PASTURES NEW

Pastures new are always tempting. The grass is greener on the other side, even in chilly Iceland. There comes a moment when every collector considers starting a new collection.
A chance encounter of a "weird and wonderful" stamp found out of the blue is often tucked in the back of a stockbook, but then revisited with curiosity at a later date.
Thus, a germ of an idea can start to grow and eventually bear fruit. It may never be as important as the original collection, but still be fascinating and rewarding.
The mainstream collection may be approaching completion, or missing items needed are expensive and difficult to locate. Or familiarity breeds boredom and a new sideline collection offers a new challenge.
It may be too easy to plunge into a new collection before taking stock. It is one thing to find an exotic rarity by chance, but another thing to build a satisfactory collection of such items. Can they be realistically found? And are they affordable? Is the language understandable? Is good literature available for guidance? Is there a danger of forgeries? For instance, if you have always collected GB and Commonwealth, a plunge into collecting Tibet might be an unwise challenge.
However, a new collection that is in some way related to previous knowledge and expertise is plain sailing. For instance, collecting revenue stamps of the same country as your main collection is simply the other side of the coin. Same history, same language, same printers.
Or, if you collect classic France, then Greek Hermes Heads came initially from the same printers in Paris, and you already have the philatelic experience to classify them.
Branching sideways is another obvious choice. Hop from one West Indies island to another, or from India to Ceylon, Denmark to Sweden. The history, geography, stamp printing style and mail connections are related and you are half-way there at the moment of starting.
I have spent half a century in professional philately covering most countries of the world, and am always happy to chat on the phone if you need any guidance about a new collecting field. John Barefoot