Back to basics
By Ada M. Prill
Previously published in the March 2005 issue of the American Philatelist, monthly magazine of the
American Philatelic Society - www.stamps.org
What Do You Collect?
I hadn’t been collecting stamps for very long before I figured out that the stamp collectors I met at club meetings and shows were a fairly friendly lot (beyond, in many cases, an initial shyness). I also soon learned that right after "Hello, how are you?" inevitably came the question I learned to dread: "What do you collect” Heck, I was a new stamp collector — I collected stamps for Pete’s sake — why did people keep asking me this perplexing question?
I finally decided that I needed a pat answer to go with the inevitable query, so I went out and bought an album for German stamps. Five years earlier we had spent a year in Germany, and I’d saved a few stamps from our stay there, so I had something to build on. Now I had an answer — I could say I collected German stamps. Alas, I had made an unfortunate choice from the point of view of answering the stamp collector’s favorite question. Germany is a vast collecting area, so inevitably I was next asked what kind of German stamps I collected. I soon decided to exclude the voluminous emissions of East Germany (DDR), but that hardly made a dent — there were German states, occupation districts, inflation period, Berlin, Nazi propaganda semipostals, and on and on. In some ways collecting Germany was more complicated than just collecting any stamps I happened to come across.
My next attempt to decide what I wanted to collect was somewhat more successful. I bought packets of thousands of inexpensive worldwide stamps and just looked at them. Soon it became apparent that some stamps interested me more than others. I set aside those of no interest and tried to figure out what the more interesting stamps had in common. It wasn’t immediately obvious — there was a lot of diversity in the "stamps I really like" pile, but it finally dawned on me that the stamps I preferred had some connection to a country or topic I already knew something about. I liked the stamps of countries I’d visited. I liked stamps that showed musical instruments and cats and birds and Queen Victoria (whose biography I’d read), too. But I also noticed that I really liked beautifully engraved stamps (no personal tie-in there) and those that had readable postmarks.
Another person could have looked through the same hodgepodge of stamps and taken delight in entirely different stamps from the ones I picked out, but the process of sorting them would have told him a lot about what direction his collecting might take. I don’t read Russian, so I tended to put Russian stamps in the "no interest" category. But someone whose family had lived in Russia and at least knew the alphabet would most likely find those stamps especially desirable. "Collect what you know" might sum up what I learned from my stamp mixture. I now have collections, largely dormant to be sure, of each of the countries where I have lived or visited more than briefly. And I also collect almost any stamp engraved by master engraver Czeslaw Slania. But it was my fascination with the postmarks to be seen on some stamps that eventually led me to my real love, collecting stamps on their original covers with all the associated postal markings. To someone else maybe postmarks are something to be avoided while pristine mint stamps are fascinating. That’s fine. I’m glad not everybody collects what I collect — it helps keep prices within reason!
Time to back up a little. There is absolutely no reason you have to specialize. I still enjoy buying packets of stamps and putting them in my worldwide album. It’s relaxing, and I’m always going to find something really satisfying in each new mixture. I love stamps — all of ‘em! — and I’ll always be a worldwide collector. But I’m also glad The Question goaded me into forming some specialized collections as well.
The greatest joy of worldwide collecting is also the most frustrating part of it for many collectors — your collection will never be complete or anything vaguely approaching complete. That means that there are always new delights to be discovered, but it also means that every few months there are tens of thousands of new potential additions to your collection. Inevitably some spaces will remain empty, while other parts of the collection crowd onto extra pages. There is nothing wrong with such a collection if you find it enjoyable, and don’t let anyone convince you that there is! It’s not for everybody — although many of us have both specialized and general collections — but the beauty of philately is that there are lots of ways to collect, and what is right (fun) for one collector is wrong (boring) for another.
How do you find out what you want to collect if you do feel the need for something other than a general collection? Well, my technique of looking at a lot of stamps and finding out which ones appealed most was one approach that worked. But you have to look at enough stamps to figure out why your favorite stamps appeals to you so much. One of my personal favorites is the 1974 German stamp depicting the painting by Franz Marc of two impressionistic red deer. It is now part of my collection of German stamps. It could equally well fit into a collection of European fine art on stamps, impressionistic paintings on stamps, animals on stamps, or even clouds on stamps. But maybe you just like that stamp for no particular reason — and most of the other stamps you really like come from Africa. Go for Africa in that case.
