New member from Portland, Oregon, USA

Welcome Mick, and greetings from a fellow Oregonian. 

Enjoying the snow?  Me? Not so much. 

This is a very eclectic board,- you should fit right in. 

Welcome Mick.I take it your a transplanted Brit.One of my latest interest is G.B. cinderellas.Take your time to go through the threads lots of good pictures and information to be shared.Enjoy.

Welcome aboard Mick,
I hope your collecting blossoms here.
Stick around, there are often giveaways which you can get lucky and get some free stamps
Philately is a great hobby if you're broke,
we can always find something for you.

The best thing for us to work on, is to get rid of those irritating prejudices,
it really doesn't matter what or how people collect,
We just bring it all here, and "show and tell", if you want to collect bus tickets, well that's OK too.
Mint, used, ripped , torn, It is all welcome here.

If you don't connect with a particular idea, or ideology, just scroll past the post

Hope you enjoy your stay.

Welcome Mick, I'm just up I5 in the Seattle area. Are you planning on going to Pipex in May?

Stampgeezer: I didn't know about that event, but it looks like it might be fun. Probably not this year, unfortunately.
Jack: Thanks. Judging from my sorry attempt to show a picture in my last post, I need to spend more time in the Help section.

This is what I was attempting to show:

Welcome, Mick! I became interested in stamp collecting through participation on swap-bot.com, which is similar to Postcrossing. Glad to have you here!

By the way, my six-year-old was looking at her stamps earlier and asked if there were any stamps with penguins on them. Needless to say, she really likes your avatar. ;D

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome!!

Welcome aboard Nick!

Ahh... Spoken like a true collector! OK, This is a topic of debate that's probably as old as the hobby itself!? I actually tend to agree with you but as you already know many also would not. The reasons are as numerous as there are collectors I reckon but I'll shall attempt to shed a little light on this subject. Mint vs. used- A mint stamp collector like to look at the vignette in hopes of finding a variant or maybe just like to see the whole design as printed. They are also less numerous so of course that drives up the value. Then there is whats called "centering", As it's name implies it is the degree to which the stamps' image is aligned with the sides of the stamps actual edge. The degree of centering is also a major factor in it's collectability and desirability and, as you may already know it's book value. In short, the better centered the design the more valuable it becomes. This concept in my opinion (and many others) is what drives the "investment potential" of the stamp collecting trade. In my opinion however, gold would be a much more sound investment, but we are after-all talking about stamp collecting so, to each to their own I guess?

OK, Used stamps, as so elegantly stated - "used for their designed purpose" Usually bearing a postal cancellation. Besides being much more numerous there are collectors like me who also like to study cancellations and their devices that make/made them. Besides being cheaper and in most cases less valuable they are relatively more easily obtainable. So, they may be less valuable but within the grasp of the common collector and allows you to more easily to fill out your stamp albums' pages.

Now I only just touched on the plethora of reasons that people prefer one over the other but I believe from this you can deduce why the drastic catalog values.




Join the club friend! You certainly are not alone in this arena! We most certainly recognize this, because not alot of us have mountains of disposable income (like Rod) so the auctions and the buy, sell & trade sections you will find very reasonable prices from our wonderful board members! Also, trading is a wonderful way to get stamps you might not have had access to before so, I just wanted you to be aware of that too.

(P.S.-I was just picking on Rod)


TRUE! And that's a good thing to do as long as you know which stamps your using for obvious reasons! lol Usually Modern stamps (considered as modern from 1949-to present) have a realworld value of around 10% of catalog value and even that can be a bit misleading. The 20¢ notation in Scott catalog is thought to be associated with the dealers overhead cost for things like sorting and restocking and is basically a starting point for value. Some collectors consider these stamps completely worthless but I certainly do NOT!

It should be noted also, that some folks think that Grandpa's old stamp collection that they found up in the attic is like finding a winning lottery ticket! The truth of the matter it is it's more like finding an old lotto ticket that wasn't a winner under your car seat, Now having said that, there most certainly is VERY high valued collections -absolutely so! However, It's most likely not one of them. I highly doubt anyone finding such a thing up in the attic or down in the basement but you never know unless you research what you have? By that time though usually the stamp bug has probably bitten you and you will find you have a treasure anyhow and one of a type you wasn't expecting! Stamp collecting!!
 I have indeed seen that very thing happen! (finding high value collections) Overall though, the value of stamp collecting is in the history that you learn, the friends you make and of course the fun of putting it all together!

I must apologize for the long winded-ness of this post...I get carried away sometimes

 If you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to ask! The old adage: "The only stupid question is one not asked" still hold true so don't hold back! If one of us can assist we will jump at the chance! After-all that's what we collectors are all about! The pursuit of knowledge and happiness. Cheers! -Jeff

Yes, I'm really glad that I finally found this board after reading a number of others. You lot are both friendly and knowledgeable, and there seems to be a nice mix of nationalities from what I can tell.

As I said, I have been having great fun going through the various threads. Are there any particularly entertaining or informative threads that I should be sure to hit? I expect that I will be able to read most of them over the course of the next month or so, but I don't want to miss anything epic.