Sections in this guide:
- What is a mixture?
- Mixture types
- Things to watch for when buying mixtures
- Why buy a mixture?

What is a mixture?
- A group of mixed up stamps, on or off paper
- It will have duplication, sometimes a lot, sometimes not, check the item listing to see if it suggests the amount of variety, or age range etc
- Generally mixtures are cheaper than packets of all different stamps etc
- Mixtures hold the possibility of “finds”. Generally the odds of a find is small, especially in a small mixture.
- A mixture of 500 stamps is much more likely to have been reviewed than a mixture of 10,000
- Note though that finds can also be specialty material, special cancels, printing oddities, common looking stamps that aren’t etc. As an example, in a mixture of Canadian stamps, one can find print errors - donut looking print errors caused by bubbles while printing or with an ultraviolet light - tagging errors etc.

Mixture types:
- A normal mission mixture, reflecting the usual stamps that come in one’s mail, will usually have in the range of 5% commemoratives in it, plus Christmas stamps if the country issues Christmas stamps. Usually mission mixture stamps will cover a specific period of time, often the majority will have been issued within a few years of each other
- Brewed mixtures are assembled from several sources. This will be evident in a higher % of commemoratives than a mission mix, the age range is wider, etc. Often the stamps will be off paper
- Commemorative only mixtures provide better value for the dollar, especially in terms of shipping on paper mixtures, but it is worth noting that this means that someone has already gone through them once to pick them out of the original source (remembering that ordinary mail has about 5% commemoratives in it)

Things to watch for when buying mixtures:
- Verify that the pictures of the mixture are not being reused and that the listing says they are pictures of the stamps you will be receiving. Sometimes this is easily done by looking at the sellers current listings. Re-users will sometimes even use the same gallery image!
- Don’t just check the pictures! Generally mixture pictures are of highlights of the mixture. Always read the description. Look for sellers that try to give an idea in the listing of the overall composition of the mixture, look for sample statistics of commemoratives vs definitives etc, or buy mixtures that are commemoratives only.
- Check the feedback rating of the seller. Selling a lot of mixtures, because of the nature of mixtures, means that sometimes there will be disappointed buyers. Check how the seller handled these situations, if they show up in feedback. If the seller sells a lot of mixtures and has a high positive rating, it likely means that the pictures and descriptions do a fair job of describing the mixture, and the seller works with buyers in situations when there are disappointments

Why buy a mixture?
- Searching and discovering, sort of like treasure hunting is one reason! One never knows what one will find!
Collectors that trade with other collectors have an outlet for the duplicates
- Individuals that sell stamps can regroup the stamps in ways to sell them.
- Sometimes folks will buy a mixture, pull out the stamps they need, then resell the remainder
- If you have a specialization such as collecting socked on the nose cancels (SONs) or try to find a cancel for every day of the year, or collect tagging errors or print errors, mixtures are an inexpensive way to acquire a volume of stamps to search through