How has your collection changed since you started?

As a kid, 40+ years ago, my mom worked at the local natural gas plant in the office. She would save all the stamps from the mail that they received. Although mostly US stamps, I enjoyed soaking them off of paper, letting them dry, and then placing them in a Worldwide Harris Album.

Since the album also had places for WW stamps, my mom would take me to the hobby shop and let me pick out packets of WW stamps. Most of them were CTO (didnt know what a CTO was at the time) and were very pretty, esp. to a kid.

About the time I started high school, was about the time I realized that girls were more important than stamps. Well, then came college, marriage, and kids.

About 2008, I decided to pull out my old Harris album from the attic, of all places, and started to look at the accumulation of stamps that was there. It gave me the spark that I needed to start collecting again, some 30 or so years later.

I decided to remove all the stamps from the album and researched what kind of album that would best for me. I bought the 3 Album set from Mystic for around $50 and was very happy that I did. To this day I believe its still the best album for US stamps for your money.

Didnt know what to do with all the worldwide stamps, so I thought that collecting them a topical collection would be for me. After a couple of years of that, I decided that wasnt for me and got rid of that via trades, giveaways and selling on ebay.

At present, I collect my US in the Mystic albums, Canada 2 Dominion Canada Stamp Album set, Great Britain in a 2 album Great Britain Scott set, Worldwide up to 1940 in a old Scotts International album and WW 1941-1950 in another old Scotts International album. Also collect anything pertaining to New Orleans: old covers, precancel stamps, cinderellas, etc.