Pleased To Meet You All: Collecting By The Book

I have enjoyed following discussions and reviews here, and thought it more polite if introduced myself and regularly contributed.

I am an aspirational collector of US and international stamps, nominally focused on pre-1940 or so for both. I would love to complete a Big Blue (Scott International 1840-1940) and Scott National, though likely not on Scott pages.

I am also an avid reader of history, and often align my short-term philatelic interests with whatever I'm reading. I've often thought about working to form collections focused on Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower or Guns of August, though I spend more time thinking than writing things down.

When I have taken the time to write things down, I've worked with creating my own album pages to better cover what I "think" should be in a representative country collection or a history-themed collection. I work as a data scientist by day, and so will experiment often with combining available philatelic databases with album page production software to create something that feels right to me.

I appreciate the time of all the contributors here, and look forward to communicating with you all.

Welcome to the forum!

I'm one of the Big Blue chasers, and avid followers of Jim Jackson's blog also. I have about 400 more to go to hit 30,000, and they're getting tougher and tougher, but I still have hundreds of minimum value stamps to find.

Good luck with your chase, and WELCOME to SCF!!
Ray

Great to hear from you and the ideas for your collection. I love both of those Tuchman books. I'm reading The Proud Tower now and can see the stamp-history connection.

Welcome! I'm relatively new here as well, as I've only been collecting for a few months. I enjoy hearing about everyone's individual collecting goals.

I too am drawn to stamps as a country's/people's historical record in miniature. That's an interesting idea basing a collection on a book! I have only read The March of Folly by Tuchman, but I really enjoyed it.

w0x0f,

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. Sounds like you are a perfect candidate to become a postal history collector?

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ

Sounds great. I am a novice Big Blue filler. Good luck on the chase.

Welcome to the forum. Would love to see a few pages that you have created.

Dan