To be or not to be... a collector of post-2020 issues?

hrdoktorx - Xavier, you are the "boss" of your stamp collecting - I do think some Countries could be terminated, e.g. Canada LOL

René

Xavier, I am glad that you made this post, as I think it addresses an important question faced sooner or later by most collectors.

I am thinking that this is a subject worthy of its own thread, and not something to be lost in this catch-all thread of what's going on today, but forgotten tomorrow.

I will make you an offer, if you are agreeable.  I think that there are two good ways to proceed:  1) You can cut and paste your own comments into a new post and create a brand-new thread on the subject, or 2) I can move your original post along with the responses and create a new thread for you.

Do you have a preference?

I just think that this is a great topic, which will recur as members come and go, and I don't want to see it lost in this catch-all thread.  Please let me know what you think.

Thanks, Chris 

I fully agree with classicalstamps. €2000 is a lot of old stamps. You can always get the newest one in trades. 
On my Europeean collection I have stop on 1960-1970-1990 and 2005 depending on several things. Mot of all that new-issue policy to several countries is sky high. Older stamps are in my opinion far more interesting. 
I collect used stamps, and a lot of the new stamps are never used. FDC and CTO (same thing) are not my gate, even if i have several in my collection. 

My goal is not to have a complete collection, the fun is the time you sent searching for new (old) stamps for your collection. For me to bay new stamps complete new year set would be wasted money. The Norwegian year set goes for 1/2 face value on auction. (They will be used for postage on letters)(by me) I guess it is much the same in other countries. A good example is Færøyane "the Faroe Islands". On every Norwegian auction there is a Faroe Islands "subscribtion" collection witch goes for low money. I never bought one, but I have several partly collections that has come my way trough big box lots. 
As you understand I'm not a fan of subscribtion-collecting, that is not my kind of doing it.   

But it's your collection hrdoktorx, your decision.

The only 2020 stamps I pick up are topical stamps for things I really like - today I just went to the local post office to get the Sherlock Holmes 2020 souvenir sheet for the UK.

My cut-off for most countries is simply when the stamps stop looking well made (i.e. when they become mass-produced multi-colour stamps).

Everything I have written below is my OPINION. I do not intend to denigrate anyone's joy in collecting modern mint material. If you like these, then go for it! Do what makes YOU HAPPY. My post here is STRICTLY MY FEELINGS ONLY!

I used to subscribe to new issue services, but I dropped them all back in the 1990s when they stopped using stamps on the covers to mail the purchases to me.

Buying new issues makes me feel like a mouse on a treadwheel - you keep spending and spending, but you never actually draw any nearer to completion as they keep issuing more and more types of philatelic confections. In the past you could buy just one stamp, then the postal agencies started issuing stamps in small sheets insisting that you buy a full sheet or a block of four minimum. Then there was an explosion of booklets, souvenir sheets, imperfs and other formats. Most of these were not necessary for the mailing needs of the country in question, they were Farleyesque attempts to squeeze even more money from dedicated collectors or to create modern "rarities". Then the self adhesives arrived and you couldn't easily separate a single stamp from a sheet or booklet.

Then, to add insult to injury, the Postal Administrations started charging exorbitant shipping fees. It wasn't quite so annoying when they covered the mailing envelope with copies of the new issues, but when they switched to metered mail, my hackles raised and I dropped my new issue subscriptions from those countries immediately.

On the other hand, collecting postally USED new issues bypasses all their ploys to empty your wallet. It is incredibly challenging to find a copy of these issues that actually did the work of paying postage which reinforces the belief that those stamps had zero postal need.

Now I watch auctions and wait for the collectors who shelled out the money to buy all of the issues to place them in auctions. And - yep - you guessed it! - most of the time you can buy them for a FRACTION of the issuing price. So, I patiently wait. For example, I recently purchased quite a bit of Aland through 2014 at about 20% of the issuing price. And as tobben63 mentioned, countries like Faroes are easy to find in these auctions.  If you're willing to wait 10 years or more, those WILL show up for sale. You don't need to have a strict cutoff date - just defer purchases until they show up on the auction scene. 

