Building A Worthwhile Stamp Collection Is No Piece Of Cake

Floortrader, What a beautiful display. Do you have any idea how many stamps are in all of those books? and how many are MNH?

FALCONRW--It is about 250,000 different stamps ,but thats not all of them in the picture . Im using Steiner pages so I have another bookcase also .
The problem with any count is what is "different" ,I mount color shades ,perforation varieties,watermark differences if any catalog carries them.Also identify reprints and forgery stamps next to the originals .So as you can see there is a lot ,than just fill a blank on a album page .Which brings up the question ,yes I place stamps on the edges of pages and then at times overlap them ,I think most collectors who use any kind of printed page does the same.
I think anybody going over any large worldwide collection gets surprised how many of the cheaper stamps are missing ,there are a lot .

sorry forgot to answer part of your question .
The question of how many are MNH .If the set is under $5.00 catalog ,I'll just hinge it because I don't see a price difference when its sold . Alot of what I buy at stamp auctions are the dealer cards or red boxes type lots full of complete sets and the more recent stuff is always MNH.I see no extra value in my buying and think even less in the future,when sold the price is the same with the lower value material is lightly hinged or MNH it will be the same.

Two reasons, Okka:

First, the man who has the better collection of Barwani does exhibit, and I just can't stand coming off second best

Second, I look on my collection as a research project. The research will never end - or anyway, not until I'm a virtual fly on the wall of the printers, and see everything they ever did.

In fact, I let myself be inveigled into agreeing to do a presentation on Barwani to the Royal Philatelic Society of Victoria later this year. This means I'm going to have to do a temporary mount and write-up job on at least part of my collection. It's a bit scary, to be honest. (But not half as scary as it will be to sit through my presentation )

Tony,

I guarantee by the time the Royal meeting has finished you will have already been given an Exhibition application form,

Okka

Okka, I'll be astonished if any of the members are still awake by the end of the presentation

From the article:




Can someone please point me to the £10 Penny Black section of my local stamp shop? I seem to have overlooked it

I was wondering about that myself. When you find it, pick up one for me too if you don't mind. I'll pay you via Paypal

Floortrader,
Thanks for the information. I don't know why I asked about the MNH, just curious I suppose. The reason I asked about the quantity of the stamps was for an idea about storage for my own collection. I dislike hinges for many reasons and will never again use them on my stamps but I still collect stamps. So, can I fit 250 red boxes into the same space you utilize? That would be storage for more than 250,000 stamps and at $40.00 per red box and 104 cards it would be about $10,000.00 plus the cost of shelving. Does that make any sense? Probably not as that where I am headed and have about 30 red boxes completed so far and have only started on the "c's".

Dear rileysan,
What the paper neglected to mention was that the penny black in question had no margins. At the local market, (where I am situated) such can be bought for £14:00, neatly cut out, with no white border showing at all. My opinion is that any antique is worth buying and saving, simply because no more are being produced. In this age of disposable products that should be a goal, does anyone not agree?

Read on lads and lassies

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...profits.html

Steve, I think it would have been more merciful if you deleted my entire thread...i am an intermediate collector thats all I will ever be but I know the difference between a casual and a serious collector..i am fairly certain that the word smiths and lawyers and pharisees and yes nit pickers that took over the thread know what I meant !

PHILB----There is more intermediate collectors out there than the hobby wants to admit .First, Bill Gross who dumped over $40 million into his collection and won the top awards in Philately ,has stated that after a day at work {he makes over 1 million dollars a day} he still goes home and works on his worldwide albums to relax {I think he has both a professional stamp expert buying for him and someone else who does his writting and mounting of his exhibits } ,but he got a 8 volume set of stamp albums he "works" on .By the way with over 500 millions dollars net worth he bought the albums used from a stamp shop he walked into .
Also Janet K. who was President of the American Philatelic Society ,has a world collection in albums and she many times in articles that she wrote that she is adding to her worldwide albums . So as you can see there are a lot of "average" collectors still enjoying the hobby .

FALCONRW-----Your posting caught me ,and needed time to think that one out.
First ,you said 250 red boxes ....right ? ---that means your inventory would be bigger than A&D Stamps who brings about 120 red boxes to different stamp shows around the country ,and it would be bigger than the inventory Superior Stamps in New York City has . The only ones who may or possibley have a inventory that large would be Stanley Gibbons in London England .Why would you collect that way and spend your life writting on dealer cards continious . It puzzles me . 250 FILLED BOXES!!
If what I read in your posting are you putting one stamp per card ? Nobody would buy that inventory ,it would be better to make a card and file it in a red box when you have the complete set wether mint ,MNH, or used and the written describtion on each card after you got the complete set .Then your collection/inventory would be a easy sell to a buyer who can judge it quickly .

I was very close to doing just that, Phil, but there are some worth while contributions in this thread. If however, you would like me to delete it, just say the word and it will be gone.

Steve