Tuesday, October 23, 2007

What next?



After completing as much of my tab collection as I could afford, I moved on to expand the breadth of my collection. So far, here are the areas I have expanded into:






  1. First Day Covers



  2. Maximimum Cards



  3. Postal Stationary (Pre-stamped envelopes, Air letter sheets, postcards, and reply cards)



  4. Vending Stamps



  5. New issue bulletins



  6. Revenues



  7. Booklets



  8. Artist signed presentation folders



  9. Plate blocks



  10. International Reply Coupons



  11. Duck Stamps



  12. New Years Cards



  13. Rememberence Letters



  14. Show Cards



  15. Tete-Beche Issues



  16. Palestinian Authority



  17. Egypt Occupied Palestine



  18. Jordan Occupied Palestine



  19. and just about anything else I can find



Crazy, huh?




Some of the areas were relatively easy and inexpensive to complete. Duck stamps, for example were only issues from 1995-1998. 4 stamps, and 4 FDC's later the collection was complete. Total cost was around $30. New Years cards were a bit tougher to complete, since they were only given free every year to new issue subscribers yearly since 1987, and I haven't subscribed directly to the new issue service. I was still able to buy them slowly and complete the collection for only $1-2 per card.




Maximum cards were very difficult to complete, even though the first set put out by the postal service only came out in 1988. Every issue from then on seems relatively common, and can easily be found from a specialized dealer or on e-bay. But, that first set (listed in the Bale 1992 catalog as MC1-3)was nearly impossible to find. I finally managed to put a set together from e-bay, but it took years. I actually thought I had bought a complete set at first, but it turned out to have only 2 of the 3 cards from the first set and 1 from the second. A few years later, I bought a lot (I suspect from the same person, but I can't be sure) that had the third card. Last year, I saw a set of 3 on e-bay and quickly purchased them (for $5) to have just in case the catalog ever catches up with there actual scarcity in the market.




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