Intro

Since everyone else is starting a blog, I figured it was time that I started my own. Since my wife and sister both have the family covered, I decided to go with my hobby instead. Since the Yankees are well covered on the web, stamp collecting becomes the obvious choice for me. I have been collecting Israeli stamps for nearly 20 years (since my Bar Mitzvah way back in 1987).
I started collecting with a White Ace tab album, and a subscription to new issues from the Israel Stamp Agency in North America. I was able to find a dealer in Linn's that offered low priced approvals, and my collection was started. My dad and I want to the local stamp shows regularly, and I slowly was able to fill in the empty spots in my album.
Looking back, if I were to start over now, I would have been better served (at least, financially) with buying a collection at an auction, but back then there was no E-bay, and bidding in a conventional auction was just too scary. Plus, it was much more fun to explore the offerings of the various dealers at the stamp shows, or open a new shipment from the approval dealer every few weeks.
Since when I started collecting Israel stamps there was just about 40 years worth to complete the collection, and the majority of those were under $1, it didn't take too long until I had gotten to the point in my collecting that I had every Israeli stamp I could afford (pretty much complete from 1952 on). I didn't want to start collecting another country, but buying 1 stamp every few months was also unappealing. So, the question became what to collect now? I will answer the question in future posts.