Stamp Department : Page 62

And, of course, with the passing years there were moreand more stamps. With the vicissitudes of war more andmore nations passed into oblivion or were newly created,all of which issued postage stamps. This multitude of newstamps and new nations created a change in the hobbyof collecting stamps. The problem of providing albumsand catalogs for all of the world's stamps became evermore pressing and the followers of the hobby began to"specialize." They limited their collecting interests to thestamps of a single country, a group of countries or a par-ticular kind of stamp. This limiting of one's collectionwas a boom to the existing album and catalog publisherswho, following the trend, aided and abetted it by publish-ing specialized albums. For a while it appeared that thecollecting of stamps—all stamps—was to be thwarted bythis lack of desire to accept the challenge presented. Itwas much easier for the album publisher to "go along