What Can Be Done: Tasmania is one of the most interesting of the Australian States. The early engraved stamps are amongst the finest in all of philately. The first two issues of Tasmania are very different from most of the British Commonwealth issues, all of which share a common design feel. The later nineteenth century issues provide interesting plate and perforation study. In general, collectors sort out into two broad groups. The majority prefer to collect different stamps and grudgingly take up their watermark trays and perf gauges when the catalogs tell them that they need to in order to distinguish the issues that they are working on. Specialists, true specialists, relish the arcanae that make one fairly indistinguishable printing different from another. For this kind of philatelist, there are few areas more fruitful than that of Australian States. And of the States, Tasmania is one of the most interesting.
Specialty catalogs: Like with the other Australian States, most American collectors use the Scott catalog and most British collectors use the Stanly Gibbons catalog.
Stamp Albums: My recommendation for Tasmania, as with the other Australian States, is to buy the Scott specialty pages that are part of the Australia and Dependencies specialty album. Many collectors make their own album pages for Tasmania and the other Australian States. This has the advantage of allowing you put in the varieties that you want and exclude the varieties that you don’t wish to collect. There is a tradition in philately where certain types of varieties have more credibility than others. Watermark varieties usually make a stamp a different catalog number. When the watermark variety is an error, it can make for a major rarity. Perf varieties have somewhat less credence. They are common on the Australian States and even many quite serious collectors ignore them completely. Shade varieties rank even lower on the philatelic food chain. Ostensibly caused by different printings of the same stamp, many shades of 150 year old stamps are in fact caused by pigment decay and exposure to light. Such shades have no consistency across the issues and are more of a philatelic affectation than a serious collecting specialty (you can see where I stand on this Issue!). Making your own album pages allows you to collect the varieties that you want and ignore the rest.
Availability of Material: Like most of the other Australian States, Tasmania has an active collector and dealer base and stamps of Tasmania are frequently offered. On a per capita basis, Australia has far more collectors than the United States and Australian States are one of the most popular specialties there. If you decide to collect Tasmania, you will have no trouble finding the stamps.
Expense: Tasmania is one of the more expensive of the Australian States to complete (second probably only to New South Wales). Still, the country complete is only a couple thousand dollars, which would only fill a few spaces in your nineteenth century Great Britain or USA collection. That you can complete a major philatelic country, replete with rare and desirable nineteenth century stamps, for only a couple of thousand dollars is one of the reason for the popularity of all the Australian States.
Overall Grade: B+