Inherited Stamp Collection.

Hello all.

I have recently inherited a stamp collection from my father. The collection is mainly Polish with a few random stamps thrown in.
My father was from Polish decent.

I have no interest right now in trading/selling. To be honest I have no idea about stamps so more research is needed.

But looking through his collection has made me want to start the hobbie myself.

I was going to link each page of the folder so you could see but making the photos 300kb makes them not viewable.

But feel free to ask and I can send a link via email to the collection.

Thanks all.

Hi Darren,
Take a meander through 9 pages of Poland here
https://goscf.com/t/53110 br /

Welcome. Perhaps you can take a couple pictures of the oldest stamps to give us a flavor of the collection?

Thanks for the welcome. I will be sure to check out the link you provided.

Here are just a few pics of the oldest looking stamps.

Darren83,

Enjoy having fun with stamps! That is the name of this game.

Collecting for the enjoyment of collecting, whatever that might be, is the name of the game. Don't hesitate to ask questions especially if you need basic information and especially more advanced sources of information for any possible topic. You should be able to find folks on this board a little further along on their collecting journey glad to share experiences.

My personal bias is a used stamp loses the story of its journey in the postal service when it is removed from the cover it transported to its destination. Collecting postal history adds a whole new aspect to your journey in our hobby.

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ

I'd strongly suggest checking out the appropriate volume of the Scott Catalog from your local library, and using it to make sense of and sort what you have. You can also use stampworld.com , that site does a very nice job of listing stamp issues in chronological order (though it doesn't use any catalog numbers). If non-USA stamps are something you want to pursue with any level of seriousness/consistency, be on the look out for catalogs from Michel, Yvert, Stanley Gibbons, AFA, Sakura, etc and/or country-specific specialist catalogs (for Poland, Fischer is the likely go-to); ebay is a good source for these, just don't overpay. For USA, Scott is the best choice.
And as a word of warning, ignore the catalog values, they're grossly inflated for all but the rarest issues.

OP is showing as being the UK, so Scott is unlikely to be in the library. (Assuming...)

Darren, you shouldn't care one bit about 2023 catalogue values at this point, so I would check locally and on ebay for a ten- or twenty-year-old Fischer or Michel, or maybe the appropriate volume of Scott worldwide or Gibbons, to familiarize yourself with what you have and what is out there. Which one you pick might depend on whether you strongly want an English-language catalogue.

Old catalogues are cheap. The shipping might cost as much or more than the catalogue.

Stanley Gibbons just published a new edition of its 'Poland' catalogue.

https://www.stanleygibbons.com/prod...-2nd-edition

You might choose to look on ebay for a first edition that will be much cheaper.

Michel publishes an 'Osteuropa' catalogue that covers Poland and neighbouring countries. It is in German, but might be a better choice.
There are more editions of it, so you might find an old one for a reasonable price. Newer ones are as expensive as the Stanley Gibbons one that you, likely, can order post free delivery in the UK from Stanley Gibbons.