Holy Cow - I'm Really New At This!

So I was given two Minkus albums - the British Europe and the British Oceana with stamps dating from 1850 - 1980 or thereabouts. I have no idea what I have, what any of it is worth or even how to begin that process.

In my naivety, I assumed that you could look up the country, year and denomination and get a value...woops! So the albums have remained in my closet for four years. I finally got them back out and am determining the best course of action for identifying and creating an inventory of what I have. ANY advice is most welcome! I was thinking that first I will first identify the year and watermark (going to try the negative scanning method.)and then moving on later to cancellations and whatnots because I don't know what any of that's about.

Most of the stamps were hinged into the book and look as if they've gone through several hands. Should I just soak them in warm water to remove the buildup? Also, I see in the book that there are a few stamps in TINY plastic sleeves - where can I get these? A bunch of the stamps have also fallen loose as the glue dried up so I am temporarily moving them to a trading card protector thingy in a separate binder. Should I convert the Minkus numbers to Scott numbers for ease of valuing?

As you can tell, I'm seriously out of my depth here but very excited! Thank you!

Welcome to the group. Warm water will certainly do the trick if you want to clean up some of the hinge remnants. But uses hinges is still a perfectly acceptable way to get your stamps in your alblum and certainly more cost effective than using mounts (the little plastic sleeve things). Keep in mind that mint condition stamps usually hold a better value if they have been 'never hinged' so in this case it may be better to use mounts to attach them to your alblum pages.

Hinges, mounts, pages etc. can all be purchased online or at a bricks and mortar stamp dealer's store. A bit of searching online for 'stamp supplies' should help you track down something local for you or a place to order from.