Stamp collecting for beginners — 06. The stamps you’ll meet

Look through any mixed packet and the stamps seem to be all the same kind of thing: small, gummed, with a value printed on them. Collectors, though, sort them into types, and the type often matters as much as the design — it decides how many were printed, how long they were on sale, and how they are catalogued and priced.

These are the kinds you will meet first. Each name links to its full entry in the glossary.

Definitives

Definitives are the everyday stamps: printed in large numbers, in a long range of values, and kept on sale for years — sometimes decades. They pay for ordinary letters and parcels, so they are the stamps you are most likely to find on envelopes.

A definitive series usually shares one theme or design across many values, and the same stamp is often reprinted several times. That makes definitives look dull and turns out to be their attraction: reprints can differ in paper, perforation, watermark or shade, and specialists spend years sorting them. For a beginner, a definitive series of independent India is an inexpensive, well-defined collection with a clear end.

Commemoratives

Commemoratives mark a person, an anniversary, an event or a subject — a centenary, a festival, a national park, a sporting event. They are printed once, in a set quantity, and sold for a limited time. Most of the stamps in this site’s catalogue are commemoratives, and they are what most people picture when they think of stamp collecting.

Because each issue is a one-off, commemoratives are easy to list and easy to complete by year. They are also where most thematic collections begin: the subject is the point of the stamp.

Miniature sheets and sheetlets

A miniature sheet is a small sheet containing one or more stamps, surrounded by a printed margin that often carries a picture or an explanation of the issue. India Post issues many of its commemoratives this way as well as in ordinary sheets. A sheetlet is similar but holds several stamps — sometimes all the designs of a set together.

Collectors keep these whole. A stamp cut out of a miniature sheet is worth far less than the intact sheet, so store them flat, in a mount or stock-book page large enough to hold them without bending the corners.

Covers, cancellations and postal stationery

Not everything worth collecting is a loose stamp. A cover is an envelope (or wrapper) that has been through the post, or was prepared to look as if it had. Several kinds are collected in their own right:

• First day covers — envelopes with a new stamp, cancelled on its day of issue, usually with a special postmark and a printed design that matches the stamp.
• Special covers — envelopes produced by postal circles or societies for an event, an exhibition or an anniversary, with a special cancellation used only that day or week.
• Commercial covers — ordinary letters that went through the post. A clear postmark, an unusual route or the right rate can make a plain envelope more interesting than the stamp on it.

Postal stationery is paper with the postage already printed on it: postcards, inland letter cards, envelopes and aerogrammes. Indian postal stationery is a large field with a devoted following, and much of it is still cheap.

Keep covers whole. Never cut a stamp off an interesting envelope — the envelope is often the valuable part.

My Stamp and other personalised issues

Since 2011, India Post has offered My Stamp: a sheet of stamps printed with a tab beside each stamp showing a photograph you supply — a family picture, a logo, an event. The stamps are valid for postage, and the scheme is often run at philatelic exhibitions and bureaus.

Collectors treat personalised stamps as a specialised side area. Some collect only the stamp designs used for My Stamp; others collect sheets made for particular events or institutions. Whether they belong in your collection is your choice — which is a good moment to look back at the one-sentence goal from lesson 01.

In the next lesson: collecting by subject rather than by country — choosing a theme, and giving it a shape.