Is finding the stamps on your wishlist a priority for you?

I have a wish list for my US collection, but I'll probably never fill it. I need the expensive early stamps (I don't have many from before 1900). So I mainly keep up on the current stamps, of which I am terribly behind on this year already. My other collections are a bit more obtainable still. I have gaping spaces in my Canada and Great Britain collections that should be relatively inexpensive to fill. France and East Germany collections are too new, so anything I obtain fills a space.

Although I would like to fill the gaps on my Scandinavian, German and Swiiss Post 1900 collections (earlier items are beyon my pocket reach), my main goal is to enjoy stamping. So, filling the gaps, is not a priority.

Philatelia and I have the same problem.  I'm working on France and Austria and still have lots of holes but am working backwards in France, in particular, in the 1930s right now.  Then I hit the 1936 50f green airmail and whoops!!!  I've managed to get nearly all of the stamps around it including the next one, SG 541, but SG540 is a gulper!  Have to think hard about it!  Also have been working on the 1925 Sower set and the 1926 overprints, but there are some around that period which are also pretty costly.   

YES - Those darn expensive stamps! I generally remove them from any lists I send to another collector or a dealer. And My eyes roll almost up to my eyebrows when someone sends me a list full of those rarities. I mean get real, dude! LoL But, I confess, my OCD insisted that I create an auxiliary list just for me with the pie-in-the-sky, pipe dream stamps, covers and varieties. I call it my “dream” list. A girl’s gotta have dreams!

My wantlist is better organized than my collection. It almost feels that buying stamps is more about chiseling the wantlist than developing my actual collection. But more seriously, I cannot separate the tasks of finding new stamps and paying attention to collecting areas I need to develop and properly annotate.

A wish list? I cannot seem to even manage a grocery list. The last few years I have limited my hunting to a few auction sites. I peruse the auction catalogues and see if there is anything I am missing in Canada and British America. In the past I just skim past other areas.

I recently started following another smaller auction house with a weekly sale that lists a lot of less expensive items. This has resulted in me bidding on some items from areas I have deep collections in but had not added to in over 20 years. It just made sense to bid on these items since I was already bidding on my specialty fields. I soon discovered that most times I do not win what I really want but do win the secondary items. 

I occasionally do shop for individual stamps on eBay and if I do find a hole filler going reasonable I will then check whatever else the seller has listed. To save on shipping it is always better to buy multiples. 

These searches are done with albums open as well as Scott catalogues. 

I did start a Colnect wish list for British America but sadly I have yet to buy anything as little is offered in the higher value field. 

My want lists - and inventories, for that matter - are all on excel spreadsheets.  It took me a while to create them, but that was a one-time investment of time.  That investment has paid me back several times over.  I keep a copy of my want lists on Dropbox so that I can refer to them when I'm not at home. 

I don't obsess about anything, but if I see that I'm missing some stamps in a particular album, I will go and see if I can get them. Recently, I've been getting ready for SESCAL and I figured that I ought to just finish off any U.S. stamps that I'm missing, back until they get too absurdly rare or expensive to address. It isn't many, I'm pretty much complete from the late 1800s to 1993, but as I was flipping through the album, there are some holes, mostly things that I have the block and not the singles or vice versa. I'm going to get all of those, just to finish the pages off. Now I've got a list that I can take to the show and hopefully come back with what I need.

I have my inventory in Excel, so I always have it in the background when I am on a website or even when I am at a show. My file is saved in the cloud and then I can pull it down on my smartphone or tablet. I would say there are certain stamps/sets as I go through my albums, I's say ooooh, I want that.

Except for US and Machins, I do not have a want list since my collecting area is so large.