The whole process made me appreciate how much information is packed into something so small. A torn postmark and a watermark you can only see against light told me more about where that letter had traveled than I expected from a box that cost less than lunch.

I still have about thirty pieces I haven't identified yet, mostly because the cancellation marks are too faded to read clearly. Planning to look at them under a lamp this week before deciding whether they're worth mounting or just filing away as space fillers.

Anyone else find that estate sale mixed lots end up being more rewarding than buying sets that are already sorted and priced? There's something about not knowing what you're going to find in a random handful that makes the sorting part feel less like work and more like actual discovery.

Forgive me if this is better suited for a stamp collecting reddit, just let me know and I can move it.

TL;DR - How to choose what to collect and how to store it

I collected stamps as a kid but stopped in early high school due to limited time and preferring coin collecting. I have recently been given the option of taking the collection of my uncle who passed away several years ago. This has sent me back into the world of philately which, 30 years later, looks completely different. My original collecting experience of cutting stamps off the envelopes that came in the mail is so narrow compared to what now seems infinite possibilities, especially with the Internet.

I have spent the last few weeks reading, watching, etc. to get an idea of what is actually out there and to freshen up on what I now realize were terrible habits I made as a kid. I have gone back through my own collection which consists of a bunch of duplicate 90s stamps that I didn't treat well. Conversely, my uncle has a huge collection of highly organized stamps that my aunt would like me to take all of if I could but that is overwhelming to me. There is a 4'x6' bookcase full of binders.

It seems that you can't collect it all and therefore need to choose some sort of niche (topic, country, cancellations, etc). He has a gorgeous binder of almost complete Mexico Exports with notes from a presentation he gave to his local stamp club on the topic, but these don't interest me beyond the history of how interested in them HE was. This leads me to my first area that I would like feedback: if given access to a huge collection, how would you go about deciding what you wanted? I like the Marie Kondo idea of "does it spark joy" but feel that without really knowing what I'm looking at, I wouldn't be able to quickly decide while looking through. Part of what is so cool about stamps is the history but you don't know that just glancing at things and I wouldn't have the time to do all that research on the spot. It would take weeks. Any suggestions?

My second area I am looking for feedback on is storage. It is clear to me that trends in stamp collecting have changed over time. What was once considered fine is later found to be undesirable or even damaging and people do things that even then would have been frowned upon. Most of his stamps are hinged onto paper in binders. Is there a way to check if this paper is acidic? Is there anything else I should be worried about or check for? The one piece that I have told my aunt I will definitely take is an International Junior Album that is really cool and has a lot of stamps in it. The album is actually torn in two down the middle so that it is like two books. This leaves those middle pages now exposed. I like the idea of keeping the stamps in there because I feel like the book itself is part of the history of how the stamps were collected but am worried about damage. The books must be laid flat because one side has a cover and the other doesnt. I vaguely recall I read recently laying flat is bad. Also, this exposes those two pages of stamps to light, dust, abrasion, etc. Any thoughts on how to limit that? I also was watching a video from Ted Talks Stamps which mentions the pages in those old albums being acidic.... Do I need to pull all the stamps out because of that?

A similar question about storage. If you were starting completely fresh, how would you store your stamps? (Album, binder, stockbook, etc) My go to as a kid was loose in a box and this clearly isn't going to work here! I would like to start putting my own stamps together as well as deciding potentially for some of my uncle's. Is there a good, better, best when it comes to storage or is that largely personal preference/cost? My final storage question: is there consensus or at least some good recent resources I could look at on whether you should use hinges?

Thanks in advance for the help. I only had space on the airplane to bring back two magazines and one Scott catalogue. I've been looking through those with joy. I'm sure once I have some of his stamps in hand I will have more questions and hopefully some things to contribute as well.

Recently, Mystic Stamp Company has begun selling USPS stamps at a discount to their face value.

On their website, they offer sets of 100 for different purposes: Postcard rate, First-Class Letter rate, and International rate. Discounts are 25-30% off face value. Both denominated and Forever stamps are being used to make up the sets.

I am not questioning the practice. However, I feel this may have the unintended side effect of imparting a sense of legitimacy to criminals who flood uncontrolled marketplaces like eBay, Facebook, and Craigslist with counterfeit Forever stamps.

6 copies of the "Postcard Receipt" design.

Part of the "Postcards Worldwide" denomination, i.e. the Hellenic Post's 9th commemorative set for World Postcard Day

I know some collectors treat watermarking as tedious extra work, and I get it, it's not exactly thrilling to stare through a tray of lighter fluid for twenty minutes. But it's made me slow down and actually look at what I own instead of just filing things away by catalog number. Curious if anyone else got into this later than they probably should have, and what it changed for you.

I'm going through my grandfather's old stamp collection and thought I'd start sharing some of the more interesting ones I find.

