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It is easy to answer yes without much thought and condemn Royal Mail but I'm not so sure such a view is merited. It is true that, apart from around ten special commemorative sets being issued in a typical year to mark various special occasions, notable anniversaries and the British way of life, there are also new definitive stamps, regional stamps, booklets, smilers, presentation packs, year packs, First Day Covers, miniature sheets etc. etc. etc. Undoubtedly anyone trying to collect one of every new issue across the various formats would find it incredibly expensive. However should completeness be the main aim for modern GB stamp collectors? I don't think so.

Although Britain began printing commemorative stamps in 1924 to mark the British Empire Exhibition only fourteen sets were issued before the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. While I acknowledge there are now hundreds of GB commemorative issues to collect, it is by no means an impossible task or an overly expensive ambition to try and build a complete commemorative collection over time.

I accept that, as the face value of stamps has increased, the cost of collecting new issues has obviously risen too but, if you look back at the stamps from a couple of decades ago, a new collector can pick up hundreds of the required issues for pence rather than pounds and there are other ways to limit the cost of retro-building a GB commemorative stamp collection. One of the most obvious cost hurdles is the 1929 PUC £1 stamp. In days gone by I might have looked to try and complete a collection using a much cheaper defective used stamp and then look to replace it with a better example when the purse strings allowed. But it also makes perfect sense to limit a collection to the commemorative issues of the current monarch's reign thus avoiding the PUC £1 hurdle altogether. Likewise, if it is the stamp designs your collection wants to represent, there's no rule anywhere that says you must also collect the relatively expensive phosphor issues of the sixties.

Having said all that, I'd question the real value of such a collection as it would simply form a catalogue rather than impart a story of much interest. The average person cannot seriously hope to build a collection that tells the story of GB stamps 1840 to date including examples of every stamp and variety. Therefore I can accept a new issue policy at Royal Mail that actively discourages collectors from having "one of everything" they issue. The way forward for collectors, in my opinion, is to choose a realistic specialisation or niche. It isn't just stamps that are affected by such an overload. As time marches on it is perhaps inevitable that collecting any kind of tangible item simply for completeness becomes increasingly unrealistic. Think about books or postcards by a given publisher, Royal Mint coins or even shoes by a fashionable designer.

So I would advise people to collect according to a logical criteria that interests them to form a complete story rather than a complete record. This could cover an era (e.g. a particular monarch's reign), a thematic or topical collection where stamps are collected according to design content, specialising in particular formats such as presentation packs, first day covers, miniature sheets etc. How about the now discontinued postage due stamps? The options available to specialise and tell the story of one GB philatelic niche are endless.

As my own collecting has matured I have become increasingly interested in more marginal areas of British stamp collecting and lean more toward postal history. I now collect commercially used covers postmarked in specific towns to build a representative collection of the various postmarks. I'm aiming to document the story about the use of stamps in each town rather than build a complete collection of stamps ever used in that town. I also collect postmark errors and have a woefully incomplete collection of squared circle postmarks from Sussex, the county of my birth. Where I do still focus on new issues is in another album that houses a collection of GB stamp booklets, but only since they contained self-adhesive stamps.

Who is to say it is just stamps, coins or postcards that form an interesting collection? If your collecting theme is based upon a town or county then it could be a diverse mix of stamps, postmarks, covers, coins, newspapers, books, photos and all kinds of ephemera that combine to fascinate and tell a great story. For me it is the challenge of collecting items together so they bring a timeline to life which creates a work that can be far more valuable than the sum of its constituent parts. Obviously I will never own every postmark error ever struck but I can tell a complete story as to why such errors happen and illustrate this work throughout with interesting examples.

When I see a beautiful and largely complete GB stamp collection nowadays it is all too often in the hands of someone who wants to impress me with the money they've spent rather than what the collection represents or the story it could tell. Fair enough, that person could afford to buy the stamps and it's nice to see rare items up close, but the collections I really find interesting often cost a fraction of the money and tell a much more unique story. I do acknowledge the enjoyment that I and others can get from trading stamps and covers as part of our hobby but this monetary motivation isn't related to collecting stamps, it's simply speculation and trading and a chance to offset collecting costs.

So, back to the old chestnut, is the Royal Mail producing too many stamps? Probably they are - and the same complaint can be levelled at most major stamp issuing countries - but, on the positive side, I'm happy if this discourages new collectors from the simplistic and largely hopeless stamp collecting aim of completeness and encourages them to think more imaginatively about the content, themes, aims and purpose of their hobby. None of the greatest stories ever published have ever included every word of the language they're written in.

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