Quick catalogue look-ups

$1 is essentially the minimum catalog value for FDC's in the Scott catalog. Actual retail, as with the stamps, will be much lower.

If your goal is get a collection of all the cities, then buy a large batch to start. At wholesale/bulk/lot level, they will come out to <10¢ each. Then go after the ones you are missing. On the common ones, individual retail should be in the 25¢-50¢ range.

All this is for unaddressed common cachets.

I only have the 2018, and it's still $1 in there. As mentioned, it's the Scott catalog minimum, so even if it has gone up, let's say 25¢, it really won't make much difference in either the wholesale nor retail price.

Gotcha. The sensible (yeah, right!) thing might be to specialize by state. I'm still thinking through the folly logic of collecting.

I wouldn't drop the idea, but keep it on the "list". Some individual covers are premium, but it's no big deal if you don't have it. The largest collections of 1396 FDCs are typically still under 10K different. Having a 1000++ different is already pretty well past intermediate. Collectors I've known typically only have a few hundred, and they are quite happy with their collection. I used to collect the unstamped "blank" covers, believe it or not!

I would suggest slowly looking for bulk lots of 1396 FDCs over the course of 1-3 years.

That's a common strategy I use when I want to focus on something. In my mind, I have a list of a dozen or so "areas" I would like to start/focus on. In the course of 1-5 years, if I see a good deal on an auction, I'll make the purchase and it becomes the starting seed for that collection.

You really only start off buying things piecemeal if:
1) you have money to burn,
2) you are only interested in that area and nothing else, or
3) you plan on building up your collection one by one on a strict budget over a course of 1-2 decades

JMHO (cheapskate's opinion, that is)

That's a really interesting listing, and also goes to show the importance of having a variety of search strategies: the lister put it under FDCs (1951 to Now) => 2001 to Now.

You are so helpful -- thanks!