To me, shifting the emphasis away from new issues to the classic material has made a HUGE difference in my collections. The money that I used to shell out to the Postal Administrations now purchases country collections. I now own MUCH more classical material and I'm MUCH happier! I actually have large sections of my collections virtually complete and now I'm mostly concentrating on varieties and more elusive classics. And - those are the stamps that actually hold their value or INCREASE because there are a limited number of them in existence.

classicalstamps is right - $1000 to $2000 would purchase a fabulous mostly complete collection for many countries. And in many cases the collection comes with an album if you use those. You can often find collections with studies of varieties that you can build on, too. From a historical and philatelic point of view - collecting this way is MUCH more interesting to me.

Also - modern material is all the same - you've seen one modern collection you've seen them all. But classical collections are all UNIQUE - especially used. To me it is MUCH MORE INTERESTING to look at a classical collection than to view page after page of post office mint issues. Yawn! Again - that is MY OPINION ONLY! 

I do not collect new issues intentionally. My worldwide collection ends around 1970 to 1980 (start of Princess Di and Disney era). My annual Christmas gift from my Dad is new US issues so I do get US and I stopped early US due to cost per stamp. I like quantity rather than rarity (expensive).

Thank you all for these thoughtful comments and opinions. They are really helpful in my decision process. Indeed, the money I would not spend on the subscriptions would go far to etch away at my wish lists. To add to philatelia's points about subscriptions, of all the ones I have, only the UN and Monaco still send their stamps in beautifully franked envelopes (especially Monaco). France and Canada just use metered cardboard. I also entirely agree about the feeling of being on a treadmill and the comment that most of the new issues are put once in the album and not looked at much anymore. I am a "completionist" collector, certainly for the countries for which I got subscriptions, and that is why I've been holding on for so long. And why I would set myself a date deadline to establish a clear limit towards that completeness. The idea of acquiring collections wholesale is certainly interesting, but I have tended to stay away from that because I don't know how I could then pass on of the many stamp duplicates I would end up with, and my collection is already extensive enough that there would always be a large group of them (and it would be a lot of work just to figure out what to keep and what to try to resell or trade away). Maybe once I'm retired or in a childless home with more available stamping time and space...

I'm going to express a slightly contrary opinion.  If we stop buying new issues, I think many countries will eventually stop issuing them; i.e another small nail in the coffin of philately.  The issue of new stamps I believe is primarily to raise revenue from stamp collectors, not for purely postal reasons.  So I continue to buy new Canadian issues and I use the excess stamps for post cards (Postcrossing) and for the regular mail (yes, I still send out some regular snail mail).  I also send mail to myself with hand-cancelled covers (maybe dumb) but they look nice and I doubt you are going to have much luck finding many of them 20 years from now.  So I sort of agree the money is better spent buying a collection of oldies but goodies; but it is nice to see nicely cancelled 2020 stamps on cover in your albums.

Be aware that by a mistake some stamps without the overprinted date has come in circulation! I have to come back to this with the information. 

However there are some other issues with this stamp Linn's

Sorry for the side tracking

Glad you got the stamps hrdoktorx ! I'll wade into this debate as I think it's an interesting question. For my country collections, I stopped collecting at year 2000. But for my topicals I am open to any and every issue even the most current. I also buy postage from Canada Post's new issues and try to use those when mailing letters in combination with the many older mint stamps I've acquired over the years. So I'm a hybrid and don't think there is a right or wrong answer to this question.

I do agree with others that the most recent stamps are in demand by people trying to keep collections current and also painful to soak in most cases.

Thanks for the clarification philatelia and for the additional details missing from the original post.
I think you are correct, but even as one that plates Canada's Imperial Penny Postage (aka The Map Stamp) with its myriad of variations, let us not to dismiss the modern material too quickly as being uniform; these stamps have their share of varieties as well if these pages are any indication, Canada Varieties, Error, Freaks and Oddities...


Happy collecting!

First of all, Xavier (hrdoktorx), congratulations on your 3,500th post.... great stuff!

Also, congratulations on reaching the decision about your collecting.  I know very well that such decisions are often not easily arrived at, so good for you on doing it.  I will be interested to see how it goes for you moving forward, and how you will end up using your new-found resources.

Stay safe and stampy, my friend!