I collect world stamps. Yes, any country, any type of stamp, anything! People who specialize in a country or a topic argue that it is too expensive to collect the world. I agree, but it’s only too expensive if you expect to complete the collection.

I have specialized in different areas at various times during my 45 years of stamp collecting. For a while I collected Canal Zone stamps. There are still about a dozen Canal Zone stamps that I don’t have, most of which have been too expensive when they have been available. Even if I saved up and bought the elusive Canal Zone issues, what would I do then? My collection would be complete, over, done, finished! I’d have to start something else.

I enjoy stamp collecting. I do it for fun. It is relaxing and informative. The stamps (most of them) are beautiful works of art. Completing a collection is a direction for me, not an absolute goal. It is as much fun to complete a set or an album page as it is to complete a country.

By collecting anything, there is always a vast number of stamps that I do not have that are available at minimum price. I don’t have to save and wait months or years to add a rare stamp to my collection. Every stamp club meeting or show can add hundreds of stamps at pennies each! To those who say it’s too expensive to collect the world–I say it’s too expensive to collect stamps and NOT collect the world!

Maybe the cheap world stamps that I buy will never become valuable. So what! I’m collecting for fun. I’m not a dealer. I’m not trying to make a living selling stamps. I’m looking for cheap thrills, those beautiful bicolored Mozambique definitives, the common exquisitely engraved 3 cent commemoratives from the US in the 1950's or even exotic Bulgarian stamps.

The best buy that I have found lately is Ben Drucker’s $20 one pound bags of stamps. They provide many evenings of sorting fun, hundreds of new stamps for my collection, and some duplicates to trade or give away. Plus they cost less than one evening of dinner and a movie. Thanks, Ben.

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