New Member Looking For Guidance

Hello, I have dabbled with stamps over the years but am just now starting to take it seriously. This was brought about by a book I recently
read by David Parker called EUROPEAN STAMP ISSUES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. I have purchased a few stamps and am eager to get more but being a novice I know I need a place to come to get information and guidance. Hopefully I can find that here.

Its a minefield with many forgeries of overprints and fantasy local issues.

Sgt.Rock,

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

Keep in mind that a huge number of German and Austrian covers from that period of history were philatelic in nature and some never even traveled through the mails. So the stamps on them are genuine, but the cover is not exactly a normal letter but just some stamps stuck on a cover that got postmarked -- used stamps basically.

Whenever I start collecting a new country or a new area, I always try to buy as large and complete a collection of it as possible. This gets me off to a good start, and even though that album or those pages might not be cheap and often contains lots of common material, they are much less expensive than if I'd purchased them one by one and it saves from having to look for all that common material item by item. Given your area, you might try to buy a few such collections, small or large, and then build your own collection from them. One item at a time gets very expensive very quickly.