lifelong collector with binders in several rooms of his house.) What should he move on first? The consensus was, whatever sells today.

The implication being that it wasn't, keep what you enjoy most. It was, sell what is most saleable, because it won't saleable be for long.

Indeed. Get the China out of the album and on to ebay fast.