Postage Stamp Guides: Why and How to Use Them Articles | Stamps

By: J.Morgan

What is a postage stamp guide and why do you need one? Well, any stamp collector will tell you that a postage stamp guide is an essential companion. Understanding their uses and what you can expect to learn and get from them will really enable you to get the full power out of a postage stamp guide, and in turn, build your collection to its maximum potential.

As with a hobby such as collecting baseball cards, price guides exist for stamps. These are great resources for determining the value and rarity for whatever it is you’re interested in. Postage stamp guides work in the exact same fashion.

Postage stamp guides actually have many different benefits and these include:

•    Determining the value of specific stamps in your collection and your entire collection
•    Finding stamps you want to seek out
•    Learning about the different types of stamps available or readily found
•    Discovering all of the different special editions, reissues and common misprints of stamps
•    Boosting your knowledge of collecting with informative articles and tips
•    Finding out more about stamp collections and stamp collectors in general

So while the primary purpose of a postage stamp guide is clearly to help you determine a valuation for a huge selection of stamps, there are actually a handful of other great uses as well. Therefore there’s really no way around it, if you want to take stamp collecting seriously, you need a postage stamp guide (and usually more than one)!

Now it’s time to track down that perfect postage stamp guide to raise your game. Look for quality guides in these places:

•    General hobby and collecting stores
•    Stamp collecting stores if you have any in your area
•    eBay and other person-to-person online markets
•    Other collectors may let you borrow or use their guides
•    Bookstores often carry postage stamp guides as well

With so many people all over the country and the world that are into stamp collecting, you can’t let yourself lag behind them. You can be sure that they all are using postage stamp guides and have all of that great information at their disposal. It really comes down to you, as a stamp collector, needing a postage stamp guide to keep up and stay ahead.

Use a stamp guide to learn more than you ever dreamt about your own collection and what it’s worth. Use it to find out what you should be seeking out and how much you should be willing to pay for it. Before you know it, you may even be collecting the postage stamp guides themselves! There’s no time to waste if you want to really be collecting stamps as a passion, you need to get a postage stamp guide as soon as possible.