Collecting Worldwide On The Side

Over the summer I have come to the realization that I love working with stamps from all over the place, so to fill this itch I am planning to take my collecting habits in a new direction. Choosing a few areas to put the "big" money into, such as Norway, but also maintaining a worldwide collection on the side.

That would give me the opportunity to delve into, say the big pile of German definitives that turned up in a junk lot, or anything else that comes my way. And at the same time work against completion in my more serious areas.

Are anybody else collecting in a similar way, or have any suggestions or comments to this approach?

Yobo

I concentrate on one country at a time (usually) but I do collect world wide. I have small boxes for the country that has quite a few stamps. and envelopes in photo boxes for the country that has only a few.

Once I have an amount that I think is worthwile I print an album for them, catalogue and hinge them. I think I have over 30 albums now.

Dianne

Yobo for years my wife has been after me to not just put the "better stamps" in my albums and also work on the "little cheapos"..the long sets of famous men and the back of book..i have finally matured to that point...i am having fun with cinderellas which allow for building a unique collection...but the price structure if it exists amazes me...when I browse cinderellas on the net I see the same item listed for $1.99 and $14.00 !

Dianne: It is something similar to the approach I have envisioned. Only I will use stockbooks instead of albums, since stockbooks give me more flexibility. Then I can, for example, add a few shades, a complete mint set of my favorite series, insert varieties I might stumble upon etc. I am going to end up with a lot of stockbooks, aren't I?

philb: I love the cheapos, a lot of fun for pocket change.

Yup you're going to end up with a lot of sets.

Dianne

Here`s my experience, a week ago I`ve started what you mentioned.
ILoveStamps thread made me dwell on my US pile (box), US being `worldwide` for me, So I start looking for the sets I saw:







Then, going deeper, I thought, why not a set made up of precancels:



...seems to be a dead-end, but in the meantime, sorting tens of small size stamps it lead me to the 50`s:



another good thing going through these long forgotten stamps is I found a ...#114 (I don`t have Scott, but since a member here, I saw it very often), with visible `grill` (another new notion to me):






Also here I`ve seen a lot of threads about Machins, I`we started to sort mine, this then a few days ago led me to the Netherlands:



My conclusion, after about two weeks:
- I`ll end up with a lot of uncomplete sets
- need more self-control, if I don`t wanna get lost...
- need more, many more stockbooks (or at least stockcards)
But it`s fun and SCF is a great source of inspiration!

I have taking a liking to those Netherlands definitives as well. I like the clean look of those, and the cancellations also look very nice on them. Sort of reminds me of this series from Denmark.



I love how this stamp comes out with a nice cancellation on it. It makes me want to have a whole page of each of the stamps in the series, neatly cancelled, and just sit back and enjoy them.

My main collection is US, but I have saved stamps from just about every country. Before they go in a stockbook, I put the stamps in a dealer card with the catalog number written on the dealer card. When my stack of dealer cards is getting out of hand, I place the stamps in a black stockbook page.

If you are using a stockbook to organize stamps from many different countries, it is possible for one stockbook page to fill up quickly and have nowhere to go because the next page is for a different country.

One way to manage all these different collections is to use loose stock book pages that have three holes on the side. Then the stockbook pages can be placed in a binder. I buy binders at my local Office Depot and try to get them on sale. (I refuse to buy the overpriced ones advertised at stamp accessory sites.) If you need to keep dust from reaching the stamps, just use some loose plastic over the top of the binder.

My main collection is worldwide, but I collect (some) U.S. on the side.

There is so much stuff out there, that it must be nearly impossible not to branch out a bit.

I used to collect worldwide. I actually had all of Bill Steiner's albums (http://stampalbums.com) printed out to the year 2000, in D-ring binders (Yes, really.) I can't imagine the number of trips it took the burglars to load all of those....

Anyway, I've thought about beginning it again, but I haven't the heart nor funds to print them all again. One thing that occurred to me: sort worldwide, and when I have something that exists on a new page of the album, just print that page. That way as the collection grows I would have thicker and thicker albums, and each page would have something on it, with far less initial investment.

Steiner does update/correct pages from time to time, no? I think it makes great sense to print on demand.

This is akin to removing empty (or almost empty) pages from an album, and keeping them in a secondary binder until they warrant adding back in to the main album(s).

A worldwide collection " on the side" should be relatively inexpensive, easy to maintain, yet interesting enough to continue, while focusing most of the philatelic energy on the specialized collection of one's choice.

I've tried to do this by...
Keeping a general WW collection, but only the classical era up to 1940. (Interesting to me)
Using a general WW classic era album- one volume (easy to maintain)
Plenty of classical era stamps are inexpensive

I believe there is a better chance of success for a secondary WW collection using the KISS principle. ;-)

Jim Jackson

Good to see another collector join in and collect the world. It has been fun and very educational ,I been collecting worldwide for about 55 years thru good times and bad but the one thing was that I worked on my collection every week of my life .<p> Now that im retired all I plan to do is work on the stamp collection and recently got the Steiner software to print pages.Wish I had it 40 years ago .

My most current Scott International album runs to 1969 but I wish I had stopped a few years sooner..the "good countries" are still fairly conservative but I don't need 16 pages of Togo !!

I occasionally stray from my main collecting area as well

It adds that little bit more interest to things when I feel the need to have a "break"

For instance at the moment I am looking at New Caledonia because of a beautiful cover that has some how ended up in my hands

Also another area that I go back to from time to time is issues relating to Indian UN Forces (a small but very interesting little tangent)

Thanks for all the answers, some good information here.