Postage Stamp Chat Board & Stamp Bulletin Board Forum
 

Hi All,
I was wondering how you keep your stamps arranged. I have heard of all sorts of things for stamp storage: shoe boxes, glassine envelopes, etc. I am considering using the plastic stock sheets like Vario for a stamp album. Do you have certain area of your dwelling unit that you have set up for stamp collecting? Just thought this might be an interesting subject.
Dean

That is a very good question.

In stock books, glassines, stock cards, plastic tubs, envelopes, cigar boxes, chocolate boxes and loose in small drawers.

I have one 64 page stock book crammed with mint DDR, everything else seems to have settled where it fell. The more valuable stuff is all safely tucked away. I must be about 80% complete for the DDR.

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With kind regards, Jim

My collections are in hagners in ring binders in slipcovers. The hagners will be replaced by home-made album pages in due course.

My spares are in stockbooks.

Some postcards are in shoe boxes, till I figure out a more permanent solution.

Stuff being sorted is in plastic tubs.

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A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

Most of mine are mounted on (self designed) pages.

Material "awaiting sorting" which is for subsequent mounting is kept in a large stockbook as is all my spare/duplicate material.

Andy

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If it ain't broke.....fix it 'til it is!!

http://www.lanarkshireps.co.uk

I use quality 64 page German Stockbooks, and all the stamps are displayed in Stanley Gibbons simplified order from A - Z for British Commonwealth, and from Gibbons specialised "Parts" catalogues for foreign. So some "countries" van turn up in more than one place, particularly former African colonies which can be found under french colonies and later as independant nations.

Several countries have one, two or more S/Books specifically devoted to that country.

Norm

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Geelong, VFA Premiers 1878, 1879, 1800, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886, AFL Premiers 1925, 1931, 1937, 1951, 1952, 1963, 2007, 2009, 2011, .

I NEVER hinge anything.

All my stamps are either in stockbooks, glassines, boxes, or scattered like madmen across my desk.

Likewise. My collection is either in Hagners or black paged stockbooks.

Cheers,

Robert

My collection surrounds me and I sleep on a bed of Kiloware.

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

Please don't tell me how you soak them. I beg you, no.

All of my stamps are in stockbooks. Except for those that are on hagner sheets. Oh, and those that are in bags. Then there are the ones on stock cards. And the ones in drawers..

OK, my main collection (Australia to GVI, Mint Used and CTO) are in stockbooks, neatly arranged...sort of. Except for those I haven't got around to putting in there yet.....

OK, OK..truth is, most of my stamps are haphazardly arranged almost anywhere you care to look!

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Peter
Hawthorn - AFL Premiers 1961, 1971, 1976, 1978, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 2008.

For me, this is one of the joys of stamp collecting. I have struggled with how to display and store my stamps ever since I started collecting. My current plan is to store everything in Lighthouse 3 ring binders using CMS light grid paper and Lighthouse mounts (display pages) and Vario stock pages to display large multiples, covers, etc. When I have an abundance of copies of a specific issue, I keep them in glassine envelopes on manilla stock pages which are included in the country albums so everything from each country is kept together. Exceptions to this occur when I have a really extensive country collection where I keep a separate album for the extras. Am still occupied in arranging a large collection in this fashion which is creating a lot of the fun.

Since I am continually adding to my collections they will never be complete (NWPI & NZ Second-type Dues).

I use Lindner multi-ring binders with variable-sized pockets that can be viewed from behind (Falzlos T system) - collect everything from singles to blocks of 30 (NWPI) and singles to blocks of 120 (Dues) so flexibility of pockets is important as is the ability to view the back of the stamp for watermarks. Lindner makes something like 30 different size pockets; expensive at $3 a sheet but a great system.

For my huge sheets of NZ dues I have a Lindner sheet album - keeps them flat and is easy to work with.

A couple of sample sheets shown below:

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Anyone else accumulating NWPI material for research?

I keep mine in ring-binder or old spring-back albums on pages that I write up and print myself using blank quadrille pages, currently on a good quality acid-free paper. Mint stamps go into mounts and cheap (common) used stamp are mounted with hinges. For booklets and some stamps I use Vario sheets. All arranged by country and year of issue.

Stamps that are waiting to go into albums are kept on Hagner sheets and I keep duplicates in envelopes or stockbooks.

Hi,
I was wondering about North West Pacific Islands...Was that also called the South Pacific Mandate?
Dean

I'm unfamiliar with that term? These stamps were taken with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) when they prepared to occupy the Mariana Islands (in the NW Pacific) at the outset of World War I (August 1914).

