Stamp Diversity

I was sorting some stamps the other day, doing as I usually do by putting them into the Vario pages to organize them and I noticed a rather remarkable thing. There is a startling diversity of the types, ages, and quality of stamps that one can collect. No big surprise really as there are millions of different stamps in the world. But what I think caught my eye was the collection on one page ...

1) I, like most collectors, started collecting as a youth and by collecting my own country. One can focus on the colorful variety of older issues

or focus on one type of issue ... i.e. the red Washingtons

2) One can collect engraved stamps, like these beautiful Swedish stamps (featuring a stamp by one of the most well known and prolific of stamp engravers Czeslaw Slania)

or this pair from Poland

3) Or one can just collect topicals, of which there are literally thousands of topics to choose from. The first is a pair of birds/lighthouses/maps from Belize

the second is a Star Trek stamp from Guyana

another from Guyana, this time featuring a PT boat, which could be considered a topical stamp in the Ships & Boats category (with dozens of subcategories).

and finally another from Belize, this time an archeological stamp