I remember as a kid in the 50's (we Spanish-American War vets have good memories) buying the little orange bags of a 1000 stamps on paper from the local dime store. The dime stores are long gone and so fortunately are the little orange bags. The bags were produced by H E Harris and sold in stores all over the country. There was never anything worth while in them, but as a kid, there was always a hope that there might be a find. It is that hope for a find that still makes me buy some kiloware now and then even though I should have learned long ago that mixtures and kiloware usually aren��t worth what they cost. The operative word is usually. There use to be what are called ��bank mixtures�� that were neat. They were expensive and the good ones were hard to find. But the few dealers who sold good bank mixtures slowly disappeared in the 70's, and I have yet to find any current ones that are worth anything near what they cost.

If you collect used US and current used foreign, then there is no alternative to buying mixtures. I have found that you generally get better mixtures when you pay more per ounce. The problem I have is that there doesn��t seem to be anything that even looks like it has been ��unpicked�� on the market today. The dealer selling it to you may not have picked anything out of the mixture before it was sold to you, but someone up the feeding chain sure has.

When buying mixtures, always buy samples and compare dealers to each other on quality, variety and price. When you find a dealer you like, then buy larger quantities but always continue to sample elsewhere because the people who supply dealers change. The column in Linn�' on mixtures is a good place to start, but remember, Linn's is not going to come out and say you should not buy from dealer X because it is a rip-off. Why, because dealer X is an advertiser in Linn's. Look for specials that mixture dealers advertise to get you to try their product. These are often good deals.

When mixtures come from the supplier, they are generally for one country. Beware of offers for a mixture from a region or a group of small countries. These mixtures are often manufactured by the dealer advertising them and are usually free of any nice stamps (nice stamps are defined as cataloging over $1). This is not always true; I have gotten some really nice Scandinavian mixtures over the years, but by the same token I have really been bitten on some mixtures of the Pacific Islands. My definition of a good mixture is that I get more catalog per dollar spent than I would buying a collection. I don��t count stamps that catalog under 25 cents. Under these conditions, some mixtures I have purchased over the years yielded nothing for my investment.

A little bit about catalog pricing should be kept in mind. Commemoratives from the 70's from Finland catalog about 28 cents each. There are now more people living in Finland than then, and the current commemoratives catalog about $1.20 each. The prices for used Finnish stamps, and used stamps for many other countries as well, are grossly inflated in the current Scott��s catalog. This helps the mixture dealer sell his mixtures because the collectors think they are getting more for their money. These high prices for current used stamps will eventually fall as they always have. Keep this in mind when valuing the mixtures you buy. The stamps that generally retain their value over time are the higher value commemoratives, and these are usually picked out of the mixtures before you get them. If there are no high value commemoratives in a 1/4 lb mixture, find another dealer. There should not be very many of them, but there should be some. There are mixtures out there that have good stamps in them. Finding the dealers who sell these mixtures is the challenge. Shop around!