Get a bunch of stamps. That’s pretty obvious. That’s why it’s called stamp COLLECTING. Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than it used to be. It’s all a matter of what and were. What do you collect, and where do you get the stamps?
What to collect is the easy part. For beginners, my advice is collect everything. This is contrary to most beginner advice I’ve read, which says to choose an area. I can see their point, I guess. There are an awful lot of stamps out there, spanning more than 160 years. It’s a lot less overwhelming to collect, say, just the stamps that have butterflies on them, the stamps of a specific country, or stamps published in your birth year or whatever. However, while this might be a direction you want to move toward eventually, I think it’s a real mistake to start out that way. It’s sort of like advising someone who’s learning to cook to start by eating eat cornflakes and milk and only cornflakes and milk because the grocery store is just so big and overwhelming. Over time you can try some 2% milk, and a different brand of cornflakes, and later on maybe go crazy and try a different kind of cereal… Sure, that’s safe, but you’ll have a much more rewarding experience if you try everything, experiment, learn, discover new things you love. If you start collecting everything, you’ll find certain things resonate with you better than others, and you can focus then. Unless you’re like me, and you’ll discover that you find everything fascinating. My collection is a sprawly, unfocused mess, but so what! It makes me happy!
The matter of where used to be a simple one. There was a time before text messaging and Unlimited Off-Peak hours. There was a time, even, when the Internet didn’t exist and there was no email, just mail (aka snailmail). Back then people wrote letters. Letters were written on paper using a pencil or pen, or sometimes typed on a typewriter. These were folded up and put into envelopes to be sent to friends and loved ones. The stamp paid the price for delivery. At this time, letters were the cheapest and most effective way of communicating more than a few sentences. Talking on the phone for more than a minute or to anyone who didn’t live within a few miles of you cost more than it did to send a letter, so everyone did it. It wasn’t just a craft, artsy or quaint way to send information. It was how we communicated!
So, anyway, back then there were a whole lot more stamps lying around, and because people cared about their letter writing, they’d go out of their way to buy pretty & interesting commemorative stamps instead of using the generic and awful “flag over porch” style of stamp. There also wasn’t as much of a stigma against stamp collecting as there is today, so you could announce to your friends and family that you collected stamps and please save stamps off envelopes for you. It was actually a great way to entertain kids (and by kids I mean me. I’m just assuming that there are others out there who had the same experience). When I was a kid, my aunts, uncles and grandparents knew I collected stamps, and they’d save them for me all year. When my parents would go visit them, I’d have a box full of stamps to sort through while the grownups visited. Back then it was possible to grow a decent stamp collection just through social networks.
Nowadays, though, actual stamped letters are becoming increasingly rare, and building a stamp collection is probably going to mean buying some stamps. Unfortunately, the days when you could buy packets of world stamps at the local drug store are gone. Maybe you’re lucky enough to live near a hobby shop that sells stamps. I don’t know that I am. The only stores around here that say they sell stamps seem really sketchy. They have big, hand-painted signs up that say they also buy & sell GOLD and GUNS. Somehow I have a really hard time associating stamps and guns. I suppose there are some gunslinging prospectors out there who trade in their gold for stamps, or maybe some stamp collectors who have such valuable collections they philaticize with a Glock in one hand and stamp tongs in the other. Since I’m neither of these, I don’t go into such places, though maybe I’m missing out! Since going to the store is out for me, and I suspect, for most people, that leave the post office, mail order, and the Internet.
The local post office is actually a great option for buying stamps. The selection is typically very limited: unused stamps published within the last few months of whatever country you’re in. However, you’re paying face value for the stamps, instead of an inflated dealer price. One cool thing about collecting unused stamps (in the US at least) is that every unused stamp issued since the Civil War is still valid for postage. So the stamps you buy are going to be worth face value, at the very least! Plus post offices are conveniently located everywhere.
However, buying stamps at the post office is still fairly limited. Why stick with the current moment of your own country when there’s a whole world with a rich history to explore?
One way to explore this history is by using an approval service. Approval services can be incredibly cool, and I don’t know of anything like them outside of philately. With an approval service, people will send you stamps on a regular basis. The stamps are organized into sets in glassine envelopes. You don’t pay for them up front. They actually trust you with their stuff! It’s a nice feeling! You pick the sets you like and send the rest back, along with payment for what you’ve kept. Then they send you another bunch of stamps and the process repeats for as long as you want it to go on.
Unfortunately, approval services have a dark side, which is why I don’t use them. Every approval service I’ve used escalated. The first few months were small numbers of affordable sets. But then they started sending more and more stamps, at higher prices, and new offers for things I might be interested in, until it became annoying and inconvenient, and I had to cancel all of them. It’s really unfortunate because if they’d kept it constant, I’d still be getting most of my stamps through approval services. Perhaps there’s an option for that, but I couldn’t find it. Still, for those first few months, approval services are a great way to start!
So far, the best way I’ve found for getting a whole bunch of stamps is through eBay. I recommend searching for “kiloware” or “mission mix.” These are just big boxes of stamps, usually unsorted. Unsorted may mean you’ll wind up with a large number of identical stamps, but it can also mean there are hidden treasures that didn’t get separated out. Mission mix traditionally are stamps that have been gathered, not by stamp dealers but by church groups or other charitable organizations to sell to collectors raise money for their activities. You can often pick up several pounds of mission mix for tens of dollars on eBay. Even if you don’t find any treasures, the entertainment value alone of searching through that many stamps far outweighs the cost! Kiloware and mission mix comes in 2 varieties, off-paper and on-paper. Off-paper costs much more than on-paper because with on-paper stamps you’ll have to put in the work of getting the envelope scraps off the stamps. Also, the paper the stamps are on far outweighs the stamps. In a pound of on-paper stamps, you’ll get several hundred stamps, while off-paper you’ll get thousands.
Once you’ve got your bunch of stamps, the fun starts!