The ANMEF were redirected to Nauru & German New Guinea while the Japanese occupied the Marianas. Therefore NWPI is a misnomer since neither Nauru nor German New Guinea were in that geographical area.

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Anyone else accumulating NWPI material for research?

The South Pacific Mandate was set up the League of Nations just about the time of World War I. It included the Mariana Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and some of the other island groups. It was a vast area! And Germany nor Japan liked a lot of things the League of Nations did because they were trying to expand their territories and become more imperialistic. Oh Well!
Although our country has always supported self-determination, I just begin to wonder???
Dean

My collection is housed in either stockbooks or Glassine envelopes until I can get them into stockbooks. I never seem to have enough stockbooks.

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Enjoy every minute

I love seeing how other people store their stamps...some make me very envious . Myself, I have tried various methods and have now gone pretty much all with Vario sheets.

The stamps look great with the black background. The quality is very good. And the best part, is the stamps don't move around so much after you've sorted them all out.

I always hated it when you've spent so much time sorting stamps and writing little notes about perfs, watermarks,dates etc only to have all the stamps shift everytime you open the book!

My stamps are not exhibition quality! They are just MY collection! for me to enjoy...and anybody who would care to...look at! Not that there seems to be many of them around!!

I do have stock books for all my spares (as well as boxes of stamps in glassine and normal envelopes!)

My FDC's and PNC's are all seperately sorted in those plastic bins with wheels and are all divided by years with dividers...makes it much easier to find and also to put new ones in as I find them!
I had tried albums but the different album sizes make it very hard to store neatly...and I like neatly!... This way seems to work, but that's not to say I won't find another solution down the track

In the end, it will all come down to what suits YOU best. You may try several different types of storage before you find something that suits you best! That's all part of the fun of collecting.

As far as a 'special area' for stamp collecting??? My husband works night shift... when he comes home from work and there are stamps all over the table, he just says "Okay...so we just eat outside for the next three weeks" !!

In this house, there are generally stamps or coins spread out on any available 'flat space' at any given time! Thankfully, we both share pretty much the same interests so there is never much of a problem in that respect. Thank goodness all the kids have left home ... there's no room for them now

Enjoy, have fun and good luck in your quest

Anne

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I am having fun collecting WW and Indian States.

Anne, I swear if I didn't know better I'd suspect you've been inside my home. As you say, " They are just MY collection! for me to enjoy".

In the end it all comes down to what suits the individual collector and one size doesn't fit all obviously.
Hagner and Vario work well for me and stackable plastic storage boxes have to be the best thing since sliced bread.

At least it's possible to keep the 'waiting to be catalogued' hoard in some form of organised chaos.
One year I'll sort it all, "so many stamps, so little time".... sigh

I feel a kinship with many of the posters on this thread as I think I've tried 4-5 different methods for keeping things organized.

- my Canada collection is hinged in a pre-printed album up to 1996, blank quadrilled pages till 2003 or so, then in a stock book.

I'm not really a fan of pre-printed albums any more. They take a lot of space and all the blank spaces take up even more space, it seems.

- I tried Vario pages for a while but for some reason never really liked them. I think it was because I kept getting dud pages with strips that came loose.

- I tried the Steiner pages for a couple of years but was using a lot of paper and ink for relatively few stamps. Tried designing my own pages and got quite good at it but it took a long time.

So now it's Lighthouse 16 page (32 side) stockbooks, with stamps placed in Scott catalogue order. I fill every second row so there's room for expansion. Some countries (like Australia) take two stockbooks, some smaller countries have multiple countries per book. Souvenir Sheets will go in a separate binder using Vario pages.

Right now, my plan is to sort the stockbooks by FIFA world zone: Uefa, Conmebol, Concacaf, etc. (It seemed fun at the time.) But I already broke that rule and have Australia back in Oceania rather than Asia. I'm trying not to sweat the small stuff.

Expanding my collection will take more work over Vario pages but I like the look.

Stamps that aren't catalogued yet are in envelopes sorted by country, or in another set of stockbooks waiting for processing. Duplicates are in another box, sorted by country, waiting for the day I get 20 posts here so I can join a chain letter.

So if there's a lesson here, it is don't be afraid to try several methods and see what you enjoy.

Mark

When I retire, five years, six months and 22 days, everything will then get sorted into stock books. The next step will be mounting the main collection, which is Germany.

