Help, I need an intervention! Going down the slippery slope.

I'm still impressed by the "exotic" appeal of stamp collecting, getting all these bits of paper from places you would otherwise seldom come across. In that regard, among my absolute favourites are the Nordic countries with small population - if I can find them, I like to grab bulk lots of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes. Sorting out the Danish town names on old Greenlandic stamps has been entertaining too, so I updated the Wikipedia page for Danish exonyms to include all the Greenlandic towns I could find. It makes it much easier to find the proper town name when all you have is a partial cancellation. Some day Google might include wildcard searches, but until then, I need a text list so I can search with Ctrl-F.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_exonyms#Greenland

Ryan

Few more?  Add up Finland and you've got ALL the Scandinavian countries on the list

After that you could of course start adding up with autonomous regions (Aland Islands, Greenland, Faroe Islands etc), occupation issues (Aunus, East Karelia etc.), colonies (Danish West Indies), local mail (various bypost stamps etc), ...

This brings up an interesting point - do Finns consider themselves to be in Scandinavia?  I had always thought it was a Nordic country, not a Scandinavian one.  Maybe the Ålanders think differently, though!

(And I thought it was tricky to find bulk lots of Greenland stamps - bulk Åland stamps are almost impossible to spot.)

Ryan

Ah yes, very good - I had forgotten about the Wayback Machine.  I don't use it so often any more, so many sites are filled with graphics-based menus and the graphics are often not archived.  Restored to my bookmarks, thank you for the tip!

Ryan

Spain1850- That is the reason I collect WW classic- I can't resist a single country! 

I agree that the Scandinavian countries are particularly attractive- I picked up some early Norway yesterday. 

So go with gravity i.e. the slippery slope. 

I like the Norwegian bears, too. Scott can’t seem to decide whether they’re air mail stamps or regular issue. I got my set when I bought an 85% complete Scott International Air Post Album for airmail stamps issued before May 1, 1930. As this album notes, the stamps were issued to assist in financing the Amundsen-Ellsworth Polar Expedition. Ellsworth, an American, had a lot of money so he could pay his share, but Norway helped out Amundsen, apparently, with a stamp issue. Hummm. Does that make them semi-postal? The airplane on the stamp (Dornier-Wal flying boat) might qualify them for being airmail stamps, as per my album. Scott finally settled on listing them as regulars. As for the expedition, they never made it to the North Pole. The wavy water (ice?) under the bear portends the outcome. Their adventures and misadventures, inculding the rescue by boat, are well summarized at www.historynet.com/roald-amundsen-and-the-1925-north-pole-expedition.htm.

I'm hoping things are looking up for me and my family so that I can feel free to buy things without wondering if we am going to go broke. Better job, new outlook, bills getting paid off. It's all good. Heck, I might even plan on going to my first stamp show in about 7 years.
It's actually been kind of a good thing not being able to spend like I have in the past. It forced me to work with what I have and re-discover things I had set aside years ago. Collecting is FUN again.

firstfrog - That would probably be the way to go. In fact when I got my Spanish collection underway I bought 3 collections, each with slightly different things to offer, but combined made a pretty complete selection for what I was after. The problem for me was that I still wound up with lot's of duplicates, lot's of empty spaces where key issues should be and quite a few that I still would like to upgrade.

I guess there are pluses and minuses to each type of buying for a collection:
1 - Buying large collection. Yes, you can fill lot's of holes in one whack at a low price. But at least from what I've seen you are not going to get a high % of nice condition items and will have to upgrade, especially if buying online and can't examine the collection in depth.
2 - Buying singles. Obviously the most expensive way to collect, and time consuming, but you have 100% control over what you buy quality-wise. You also won't end up with alot of duplicates.
3 - Buying sets or small lot's. Sort of a compromise between the 2 in my opinion. From what I've seen you can get small lot's or accumulations for a small percentage of cv. Also, since the lot's are small, you can usually see what all is in the lot and decide what is needed and what is not. This is what I like doing since I can find lot's that are era-specific or even set specific.

I don't mind hunting down singles, I just would not want to start a collection from scratch and buy singly.

One of the issues I will have with this Denmark collection is that I am looking for both used and unused copies to fill spaces. Most collections are either a mix of used and unused, used only or unused only.

I.L.S.- your advice makes good sense- but  I've done just the opposite. 



What is fun about casting a wide net, is, one can always be surprised. Today I went to one of the few remaining stamp stores  ( United States Stamp Company in San  Francisco on Bush Street), and they had essentially full pages of all the occupation issues of Hungary. Wasn't on my radar, but that is what I walked out with.