Plate Number, Mr Zip, Mail Early In The Day, And Other Margin Marking Collectability

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This question happens to be specific to U.S. stamps, but it's not unique to classic or modern.

I know that some people collect plate blocks, Mr. Zip blocks, and mail early in the day blocks. And I have heard there are some who collect plate number singles and Mr. Zip singles.

But what about pairs? I have multiple hundreds of pairs of MNH / MH stamps that either include a plate number single, Mr Zip single, the mail early in the day tab, and some with the (C) copyright tab. All of these are post-1935, so there isn't likely anything of value.

Is there any real reason to keep these as pairs? I can see keeping the plate # pairs together, but the others just seem not especially interesting as pairs.

Perhaps all best used as postage?

I'll add that for any of these that are plate # pairs, I'm pretty sure I have multiple plate blocks of the same stamp. The previous steward of this collection apparently wanted every plate position of every plate number. Cannot understand wanting both blocks and pairs. Maybe it used to be a thing.

Note: I wouldn't dream of separating pairs of stamps prior to 1935.

I've never heard of anyone collecting these types of pairs.

Very unusual to collect pairs. Considering the street value of most mint post-WWII U.S. stamps, I would be inclined to use them as postage. The used margin imprint copies are likely worth just as much as mint.

Or it could have been worse ... consider this page of what some collector saved as Zip singles!!!

To use you term OP, yes complete number and position collecting has been a thing and for some continues to be a thing.

You do not mention which stamps have just pairs nor the shape of the pair. However with some of the very large plate number stamps where plate number took up much more than one or two spaces of selvage to create a block of 4. But as the plate numbers increased to three selvage spaces and beyond up to 6 then there was no real way to collect the standard block of six for the mail early and block of four for Mr. Zip. That is when just collection the entire strip of ten, two deep lead to collecting plate strips of 20.

Almost all the pairs I have are for stamps that had just one plate number. The other piece of selvage is blank. That said, some pairs are of the style that includes an interior stamp, so just the one stamp has selvage with the plate number, mr zip, etc. I do have some panes of 16 or 20 that include the multiple plate numbers and other margin items.

I'll post some examples later.

Here's some examples.

The 1st picture is mr zip and mail early tabs, with one (c) tab in the mix. Some of the examples have both tabs next to each other, but the bulk of what I have have one blank tab either on the wide or short side. And you can see some single tab with depth of two.

The 2nd is what I referred to as plate number pairs. Just so happens many of the plate number examples shown have 2 plate numbers, but these are definitely not the dominant varieties of what I have. Some stamps appear to not be from corners as they are from sheets that have multiple plate numbers. I'm thinking the normal plate number single would be a corner stamp with selvage on 2 sides. Before multiple plate numbers started to be used.

A few of them make sense to keep as pairs (Bicentennial, Soyuz, etc) but the rest, that's just weird. Definitely postage in my book. (In fact, I'd use the entire pairs as postage not just the extra blank single stamps and let the receiver figure out what to do with them). There are probably at least as many collectors of used Mr Zip singles as there are mint Mr Zip singles.

There is an active group of plate number single collectors. They do not need the attached send stamp which you can use for postage or collecting. https://www.apnss.org/index.htm

The collector of the pairs of plate number singles was apparently baffled regarding the correct format for collecting plate numbers. He had either too many stamps for a plate number single or not enough for a plate block.
But collecting plate number singles seems to be popular. Here is a link to a new book in another thread from a couple of days ago:
http://goscf.com/t/85865

From the "some people will collect anything" department, eBay just recommended this item to me and it reminded me of this thread.

There was more interest in this type of collecting 50 years ago ,not so much now . When you can buy mint U.S. sheets at less than 50% of catalog ,why would anybody pay a premium for these .

I collect plate number coils and they have a active market for mint strips of 3 or 5 but I been getting many USED plate # coils in large lots. So I been saving those as used and nobody cares about those and I can buy them cheap in bulk .

Omg, that's awful. Maybe I should tear the tabs from all the mail early singles I have.