Setting collection cut off dates - how do you decide?

I don't have one fixed "cut-off date" for all my collections, but I do have various ending dates depending on that country's stamp issuing policies or whether or not I feel like continuing to collect that country's stamps after a certain year. It's not unusual for a country to change its stamp policies, issuing far more stamps than before or issuing stamps about subjects unrelated to that country (typically "topicals") and so on. Any cut-off date I decide on, I'm free to change whenever I'm in the mood to do that. Hey, it's just a hobby, so I can do anything I want, right?

For Germany, I stop sometimes "around" 1990 because of reunification. Also, Germany is an absolute flood of stamps to collect, so there has to be an end for any collector. For Britain, I collect up to about 2000 just as an arbitrary cut-off point. For my U.S. collection, I initially chose 2000 as the cut-off year, then pushed it to 2010, but have finally settled (well, we'll see, won't we?) on 2015. After a certain point, it's just buying more "year sets" and that can get really expensive really fast. For various others collections, I just use a convenient year somewhat arbitrarily.  For my few Africa collections (well designed, interesting histories), Tunisia goes to 2010, Malawi to about 2000, Congo (Kinshasa) goes up to its flood of inflation era stamps, so about 1990 when overprints proliferated out of control. Egypt also goes to about 2000. In Asia, I ended Japan when it began its endless flood of "pop culture" stamps in about 2000. You just kind of "know" when a country's stamp-issuing policy changes or its stamps become a "flood" or they start to bore you. That's your cut-off date.


I collect about 25+ countries plus I have a general worldwide collection for everything else. I collect the U.S., Canada Great Britain, Scandinavia, most of Europe (yes, too many countries), four or five African countries whose stamps are well designed, a few Asian countries, and others. I'm tentatively beginning to collect some Latin American countries. I am clearly addicted. My general world-wide collection is mainly for my duplicates plus casual collections of those countries I don't really focus on. It's hit-or-miss, and I don't pay very much attention to this collection, so some countries will undoubtedly remain almost empty of stamps.

In all of this, my approach is generally to only collect stamps I want to collect, skipping stamps I don't find appealing for various reasons. It's a hobby, right? So I can do this. Besides cut-off dates, arbitrary or not, I use a somewhat different general approach to collecting from most collectors. For many countries, I only collect the stamps I like. How's that for freedom? For most countries stamps about the country's people, history, culture, inventions, important anniversaries, and so on predominate. Those, plus stamps that are just "pretty" or clever, I collect. For others, I omit stamps about various "money-making" topics unrelated to that country or stamps that are so dull they look like bread labels. With some countries, this is hardly ever a problem so I end up collecting nearly all their stamps. With others, I omit a sizable number I simply do not want. Needless to say, those omitted are nearly always modern stamps -- many topicals and from the tidal wave of money-making issues which bring in much-needed revenue (or enrich a few members of the government -- I'm never sure). I dislike souvenir sheets which are this sort of thing so I usually omit them. If stamps are unrelated to a country or seem superfluous and silly, I just omit them.

How to do that, and doesn't that leave empty spaces in my albums? It would if I only used standard albums without alteration. But I modify the standard albums I use where necessary by printing replacement pages that omit stamps I don't want. If you use blank pages to begin with, this isn't necessary, of course. This is now much easier with the proliferation of print-your-own album-pages programs. I print my revised page layouts on matching blank pages. Nearly all album makers sell identical blank pages. The results are matching pages without the offending stamps.

[One trick is to save print-your-own page files -- like Bill Steiner's pages which are available online -- to any basic online PDF-to-Word program. I use "Small PDF" but there are many others. Upload your pages to the program and then select "save in Word". Then edit them as you like since Word allows that sort of thing. Just delete stamps you don't want. "Highlight" --> "Delete". Then print them out. If you invested in a wide-bed printer you could print directly onto your blank album paper. I use a normal printer, though, so I print onto regular computer paper, then at Fedex I photocopy those copies onto blank bordered album pages. The result is a matching page that omits all the stamps I don't want.]

Whatever you do, remember it's a hobby and you can do whatever you enjoy.