Sorting Box Lots

I was excited when I saw on the cover of the May 2010 Scott Stamp Monthly an article entitled "How to Buy and Sort Box Lots". I was more excited when I saw it was by Janet Klug, who I know to be a worldwide stamp collector. Surely she would have some insights!

Well, not really. The article is basically

1. Decide how you want to sort
2. Be sure to divide the stamps properly into little bead sorters and cover them with a lid
3. Pace yourself
4. Realize that it can increase clutter, which can bother housemates

Wow, Ms. Klug. That was certainly worth a cover article.

I thought I'd start a thread to talk about other people's tips. I used to be a general worldwide collector. When most of my stamps were stolen I decided to re-specialize. But here are a few ideas I came up with for sorting worldwide mixtures and box lots. I'm using the word "country" but you can replace it with "topic", "postmark", "denomination", "color", or whatever.

1. Buy a checkered tablecloth or a yard of surface-printed checkered fabric. Flip it over onto the lighter side. The pattern should still be visible, but much lighter. Write country names in the squares with an indelible felt-tipped pen. I used to use the bead-sorting trays, but this is cheaper and IMO better.

2. Buy a big box of #6 3/4 acid-free PAPER envelopes. If you look for nearby sales, they're cheaper than glassine, especially as most stamp supplies must be shipped to you these days. You can write on them with a normal pen. Label them by country. You can't see within them, but I haven't found myself to care that much. There are boxes sized for them standing up, either from a stamp supplier or an office supply store.

3. When you catalog them, get a copy of a catalog on CD-ROM, such as Scott 2008 -- http://j.mp/eaaIRv at Amazon. That will let you CTRL-F to find a keyword. No one can be an expert on every country's stamps, so a set of paper catalogs can be tough.

4. Obvious (and Klug mentioned a couple of these): no breeze, beverages, smoke, pets, toddlers, etc. around the sorting.

That's all I can think of for now. Would love to hear others' ideas!

I have also thought it perhaps a good idea, in these days of album pages one prints on a home printer, to print the pages (from, say, Bill Steiner's site http://www.stampalbums.com) as needed rather than printing them all in advance and having to buy binders in advance. It also makes one's album look denser. :-)

She's got a point. When I sort and don't pace myself, I can end up having a heart attack.

Ooh, then I definitely need your speed tips! :-)

I've found an old fruit box which is most useful. It has a flat bottom and no unglued folds or slits for the stamps to get caught in or fall though. Size is about 40 by 60 cm. The advantage of this is that I can sort stamps anywhere. To pack up, all I do is put the box back in its spot. It works on the lap too but not if the children want my attention!

When I get a shoe box lot, I've found it useful to make a couple of passes, particularly if space is limited:

First pass: separate 'probable keepers' from 'discard', separating possible keepers into countries at the same time in the fruit box.
If piles get too big, put them in a small box in the fruit box.
If there are too many piles to fit in the fruit box keep the piles which look like they will be the largest. Make another pile of smaller piles.
I tend to order the piles alphabetically in a row and column pattern. At first the position is a guess. I start with about 5 columns. As the sort progresses and the columns fill up new ones are introduced and boxes inserted as the need arises.

Second pass: take the piles, one at the time, and sort into sets.
I sometimes start at Z and work backwards as these piles (often Zimbabwe, Zambia and Zaire) are smaller and easier to put away.
Then take one set at the time and sort into individual stamps; this usually happens on a shoe box lid.

I run into trouble with this process when I'm half way through one pile and start another a couple of days later without finishing the first.

I relate to this! I find it even more frustrating with trading cards.

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One thing I've done with box lots in the past is the following: I buy a Banker's Box lot. I go through it and discard the obvious trash -- just throw it into the recycling bin. I take out what I need for my collections -- mostly specialized items. I do not take out all the valuable stuff -- although if I found something extremely valuable I surely would. Then I break this into smaller lots and sell them through Linn's. I try to balance everything so each smaller lot has a range of different sorts of material, and I "salt" them suitably.

I'm another picker in the chain, of course. But I'm not a cherrypicker per se. I think I'm more of a gooseberry picker -- they'll be missing, but that's a rather obscure thing for people to miss. But I also serve to shrink, vet, and balance the smaller lots. And people are uniformly delighted, so I'm doing something right! And I usually double my money.

Linn's?

You mean there's another way to sell stamps other than ebay?

Actually can't tell how much you're joking here.

I like to sell individual stamps (that need scans) at Delcampe (http://delcampe.net) and mixtures and lots in the Linn's weekly stamp newspaper in the U.S. (http://linns.com). Both are far cheaper than ebay!