Stamp collecting is a popular (and expensive) activity. There are many album pages of stamps and other collectibles for you to collect, and there are always new stamps coming out.
As a note, the term “stamp” is used throughout Neopets (and this guide) to refer to any item that can be placed in your stamp album, even though many of these items (such as coins, shells, scarabs, and coconuts) are not really stamps in the dictionary definition of the word.
The Stamp Album
The foundation of stamp collecting is your Stamp Album. Every account has one automatically; you don’t need to do anything special to create it. You can view your own or any other user’s album via their user lookup.
The front page of the stamp album
The album is divided into different pages. Each page has room for 25 stamps, though not all pages have had 25 stamps created for them yet. Each page also has a theme, such as Mystery Island, Neoquest, or Coins. The bottom row on each page is coloured a darker gray; TNT originally reserved these spaces for special or especially rare stamps, but has not generally followed this on more recent pages.
When you add an album item to your Stamp Album, it will be visible in the album. Album items cannot be removed once they are added.
Adding to your Album
Any album item can be added to your album through your inventory. Simply select the “Put in your Stamp Album” option from the dropdown and submit!
How to add a stamp to your album
It is not possible to add the same stamp to your album more than once. If you try, you will get the below error.
Stamp Collecting Tactics
So, how does one manage to amass a meaningful stamp collection?
Restockable Stamps
The vast majority of stamps have a rarity of r100 or lower, meaning they restock in the main shops of Neopia. Lower rarity stamps restock more commonly, in higher quantities, and cheaply, while higher rarity stamps restock rarely, in smaller quantities, and for more Neopoints. Because the shops of Neopia can stock at any given time on any given day, the supply of these stamps is theoretically infinite, though the infrequency of higher-rarity stocks throttles this reality.
There are four shops where stamps restock:
- Neopian Post Office: Stamps
- Collectable Coins: “Collectibles”, which includes coins and scarabs
- Collectable Sea Shells: “Sea Shells”, which includes not only sea shells but also Maractite coins and Treasures of the Deep
- Toy Shop: Charms
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The lowest rarity restockable stamp is the Mystery Island Kougra Stamp at a mere r20, while the highest rarity restockable stamps are the Emerald Eyrie Coin and Neopian Times Coin at a whopping r100.
Despite selling stamps, the Post Office doesn’t seem to offer an actual mail service…
Most (but not all!) stamps are cheaper to buy from these shops than from other users; this is especially true for higher rarity (r90+) stamps, where you can get them for tens of thousands of NPs instead of tens of millions! However, these shops tend to be extremely competitive due to the value & rarity of such stamps.
You can get even better savings at these shops by visiting on Half Price Day, which occurs the 3rd of each month. For stamps r89 and lower, you may get lucky at the Igloo Garage Sale, which randomly stocks items for a fraction of their price in the main shops.
Just a few of the many stamps you can buy from the main shops
There are several other miscellaneous ways to get restockable stamps that aren’t through the main shops:
- Many restockable stamps can be found in the prize pools of various dailies.
- Similarly, several Battledome opponents have stamps in their prize pools at certain difficulty levels.
- Tarla’s Toolbar has 14 different restockable stamps in its prize pool, both as main prizes and as drops.
- A random event in which Gordos the Collector gives you a random r92-98 stamp.
- Although now defunct, Key Quest had 28 restockable stamps in its prize pool.
- And of course, restockable stamps can be earned from any feature that can give any item within a certain rarity range, such as Premium Space Faerie drops or Kitchen Quest prizes.
Special Stamps
Any stamp with a rarity of r101 or higher is considered a “special” stamp. These stamps do not stock in any main shop of Neopia. They can be unofficially categorized into two main groups: active and retired.
Active
“Active” special stamps are ones that are regularly generated through a site process such as one of the dailies. For example, the Deformed Maractite Coin is exclusively given out by the Anchor Management daily.
Some special stamps you can still earn through features on the site
In some ways, active special stamps are more similar to restockable stamps than to retired special stamps, because their supply is theoretically infinite.
Retired
“Retired” special stamps are ones that are not regularly generated in Neopia. This includes not only stamps that are literally retired (r180), but also stamps that were awarded for a one-time event or promotion. For example, Altador Cup prize shops have featured a commemorative stamp almost every year since the very first one; once that year’s prize shop closes, the supply of the stamp(s) within it officially becomes finite.
Some special stamps you can now only acquire from other players
Because there is a finite, limited supply of these stamps, they can only be purchased from other players and tend to be very expensive. Because of this, these stamps often alone dictate the value of a stamp album page or avatar. Their scarcity and value is essentially the basis of competitive stamp collecting!
Tracking Your Collection
The Jellyneo Item Database includes a checklist tool to check which stamps you are missing from each page, as well as their estimated costs. You can manage missing stamps more continually by adding these missing stamps to a wishlist.
We also provide stamp collector counters that you can display anywhere, such as your user lookup, shop description, or pet page! There is a counter for each album page, as well as for the album overall.
