John's Personal Page
Personally, I lean toward used stamps. A mint (or unused) stamp is a piece of paper with a pretty picture printed on it. A used stamp, however, has fulfilled the obligation for which it was created.
I collect the world up through 1954 (It was a good year, as I was born then). I use a combination of Scott International Albums and 'Home made' pages from Stampalbums.com (see below).
I collect United States stamps through to the present, again usually used. I do purchase a lot of stamps from "the Cave," where the Postal Service has its stamp fulfillment service. These however, I use in an attempt to use commemoratives (stamps issued for short periods of time, usually honoring an event or a person) on all of our outgoing letter mail.
One of my "specialties" are the U.S. PNC issues. These are Plate Number Coil stamps.
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| The plate number located at the bottom
of each of these stamps is coded to show the actual printing plate
that printed the stamps. Depending on the press and manufacturer,
the numbers occur at different intervals. You can visit the Plate
Number Collectors Club
I also collect stamps issued by Great Britain. A valuable resource is the Great Britain Collectors Club. As a collector of religious topics on stamps, I am a member of COROS, the Collectors of Religion on Stamps. I also have a small collection on line of the Madonna on Stamps
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For Sale
Occasionally, I have some unwanted or unneeded stamps that I am willing to sell at a good price.
Other Links
As a stamp collector/accumulator, there are a number of places on the internet I enjoy visiting.
Bill Steiner's Stamp Album website. Bill has set for himself the goal of creating specialized album pages for every stamp ever issued. These pages are available at his site in Adobe PDF format. (PDF or Portable Document Format was created by Adobe Systems to allow an artist to have his creations appear the same on all supported computers, monitors, and/or printers.) Bill offers his pages for a very small amount, $20.00 a year, with unlimited downloads.