You don’t want to start a collection of a country or topic because you like one individual stamp related to that country or topic — although it is possible in some cases to have a specialized collection of the varieties and usages of just one stamp. The Franz Marc stamp would probably not lend itself well to a one-stamp collection — single stamp enthusiasts usually choose a stamp that was issued in very largo quantities and/or used over a fairly long period of time. Most likely there are not that many printing varieties or unusual usages for a modern German commemorative stamp that was only on sale for a few months. But feel free to prove me wrong.
Another way to find potential collecting interests is to attend stamp club meetings. You can learn a lot by listening to programs and talking to lots of collectors about the things that they find fascinating in philately. Chances are you will react to some such conversations by thinking (please don’t say it out loud!), "Why on earth would anyone want to collect that?” But other people may give you ideas. Maybe Helen’s talk on pharmacy stamps gets you interested in medicinal herbs on stamps, or the notebook of scale advertising covers Rick shows you triggers your desire to collect automobile ad covers. Look and listen and ask questions — most collectors love to tell you about their specialties.
Go to shows and look at the exhibits. If a collection of Welsh postal history seems the most interesting thing on the floor, but your ancestors carne from Poland, maybe you should consider Polish postal history. Love those Belgian railroad stamps? They are plentiful and fascinating, but once you start looking at Belgium as a collecting area, you may find that something other than railroad stamps catches your fancy even more. You can be inspired by other people’s collections or exhibits without going on to collect exactly the same thing in precisely the same way. Even reading through several issues of The American Philatelist will expose you to many possible collecting areas and approaches. Which article in last months issue held your attention so much that you read it several times? Which one did you skim over, mostly just looking at the pictures? There is a lot to be learned from your own reactions.
Many collectors build a collection, lose interest in that area, and go on to start other collections. Or perhaps they maintain lots of different collections at the same time. There is no reason you have to continue with a collection that no longer excites you. Nor is there any reason not to add a new collection to your shelf of albums or stock books while retaining what’s already there. Your interests may expand, contract, or change completely, but philately is sufficiently all-encompassing that you don’t need to feel confined by what your interests were at some time in the past. There is always a new collection to form, maybe related to something that interested you in the past and maybe something entirely new. Go for it! Don’t let someone else limit you by labeling you as a collector of Israeli First Day Covers if you really would like to branch out and collect Indian air mails, too.
Some people say they are quitting stamp collecting because the United States issues too many stamps each year and they can’t keep up. How sad! There are so many other things that a philatelist can collect besides U.S. new issues — it makes a lot more sense to form a different collection instead of entirely forgoing the pleasures of the hobby for such a reason. Your collection can be limited by geography, time, subject, or any number of other factors to keep it manageable. If you collect the stamps of Newfoundland or nineteenth-century revenue stamps. or even the commemorative issues of the United States from 1950-2000, you can stop fussing about the number of new issues. Or you can see the variety of new issues as a collecting challenge (try getting them all used on cover!). Your hobby interests can grow or shrink any way YOU want them to.
A personal plea: insomuch as possible, use attractive stamps on ALL of your outgoing mail. The chances are that a nice-looking stamp used on a bill payment will be collected by somebody — and seeing lots of different stamps on mail is one of the things that can spark an interest in stamp collecting and help create new collectors. There is no reason to EVER even buy a boring stamp. If you don’t find something interesting in the stamps that you use on your electric and telephone bill payments, choose different stamps. It doesn’t cost a bit more to dress up your mail with beautiful stamps and thereby promote our hobby.
And, to get back to the original topic, what is the best way to deal with the "What do you collect?" question if you haven’t really decided? Don’t let it bother you. How about saying, “Oh, various things; what do YOU collect?" If you do that, your fellow stamp collectors will think you are the most charming per-son in the room!
I can be reached at ada@stamps.org or care of The American Philatelist at the address in the front of this magazine. If you e-mail me, please mention APS in the subject line, as I delete hundreds of junk e-mails each day without opening them, and if you use something like “magazine article" as your subject line, your message is likely never to be read, as such subject lines are too often used by purveyors of snake oil or worse.
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