These two are from Tannu Tuva, 1934. Tannu Tuva (or Tuvan People's Republic, according to Wikipedia) was a partially recognized socialist republic that existed from 1921 to 1944.

I don't know much about stamp collecting, so I'm mostly sharing these because I think they're really cool, and people who appreciate stamps would enjoy it. If anyone knows more about the stamps, the artwork, the airplanes, Tannu Tuva, or anything else interesting about them, I'd love to hear it.

I'm not particularly interested in selling the collection, but if I happen to have something that's unusually valuable, I'd definitely appreciate someone pointing it out so I can take proper care of it.

I'll probably post more from my grandfather's collection as I go through it. There are some pretty strange and beautiful ones in here. (Or point me towards a better sub for sharing things like this)

New stamp alert!

According to an August 24, 2026, news release, the US Postal Service will "commemorate the art and life of Linda McCartney (1941–1998), a pioneering photographer and animal rights activist who was a pivotal figure in the vegetarianism movement, at a first-day-of-issue ceremony for stamps featuring her photography."

"Linda McCartney rose to prominence by capturing some of the most memorable musicians of the 1960s in photographs that felt relaxed, intimate and full of life. Her 1968 portrait of Eric Clapton made her the first female photographer to have their work featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Among McCartney’s favorite subjects to photograph were her husband — musician Paul McCartney — and their children and animals, as well as small moments of everyday life. McCartney’s photographs have been exhibited throughout the United States as well as at the Royal Photographic Society and the Victoria and Albert Museum in England."

"The pane of 20 stamps showcases five different photographs. The selvage features a black-and-white self-portrait of McCartney behind her camera."

USPS is releasing the stamps at a first-day-of-issue ceremony scheduled for Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, at 11 a.m. ET, at MoMA The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, NY (USA). Guests must RSVP in advance. There are no details yet available as to who will be participating in the program (I can only hope that Sir Paul will be there!).

There are no pre-order details yet on USPS.com. More details are available at https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2026/0824ma-postal-service-to-honor-photographer-and-activist-linda-mccartney.htm.

I've finally got a hold of my childhood collection which is really cool to see 25 years later which is the last time I laid eyes on it.

This the China section of my album. Let me know your thoughts/insights please.

Im trying to identify where this Perfin came from. To me it looks like they punched a whole sheet and I got part of the punch. Not to sure tho. Anyone know? Its on a British Half Penny Green

Some of my only stanps that have no perforation! Kind of a shame, since iw perfect presidents w no flat corners but I guess whatev

I was so excited to get my 3d perf gauge but it came broken! Anyone else had this problem?

Richard Wagner most probably visited Prague only once in 1863 to conduct a concert. He lived quite near as both Saxony and Bavaria border on the Czech Republic so there might have been other, less official visits. The postal authorities of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia decided that the 60th anniversary of his death deserved commemoration. Perhaps it was so because the head of the German state at the time was a great fan of Wagner. Perhaps they wanted to celebrate famous composers - within four years stamps with Mozart, Dvorak, and Smetana were issued. Two of the stamps commemorate the premieres of Wagner's operas in Prague, the third - standard letter rate - the composer himself.

I've seen a modern machine canceller which is used in Africa from the late 1970s to at least the mid 1990s (Tunisia, South Africa, South West Africa, and possibly Ethiopia.) I've not yet seen it from other countries, but I'm sure it's out there.

The clearest examples are those from Tunisia, which I've shown in the pictures. There are "long" and "short" formats: a single circle date stamp 28 mm diameter with a band of five wavy lines 39-42 mm long and a 5 mm spacer to the right of the date stamp: these can either have two peaks, or two troughs. The short format is 23 mm long either side of the date stamp, and has either one peak or one trough. A slogan can be inserted to replace part or all of the long format troughs.

Can anyone help with the identity of the machine used?

I'm seeing 504 Gateway timeouts. I had a bunch of stamps in my shopping cart, too :(

My uncle had these on the wall. I figured that this community would appreciate some of them. He worked at an office where a lot of mail was going in and out. At the end, he saved some of them.

How soon before we see calls to honor Dolly Parton’s life and legacy with a stamp? I know there is a three year waiting period before she could be honored this way.

What the title says: I have a stamp collection that I want to protect and buying individual sleeves for each one according to their size would be a nightmare so I was thinking of just buy this type of sleeve for card collection (yugioh pokemon ect...) and cutting them to size. Can I get any more experienced philatelist's opinion on that? Thank you!

Edit: I mean in addition to the album I already have my stamps in. While buying stamps I found albums that had the stamps both displayed in the album AND had an additional plastic mount on certain stamps and I was thinking of using these sleeves the same way. (Sorry for the confusion)

I haven’t had much luck finding photos of unopened packs like this online.