Saying Goodbye
I'm a compulsive purchaser of "mystery lots" and bulk mixtures. Part of the glamour these offerings hold for me is the "thrill of the chase" - that intense hope of finding an elusive prize, or an unusual offering, among the tens of thousands of common items. I'm not alone in my hunt for prizes: a large portion of collectors who collect multiple countries share my compulsion. We'll discuss how to find and choose such a lot in a future article, but this article wants to concentrate on something more basic: how to get RID of the tens of thousands of stamps you DON'T want or need!
Most stamp collectors, especially worldwide or "general" collectors, are loathe to turn lose of anything, even duplicate stamps and materials that have outlived any possible use they may have had to enhance our collections. But unless you live alone, in a house big enough to serve as a warehouse for General Electric, there comes a time when you have to let go of some of what you've accumulated. One of the things that stymies many collectors isn't the decision to dispose of excess material, but HOW! Let's take a look at some of the possibilities.
First, however, let's set some ground rules. Let's assume you have been a compulsive hoarder for at least five years. You can accumulate a lot of useless material a lot quicker than that, but it usually takes at least five years for the average collector to reach the point where his/her spouse or frequent visitor start dropping hints of the need to CLEAN UP a bit!
Ground Rule #1: You only need one copy of a given stamp for your collection. This rule is void when the objective is to plate a given stamp, or when you collect both a mint and used copy, but for the majority of us, it's a given.
Ground Rule #2: NOBODY will want to buy, or trade for, a copy of any of a large number of stamps that are so common it's virtually impossible to purchase a bulk lot without getting one or two of them. These are usually small-size definitive stamps issued after 1950 or so, but may include many early issues, and a lot of large-size stamps from some countries.
Ground Rule #3: The likelihood of trading away ten or more copies of most stamps without getting additional copies of that same stamp is virtually nil.
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