[VI]
ON LIMITING
A COLLECTION
ON LIMITING A COLLECTION
The difficulties of a general collection—The unconscious trend to specialism—Technical limitations: Modes of production; Printers—Geographical groupings: Europe and divisions—Suggested groupings of British Colonies—United States, Protectorates and Spheres of Influence—Islands of the Pacific—The financial side of the "great" philatelic countries.
To the child in stamp-collecting the boundless world is small; he will seek to bring into his net stamps from everywhere, postage and fiscal, exhibition labels, trading stamps, and all that has the shape or semblance of what he conceives to be subjects for his collecting. The collector of fuller experience knows that he must make a lesser world of his own. To attempt the whole wide world, even in what I may term "ordinary" postage-stamps, is a task which can scarcely attain even approximately to completion in these days, and the collector on such a scale would lose much of the advantage that comes of specialisation in particular directions. He would know little of the world's postage-stamps except in a superficial way, that would never bring him a bargain, and would probably make him a frequent victim of the unscrupulous.
It is well enough that the beginner should first flounder in a sea of stamps, to learn the first rudiments of the study. The specialist needs a general education as a groundwork in stamp-collecting, just as he does in any other pursuit. But it is almost unavoidable that the tendency must come to the advancing collector to reserve his strength in the direction which most attracts him, or for which he enjoys special advantages.