Life sure seemed simpler when I was growing up. As a budding stamp collector, I eventually worked my way up to investing in a set of Scott International Albums, which, at the time, consisted of six hefty albums all neatly housed in blue binders with spaces for stamps starting with the inception of the adhesive stamps we all have come to love to collect and running right up to the then present time.

Today, with an estimated 10- to 15,000 stamps being issued worldwide on a yearly basis, keeping up with a general collection has become a daunting, if not impossible, exercise (although some hearty souls are giving it a go), not to mention the expense involved and the shelving required for what must be an unbelievable aggregate of stamp albums.Not surprisingly, the sheer number of new issues has given rise to different ways of collecting, such as topical and single-country specialization as a means of creating at least the possibility of completeness for one's chosen philatelic journey.

In this newly launched blog, Linn's will be attempting to provide information on as many new issues as we can to help our readers keep up with what's out there and what may fit into your collections, and in doing so, we'd like your help.

Are any of you out there still trying to collect all stamps worldwide? Is there a special new issue that tickles your fancy for any reason? Is there any information you that you feel needs to be added to this exercise as we go along? Together we can make this blog a super resource for all collectors regardless of how and what we collect. Feel free to jump into the discussion at any time.

Shown with this blog is Great Britain’s Penny Black miniature sheet. The technical details for this sheet are as follows:

ISSUE DATE: May 6, 2015

SHEET SIZE: 144 millimeters by 74mm

STAMP FORMAT/SIZE: portrait, 20mm by 24mm

DESIGN: Sedley Place

PRINTER: International Security

PRINT PROCESS: lithography

PERFORATION: 15 by 14

PHOSPHOR: bars, as appropriate

GUM: PVA

NUMBER PER SHEET: 4