High Scores
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The stamp collecting high score table is based simply on the number of stamps you have added to your Stamp Album.
Like all high score tables, it is reset at the start of every month. However, unlike most other high score tables, progress is never lost. To reenter the table each month, a user simply needs to visit the stamp overview page.
Because of this requirement to go out of your way to reenter the table each month, you don’t necessarily have to be in the true top 17 of stamp collectors on the site to get a trophy—you just need to be in the top 17 that have checked in so far that month. If one of the top collectors doesn’t check in during the first few days of the month, that opens up a temporary spot for somebody else!
To demonstrate this, we have tabulated the average trophy cutoff scores on the 1st, 15th, and 28th day of the month. The scores below represent the average number of stamps you must have in your album to receive a specific trophy. Notice how the scores tend to be lower earlier in the month by a few stamps.
Indeed, the cutoff scores are not even necessarily strictly increasing from month to month. Here are the monthly cutoff scores for 2022 as an example.
Avatars
The set of stamp collector avatars are among the rarest and most expensive avatars out there. All of them have the same solution: fill a specific page of your album, then view it. All of the pages that have 25 stamps released have corresponding avatars. You can view each page’s avatar in our Album Page Listing.
Curious what the easiest/cheapest avatars to obtain are? While none of the album pages are easy or cheap, there are some that are comparatively more attainable. Space Station Coins and Sea Shells are generally considered the most attainable because all of their stamps are restockable, which helps with both supply and price. (The same is true for the regular Coins page, but the r100 Emerald Eyrie Coin is so rare it hardly counts.) Other, Other II, and Other III each have at least a few special stamps, but they are not as rare or expensive as most other pages.
History of Stamp Collecting
The first stamps were released on September 5, 2002. At the time of release, only a handful of stamps and just two pages (Mystery Island and Virtupets) were available. Additional pages were released on later dates:
- Mystery Island: September 5, 2002
- Virtupets: September 5, 2002
- Tyrannia: September 10, 2002
- Haunted Woods: September 11, 2002
- Neopia Central: September 25, 2002
- NeoQuest: November 18, 2002
- Snowy Valley: January 2, 2003
- Meridell vs Darigan: January 15, 2003
- Lost Desert: January 22, 2003
- The Battledome: November 18, 2003
- Coins: November 20, 2003
- Battle for Meridell: February 19, 2004
- NeoQuest II: March 31, 2004
- Other: June 1, 2004
- Space Station Coins: July 19, 2004
- Evil Coconuts: November 19, 2004
- Sea Shells: March 24, 2005
- Maraquan: July 6, 2005
- Altador: April 18, 2006
- Shenkuu: May 1, 2007
- Charms: October 17, 2007
- Other II: June 21, 2008
- Faerieland: July 7, 2010
- Scarabs: August 14, 2010
- Moltara: December 9, 2010
- Maractite Coins: February 1, 2011
- Qasala: May 14, 2011
- Treasures of the Deep: July 8, 2011
- Krawk Island: August 9, 2011
- Neovia: August 31, 2012
- Charms II: February 11, 2014
- Mobile Apps (formerly Ghoul Catchers): March 6, 2015
- Other III: May 9, 2015
- Sea Shells II: May 30, 2015
- Neopia Central II: December 30, 2019
- Tyrannia II: May 12, 2015
- Snowy Valley II: May 9, 2015
- Evil Coconuts II: October 31, 2015
- Scarabs II: April 21, 2016
- Coins Part Deux Revenge of Coin: July 4, 2015
- Other IV: October 31, 2019
- Card Collector: July 7, 2022
- Virtupets II: April 20, 2023
Sloth Auctions
Starting in February 2011, TNT began to release some very old, very retired stamps once each month through auctions by the dr_sloth staff account. These were put on hold without comment by the end of that year, though have returned randomly a couple of times afterward.
In June 2011, one Midnight Jelly World Stamp was also released as a prize for the closest guess in Lenny Conundrum round 408 as part of a celebration for 1 trillion page views on Neopets.
Will Sloth Auctions ever return again? TNT has been asked at least 3 times in the Editorial and were receptive to the idea each time. They were more skeptical about the wisdom of reviving Sloth auctions in a June 2018 Q&A, but hinted at alternative re-release methods in other Q&A’s in October 2018. Most recently, in a July 2019 Q&A, TNT had stated that re-releasing old stamps was not a top priority for the team but were open to ideas.
Unreleased Stamps
Jellyneo has found images for several dozen unreleased stamps, which you can see in our Item Database.
Will these stamps ever be released? It’s unlikely. Many of them have outdated artwork (such as stamp_hal_edna which features the original version of Edna) or are crude versions of actually released stamps (such as stamp_nq_archmagus’s resemblence to Two Rings Archmagus Stamp). The majority of them are also clearly themed for album pages that are already full. We include them in our Item Database not because we anticipate their release, but simply for your curiosity and viewing pleasure.
Some of the many examples of stamps that never made it
This article was written by: Kenny
Source: https://antiquewolrd.com
Categories: Stamps
