I have no idea why, I just find it very hard to bring myself to collect anything used. I started off that way, after all. I soaked tons of stamps off of envelopes when I was a kid and hinged them into albums. Today, I just can’t do it. I know, I’ve tried. I just don’t understand what the problem is, although I might have some ideas.

So let’s discuss it.

As I said, I used to do it. My parents gave me two stamp albums when I was about 7-8, one a U.S. album and one worldwide. My mother then let me dig  through hundreds of letters that she’d saved over the years for any stamps that I wanted to take. I would soak them by the hundreds and lovingly put them into the albums. When I was a little older, I’d order kiloware and go through it, plucking out the stamps that I wanted and setting the rest aside. Eventually, I had tons of stamps in glassine envelopes, extras, things that didn’t fit, it didn’t matter.

I can’t do that anymore.

I think the beginning was when I found out that there was a local department store with a stamp counter. I went in there and bought a couple of packets of cheap mint stamps, including the one to the right. I also picked up proper stamp mounts. There was no way I was hinging these!

When I got home, I realized that the mint stamps just looked better. I didn’t immediately set about to replace all the stamps that I’d already collected with mint, but I stopped actively looking for used stamps for my collection.

Today, every single U.S. stamp from about 1900 onward is mint. That’s not to say that I have a hard dividing line, I just accept used for the more expensive ones, usually as placeholders until I can get around to replacing them with mint. Money really isn’t an issue, mostly it’s just a matter of having come across one that I like. I’ll probably never have them all, especially the 1868 z-grill, of which there is only one in existence and I’m not paying $3 million for a stamp, but I’m at least having fun picking them up where I can.

I’ve never cared about postal history. This isn’t about preserving the past. I do it because it’s fun, that’s it. I like paging through my albums and seeing the colorful stamps. I have expanded beyond my U.S. collecting roots and now collect countries throughout Asia and Oceania. It isn’t that I have any connection to any of those countries, I just like how their stamps look so I collect them.

Yet, as I said, I’ve tried a couple of times to get back into used. A year or two, I decided, quite deliberately, that I’d collect New Zealand used. I got on eBay and ordered a hundred all-different New Zealand and waited patiently for them to arrive. I got myself some hinges, which, granted, are crap these days, and was excited to get into something that I could just add new stamps en mass without having to care about cost at all.

I think I hinged in about ten stamps before I stopped. Out came the mounts, I put the rest into the album and then started ordering mint. I just can’t bring myself to do it. Now, I’ve got a fair collection of mint New Zealand to go alongside all the other countries I only collect mint.

I even tried ordering some kiloware, just for the fun of going through it and the only thing I got out of it was a headache. I found a handful of stamps in countries that I collected, a few for my wife, and the rest, I just gave away. It really wasn’t as much fun as I’d hoped.

That doesn’t mean that if I get some used stamps that I need, I won’t throw them into the album as a placeholder until they can be replaced. They always get replaced, though, eventually. I just don’t care for the look of used stamps. I don’t know what it is.

The only place that I will get used stamps is for my topical collections. I used to go after some huge topics, like dogs, but now I’ve cut it down to very specific categories. Now, I only collect chihuahuas in that category and there aren’t that many of those to be had. I think the latest list I have is about 60 stamps total and I have a fair number of them.

Before we moved, seven years ago now, I went through the house and decluttered and I’ve never wanted to be cluttered since. All of the extra thousands of stamps that I had sitting around in boxes, I gave away to local collectors. I didn’t need them. They were just taking up space. Now, if I ever get any extras, I have a couple of fledgling collectors that wind up with them because the idea of having piles of stuff I don’t need bothers me. What’s the point? It falls outside of my collection.

So, I give up. Every time I go to a stamp show, where people are hunched over all the used stamps, trying to save a buck, I just shake my head and head for the mint stuff to fill some holes. At least I’m having a good time. That’s all I care about.