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Posted 12/23/2016 09:23 am
I got a popular book on stamp collecting a few years back - can't recall from where - and it reminded me of one of the main reasons why I went into coins but never liked stamps: there are too many.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of assorted coins. (Especially if we're getting into ancients and medievals.) But that's nowhere near the variety of how many stamps there are.
Like, for coins, a type set for a country in a decade would normally be something like 10-20 coins (less if you're lucky, a bit more if you're including the really rare stuff); for stamps, you're looking at many hundreds, easily (and most of them would be common), and that's not counting the special issues for parts of said country (less common lately, but still).
...Right now, my stamp collection consists of a Russian set showing various old coins (bought at the main Moscow post office in 2011 when I got angry that they didn't have any actual coins on sale), a few old Russian stamps with back inscriptions certifying them for use as currency (bought as essentially paper money), and a bunch of random stamps (mostly Russian and Belarussian) that I (or my relatives) actually received on letters.
A few years ago there was also that one 1970s Soviet stamp that I randomly found on my old apartment's floor in 2006 (just before the big move), but I hadn't seen that one anywhere lately.
I did find an envelope what appeared to be my dad's old stamp collection one day in 2009 or so; didn't really have the time to look through, so just put it back where I thought it was.
Never saw the darn thing again, and the desk I found it on isn't standing in that room anymore, so it could really be anywhere; maybe my dad found that envelope himself and threw it away.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of assorted coins. (Especially if we're getting into ancients and medievals.) But that's nowhere near the variety of how many stamps there are.
Like, for coins, a type set for a country in a decade would normally be something like 10-20 coins (less if you're lucky, a bit more if you're including the really rare stuff); for stamps, you're looking at many hundreds, easily (and most of them would be common), and that's not counting the special issues for parts of said country (less common lately, but still).
...Right now, my stamp collection consists of a Russian set showing various old coins (bought at the main Moscow post office in 2011 when I got angry that they didn't have any actual coins on sale), a few old Russian stamps with back inscriptions certifying them for use as currency (bought as essentially paper money), and a bunch of random stamps (mostly Russian and Belarussian) that I (or my relatives) actually received on letters.
A few years ago there was also that one 1970s Soviet stamp that I randomly found on my old apartment's floor in 2006 (just before the big move), but I hadn't seen that one anywhere lately.
I did find an envelope what appeared to be my dad's old stamp collection one day in 2009 or so; didn't really have the time to look through, so just put it back where I thought it was.
Never saw the darn thing again, and the desk I found it on isn't standing in that room anymore, so it could really be anywhere; maybe my dad found that envelope himself and threw it away.
