The Beginner

 

You will be surprised about the countless possibilities to collect stamps refering to the cretan postal history.

One surprise might be, that there is an own chapter about Crete in  the international stamp catalogues. It begins with this 1 Lepton stamp showing Hermes:

That chapter covers the period March 1900 to December 1912.
Historical the period is sometimes called "The independent Cretan State", but it wasn"t a real State although it has its own administration. So here it is called "Independent Crete".

This is the best start for collecting "Crete".

You will find some beautiful stamps and learn about the greek mythology.
If you prefer these aspects you have to collect unused stamps.

Otherwise I strongly recommend postal used stamps, because there is so much to detect, see the following chapters.

In that short period occured special things like overprints, bisects and perfins and there are connections with revenues, postage dues and official stamps issued in the same period.

Try to get all the stamps with a main catalogue nummer. That's possible with not too much money.
It is not diffcult to sell such a collection, because a complete one is seldom offered.