Collecting has been a popular hobby since the beginning of human existance. Almost anything you can think of is being collected somewhere.

It can be somewhat of an addiction too, always being on the look out for another item for your collection.

Starting a stamp collection is a pretty inexpensive hobby. You can always start with with any stamps you receive on your own personal mail. Then get your household members to save their stamps for you. You'll build a good size collection in no time. There's no way you could ever run out of stamps to add to your bounty.

The slideshow begins with a few of the older ones from the United States and the next picture is a few from other countries, such as Italy, India, Sweden .

The Christmas stamps are a special category to start collecting in. At least you know you'll always get new ones once a year from the postal service. Some of last years Christmas stamps are valued at sixty cents -used, right now. I'd say thats a good place to start.

There's also a couple plate blocks shown. Each block has an identifying printing plate number, which indicates what full sheet it came from.

The airmail stamps are a unique category and may be more fun to collect because the older ones are not as readily available as other stamps.

Category items such as the Internal Revenue Stamps are a true delight to find, especially the documentary stamp and the Vehicle Use Tax Stamp of 1943.

Errors and misprints would be great additions to anyone's collection.

Christmas seals are distributed by non profit organizations for fund raising. They too are inexpensive to collect as the companies send them out at no charge in the hopes of getting a donation. They cannot be used for postage but , they are still collectible.

The last thing to consider is to be very careful of buying stamps from mail order dealers especially the ones that send you approvals so you can choose what you want. There is at least one company that insists their stamps are geniune ungummed stamps, but it's very obvious that they are reprints.