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Greetings!
I have been lurking for a while in this Community, but this is my introductory post.
I have been a stamp collector since my early teenage years. As with many collectors, it has been an "on again / off again" thing most of my adult life. As they say ... "life happens" ... college, careers, kids, etc. The stamp collection gathers dust for years, then it calls and you come back ... then you get busy. When I traveled to a foreign country, I would try to purchase some mint stamps from the country at the post office, which made for some interesting "populated areas" in an otherwise sparse albu.
I started out collecting everything, somewhat indiscriminately. As I learned more, I became a little more selective about condition, grade, whether to buy quantity or quality, etc. When I retired, and planned to spend more time with my stamps, I realized that I could not collect the whole world, all the way into the present. Specialization has always been difficult to me, but I made a solid decision to dispose of every stamp in my collection that was issued after 1963. So I did. Everything, except Iceland.
I had been collecting year sets from Iceland since I first visited the country, and I decided that I would keep them, and work that country backwards, at least until I got to the point where I could not afford to fill more spaces. Fortunately, they stopped issuing new postage stamps (at least for now), so it is a finite country to collect. I think we will need a new term in the philatelic lexicon. "Dead countries" refers to stamp-issuing entities that no longer exist independently, or that no longer have a separate postal system. Iceland continues to have a working postal system, they just don't need to issue new stamps, or create new stamp designs. They always have the option to resume, or to reprint existing designs.
I am also a beekeeper, and I have started a collection of stamps, covers and philatelia related to honey bees and beekeeping. There are some interesting possibilities, since the US Postal Service still ships bees in the mail.
Finally, I am a volunteer with Stamps for the Wounded (SFTW), which is based here in the Washington DC area (Dunn Loring / Vienna, Virginia). At present, I am the president of the organization. It is a huge job. It takes up most of my time. So, once again, my own collection sits, calling for attention.
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Posted 05/13/2025 10:56 am