I'm virtually 100% complete from 1880 to the Third Reich. About 95% for Reich. I'm missing a couple of expensive blocks. I'll probably sell the excess to buy the blocks.

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With kind regards, Jim

I’m a general stamp collector who’s been working on a representative worldwide collection into the late 1950s of mostly inexpensive but interesting stamps that illustrate World Wars, occupations, inflations, and other historical events. For this I’ve been using a thick paper version of the Scott International 1840-1940 albums with added pages at the beginning of particular countries for mounting small “study” collections of early classics, such as British line-engraved (penny blacks & reds, twopence blues, etc.), early Brazil including “bullseye” and other numerals, Cape triangles, Cuba, early Mauritius, France (including proofs) and Belgium, including blocks and other multiples. I find this traditional album approach (with black mounts where appropriate) provides both a compact and enjoyable way for me to look at my collection, especially since it places a full range of stamps of the world in context. For stamps from 1940s to the late1950s (and duplicates) this is supplemented by a two-volume Minkus Supreme Global album.

For my “specialized” side collections of stamp-on-stamp topicals, Latvian map and banknote stamps, and FDR related postal history items, I’ve been using stockbook-type albums with both black background and transparent pages (which allow both sides of an item to be seen).

With slip-cases for all of the above, this makes for a robust and attractive way to display and house my main collection. Naturally, there are overflow items, which I keep in clear plastic storage boxes (to minimize the chaos). Not ideal perhaps, but it seems to work for me.

Best Regards,

InforaPenny

All of the above

Stock books
Shoe box

Glassine envelopes
Sorting tubs (ex-pate tubs)

I'll take some pictures as soon as find the camera, which is buried under stamps

fromdownunder - what brand of quality 64 page books do you use if I can ask ? Thanks

For my worldwide collection (specialization is for the OCDers! ), I use lots of Vario pages, in 1" ring binders because the larger ones are problematic for page turning. When I have just a few of a country, they just go all together on one sheet - when I get to a significant percentage of the country, I rearrange onto multiple sheets leaving holes for the missing stamps. For a handful of countries that are approaching completion, I move up to the fancy hingeless Lighthouse albums. Dups go into small glassines, typically one for each year of each country.

Previously I got into a bad habit of overlapping stamps on the sheets to save space, but that's proven to be a problem now that I'm wanting to scan a bunch of them, and so I've been gradually rearranging them to be properly spread out.

As far as Australia goes, I was happy putting the basic stamp on the preprinted album page and adding any extras to quadrille pages.
But now, as I am more interested in all the varieties available in colors, flaws and postmark, I need room to be more flexible in moving things around as I find new ones.

So now, I will be starting to take them off the pages and into new stockbooks.

The best part is, I will be looking at them closer with the new information I've learned here, and seeing if I missed something interesting the first time around.

Best to all,
pat

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"I don't have a lot - But I like what I got"

My collection is just 'there' in the closet. I'll let the next owner try to arrange it.

I arrange them how I want them, and in a stern voice command "STAY" ... and they do.

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A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

*SIGH*

Oh what a question! I have dozens of bankers boxes full of items ranging from worthless kiloware to Commonwealth rarities, all mixed together. My home is a public auction in need of sorting!

My new approach is this:

Put all singles and sets into 106 cards (after being scanned)
All collections fit into either USPS priority flat rate envelopes, or boxes depending on bulk
All items for my own collection into four colours of stockbooks: Blue for my personal BNA collection, Red for Worldwide rarities and "look-ups" (you know, those items that have multiple signatures on the back, but can't locate in any catalogue), Green for $20-$50 marketable items, and brown for my worldwide reference collection of Fakes & Forgeries (I have a huge French Cols reference collection I stumbled upon, and hundreds of items that came back with bad certificates I was convinced were authentic).

I also have Hagner sheets - in binders - of items to be scanned and sold, as well as large plastic bins containing larger lots in 12x14 plastic bags to be photoed and offered (and then forced into either flat-rate envelopes or boxes). All items that do not eventually sell for $9.99 are put into one of many oldtime albums to be eventually offered as collections for sale (all in mounts, no hinges). Of course, I also have drawers, cigar boxes, the ashtray in my car, and any bowl-like vessel in my home filled with items to be "dealt with." Stamps are a lot of work! We stamp collectors need long lives to arrange and sort our collections!

This is a great read to see how the big guns in the stamp world do their own thing. I have like 4 binders with hangers and a 5lt container full of loose stuff, maybe the container is worth more then the contents .

Wonderful to read, thanks

Micky