• World stamp collecting has another advantage over specialized (single country or thematic) collection. It is easy to get new stamps all the time. If you are narrowing down your collection to a single country or a special theme, pretty soon you will discover newer stamps are hard to find unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money. On the other hand, for the world stamp collector, varieties are easy to find. Even the dealer will always have an inexpensive packet which the worldwide collector doesn't already have.

• Nobody knows what will happen to stamp collecting in the future. Ordinary stamps of today may turn out to be valuable stamps in the future. If that happens, may be a member of your future generation will someday thank you!

• It is perfectly alright to collect used stamps. One of the most valuable stamps in the world, which sold for $935,000 in an auction in 1980, is an used stamp.

• Sometimes 2, 4, 6 or more different designs of stamps may be contained in one block. If you find such a block, it is best not to separate the stamps in the block. Keep them together. They are generally considered more valuable in a block than separate stamps. Below is an example.

• Stamps having same design, color, and denomination are sometimes issued in different forms, e.g., as sheets, booklets, or coils. Collect a specimen of each, if possible. They are considered as different stamps. Here are some examples:

• Booklet stamps may not have perforations on 1, 2, 3, or all 4 sides. The above example of booklet stamp does not have perforation on 3 sides. Below are other examples of booklet stamps:

• Stamps on First Day Covers with first day cancellation marks should never be taken off the covers. They are definitely more valuable on the cover. Similarly, if you find an old envelope with stamp/s on it, check with a senior collector or dealer. The envelope with stamp/s attached on it may be more valuable than the off-paper stamp/s.

• Even for used stamps, always use acid-free, archival quality album pages, hinges, and philatelic quality clear poly film sleeves for display and storage of your stamps.

• If you use two-sided album pages, always use archival quality clear poly film interleaving to prevent stamps from getting entangled with stamps on the facing page.

• Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue has a very good section in the front. Read it to know more about stamps and use it as a guide book. Scott Catalogue is available in most public libraries.

• Looking at the cancellation mark (if legible) can reveal many things about a stamp. If you can read the date, it will give you an idea how recent or how old is the stamp. If you can read the name of the originating post office, it can sometimes help identify the stamp. For example, if you do not know what "Hellas" means, and if you cannot read Greek alphabet, but you can read the word "Athens" in the cancellation mark, you've got a big clue. It is a Greece stamp!

• The condition of a stamp is often described with words like 'average', 'fine', 'very fine' etc.. These terms usually refer to centering of the stamp though they can also mean the overall condition of the stamp. Centering means the distance of the printed area from all four edges of the stamp. If the distances are all equal, it is a perfectly centered stamp, and it is called 'superb'. But that is not the case always, though expected. Stamps can be so off-centered that on one side of the stamp there may not be any margin left between the design and the actual edge of the stamp, and the perforations may actually go through the design. Stamps so badly off-centered are known as 'average'. Things in-between can be described as 'fine', 'very fine' (abbreviated F, VF) etc.. One factor that determines the value of a stamp is its centering.

• Stamp collectors use a lot of different terms like cachet, plate block, selvage, roulette, coil, overprint, cut square, grill, perf, watermark etc...

However, even a beginner should know the meaning of the terms definitive and commemorative stamps. Definitive stamps are usually small in size, are printed in huge quantities, and they remain in circulation (meaning they can be bought from the post office) for a long period of time, often years. In common men's words these are "everyday" stamps. The following is an example: