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

This is the start of a new year ,we need something different here . Tired of the usually "how much is it worth " and the "here is a bad Ebay seller " postings .

Most of the readers want to see new stuff and how others collect , some here like to view stuff they rarely seen , Some like full or completed album pages .Some want to see more detail than just the basics of filling spaces on album pages .

On the subject of " Filling Spaces " website . They discussed large worldwide collections but the subject there is 7 years old and I would be interested in hearing about other collectors who are pushing forward and still active in putting together decent size collections .

There are a lot of claims out there of so and so at our stamp club has a larger collection , we all hear the claims of "mine is bigger " but nobody ever heard of them and we never lost a stamp lot to them as the high bidder at a stamp auction . At a certain level all those who have massive collections are known to the major stamp auction firms and the staff .

Then there are a lot of questions on the progress of going from 1,000 stamps to the 100,000 stamp level . There are a lot of bumps along the way, but by the time you reach over 100,000 stamps your on your way and every addition is a call to go further and stay focus .

Let's see where we go in 2023

How do you define a "stamp"? Many many countries including at time the US issue "stamps" that could but were never intended to frank a letter or package carried in the mail. There are stamps issued and then there are "stamps" issued. How would you tabulate the difference?

Most of us would agree on stamps for postal use listed in a postage stamp catalogue - some catalogues exclude more than others.

"How do you define a "stamp " ---The same as most collectors ,95% percent of them are as GeoffHa said they are in a postage stamp catalogs . The other 5% are my Cinderella collection and my Fakes and Forgery collection ,both are in a seperate set of binders .

Floortrader - Realistically, all of us worldwide collectors on SCF are at various levels in our collections. Obviously, you are a very experienced collector with an impressive collection. You have seen a lot and know a lot about collecting the world. "New stuff" to me is "old hat" to you. Case in point, I recently dug up this set scanned below from a WW box lot I bought at the Stamp Out Cancer Auction in the Quad Cities. I had never even heard of Oltre Giuba before. It existed as a "country" for less than two years, very new to me. You could have this whole "country" complete in your collection, hard to find stuff new to you.

I like using Vario blank pages for mounting items such as this. I just make me a label, slip the stamps in, and put the page in the back of my Italy book.

I try to post things that are a little different, and will try to post more items this year, but some of you have been around the world compared to me.

Linus

Nice set Linus
I'll have to add my entire collection of 1
Jubaland

Floortrader, Are you up to 330K? I'm up to 118,606 and getting from 100,000 to 118,000 has been a bit of a crawl. I'd be farther along, but it's easy to get distracted. I include anything that could be used as a stamp to mail something. I think a collection to maybe 200K is very doable for anyone who has the time. One could sift though box lots and sell the extras and build a very decent collection. That would be my advice. Another way is to go to a dealer or stamp show and pick from an album. 10 cents a stamp is a popular way and if you get a whole bunch, it's OK to haggle the price per stamp down.

Question from someone whose barely in the 20-30,000 range. At what point are your increases based mostly on packing in modern CTO stamps from Eastern European and Asian countries? These stamps are cheap and plentiful. It seems that someone could actually ramp up quickly and cheaply while ignoring most of the old classical material which is more expensive and lower in volume. Not sure how much volume alone should be the main indicator of a great stamp collection.

This is squarely in the collect-what-you-like category, and value your accomplishment accordingly. If you want to fill as many spaces as possible, go for it. Could you pay me to study your "complete" Equatorial Guinea album? Not a chance. But there is nothing wrong with trying.

Picking single stamps can be fun, but it won't drive numbers. If you want to bump up hundreds or thousands of stamps at a crack, you probably need to pick up country collections.

I'll be following this thread. I'm at 96K unique and continuing to count as I work through what I have. My story is simple. Before 3 years ago, I maybe had 8K stamps total and more than half of that came to me as a junk purge through one of my daughter's friends at college. Then in November of 2019, I was offered a collection (nearly every stamp hinged) that was started in the 1920s and the person had collected worldwide for the next 50+ years. Of course I couldn't resist as I had always wanted a serious worldwide collection. This has been my remounting project that I have posted about. I don't have much by way of high value items and I certainly have a percentage of forgeries and damaged stamps, but to me, it's simply about the stamps and the history.

Whatever keeps triggering endorphins. Once it becomes "work" it may be time to reassess.

LANDOQUAKES ---- The large stamp count today is much more doable in the 2020's than the 200,000 different counts reported by the advance collectors in the 1990's time frame .

I would say a heck of a lot easier than the 1920's to the 1940's when a 100,000 was the ultimate goal.

The second part of your question or posting about picking up stamps at dealers or stamp shows is something that is dropped by the time your past the 150,000 different stamps it would be a waste of effort to deal with them, you would be picking up too few stamps.

Gibby 01 ----- Most of the stamps that a long term Worldwide Collector picks up to rearch the first 100,000 different stamps would be the cheap Eastern European and Asia countries , that would be done early in their journey to build a decent collection.

You are right they are cheap and plentiful, that's why it is understood to be picked up in mixtures and packets at a much earlier period of the journey when building your collection .

LINUS --- Nice set , yours are better than mine . This set is mostly poorly perforated and has issues with the gum apply . Your set is in premium condition and believe it has extra value due to condition .

CJD---- "Fill as many spaces as possible ,go for it " I am sure you would agree without winning the Lottery I would have no chance to compete against others to get those stamps that were in the great collections of the past .

Your correct in your statement that the only way this can be done is to buy country collections but even this has limits, at some point a advance collector starts looking at sections of a country like just buying Turkey in Asia or the Belgium Railroad stamps but just a specialized part of a country collection . This is what I did at Michael Rogers Auctions and purchased just the China Peoples Republic Liberated Areas . Right now working to establish a collection of Bangladesh overprints ,there are hundreds of them but nobody has yet figured out what is fake and what is real .I hope to show it to you in a few weeks ,mounted .

Nicholas ---Agree and welcome to the journey ,I always wanted a serious worldwide collection that was my goal also .
I wanted to see how far I can go with it ,It isn't about the money or having some stamp everybody else wanted ,it was about relaxing time and the quiet time of just sitting down and closing off the rest of the world.