Stamps by the Pound
September 13, 2012 § 2 Comments
Recently, because of the upcoming type-in and letter writing social, I’ve been searching for information and browsing for inspiration. Somewhere along the way, while thinking that collage would probably be the best approach for offering a mail art activity, I discovered that you can buy canceled stamps on eBay. By the pound. Since I have a weakness for ephemera, I placed a bid. I now have a bag containing hundreds (thousands?) of stamps from all over the world spanning decades of postal delivery.
With the more unique and interesting designs, I can see a single stamp becoming the central element of a work of art. The more monochrome stamps with run of the mill designs give me ideas for color themes. I am so excited to see what people do with them! And I have a feeling I’ll be using a few in projects of my own before December 7th.
Scribbling Glue 
Love it. I’m not a stamp collector, but i do save ones I like and use them in collage. How would I find the ones for sale on eBay?
I’m not a stamp collector either, so if I’m about to make a collage out of valuable stamps, I won’t have any idea I’m doing it!
If you do a search on eBay for “stamps lot,” you should find a bunch of listings and, if needed, you’ll be able to narrow your search from the categories that pop up. Choosing the category “in Stamps” should weed out most of the listings for rubber stamps. Interestingly, a search for “lot postage” will return listings for unused stamps that can be used for postage–a fun thing that I’ve discovered many other letter-writing bloggers enjoy doing. It’s a way to create mini art on an envelope as you piece together the proper denominations to cover the cost of mailing.
The lot I bought was a collection of international stamps and there are some really neat foreign stamps in the bunch.