New To This...need Help Organizing!

I've been penpalling for 4 years and have accumulated a massive collection of stamps from around the world. I've decided to display them in an album. My collection is eclectic and I have no interest in the value of my stamps or collecting all the stamps in a certain edition. I just love stamps and want something pretty to look at.

I have a blank album and hinges, but now I need some organizational help.

The most intimidating thing is the huge number (somewhere in the thousands) of stamps that I've soaked and dried in the last few weeks. They're in a big, decorative box right now and that pile is pretty scary. I'm not even sure where to begin. I know I want to organize them by country alphabetically, but does anyone have any ideas for sub-organizing them or how to arrange them on the pages? Should I sort them out by country before I even begin trying to organize them or just grab them and start slapping them on the page? I tested out my stamp hinges earlier on some US stamps that I have duplicates of, and it's harder than I thought to mount with those things! I'm terrified I'm going to mess up my good stamps. :-/

Any advice?

Wow, you have a good start already just in soaking and having hinges and blank pages purchased. I would definitely sort by country first. Then you could sub catagorize them by year of issuance, face value amount, or topic ie. people, places, things. Your local library could have a set of stamp catalogues to help ID your stamps that you check out or if it is the newest catalogue view it in their hobby/reference section. I would suggest Scott's for world wide if you are in the US. I hope this helps.

Welcome to the group and please post some pictures,if you are able, of your collection.

Congrats..and, welcome to the great pursuit. Rule #1 - Do what YOU like. It sounds like you have an idea of what you want to acccomplish. From what we know so far the suggestions I would make is to sort by Country and then approach your page layout by trial and error and lay out (arrange) your stamps on blank pages to get the arrangement that you like or that feels good to you. When you are satisfied with the look and feel muse your hinges and mount them. Hope this helps. I use this approach on one of my specialize3d topic collections where there is no need to concern myself with details of issue and it works very well. Good luck.

Don't worry, the moment the stamps are hinged they are basically ruined anyway
Hinged modern stamps usually have a monetary value of zero, but as you don't care about that, I don't quite see the problem. What could be the worst thing happening to them?

Maybe you don't need to sort your stamps by catalogue numbers, but you could sort them by country and then "sub-organize" them chronologically by year?

Or you could go through them and pick out the ones that have "good" (readable) cancels and organize these alphabetically for each country. Or chronologically, if you can read the date of cancellation.

Another organization method would have been to organize them in the order you received them. But I doubt that's possible to find out by now

I would separate them by country first.

Then, country by country, look for the stamps that are definitives. Definitives are the day-to-day regular stamps that most people use. They should be easy to pick out; typically they are smaller and have a common subject or format. Put these in order by denomination. As to the rest of them, which will probably be the commemoratives, come up with some sort of arrangement that is attractive and symmetrical.

Welcome stampcollector89.

If they are used stamps you can't ruin them. And as used stamps, they are not worthless hinged. Just remove the hinges (with the junk hinges out there, these days, you might have to resoak them) and try again.

BTW, what brand of hinges are you using?

I guess my worry is that I have certain stamps that are "favorites" (none of my stamps are rare or valuable) and I'm afraid I won't be able to find them again if I tear them or otherwise ruin them. I've heard the hinged stamp horror stories, but I'm not too worried about it. Since none of my stamps are rare, I can probably replace them if it becomes necessary. I need to lighten up about the whole thing, I think. It's supposed to be fun, not scary!

Well, actually getting my supplies was a bit of an ordeal that involved two trips to the local hobby shop and two trips to Staples in the same day. They told me they were ordering me 3-hole punched blank album pages and they were 2-hole punched. Then they told me they couldn't order the binder that goes with them. So I bought a legal-size 3-ring binder and re-punched the darn things myself! I'm using them for my US stamps. For my world stamps and a separate Christmas stamp collection I'm doing, I wanted to try using plain old graph paper. Has anyone tried this?

I experimented with using my Supersafe hinges to attach some of my Christmas stamps to the graph paper and it worked out rather well. The graph paper makes a really good guideline for placing the stamps.

I still have a lot of sorting to do before I can get my world stamps mounted, but I think I'm going to organize them by country (A-Z), then by year, and underneath each stamp I'm going to handwrite the year it was issued and the catalog #. What types of pens are safest to do this sort of notation with?

I went to the library to get the Scott's 2009 catalog and got there just as it was closing, so I grabbed all 6 volumes they had and checked them out. You should have seen me carrying those back to my car! At least I get to keep them for 3 weeks, lol.

Here it is asolutely impossible to trade or sell hinged modern stamps, used or not.
Yes, you can remove the hinges, but that would be absolutely crazy, soaking, hinging and re-soaking them again
Also I don't know how good it is for your stamps if you soak them several times. Because every time you're doing this, the paper fibres "warp".
But as I said, because you want to keep them anyway, I wouldn't mind about the hinges, I don't know what damage you could do with them.



I wouldn't write the year underneath the stamp, but just once on top of the page. Just imagine if you're mounting all the stamps and then one day you get a new one that is a few years old and you haven't left enough space between the years...
Just take a new page for each year, if it's full take a new one, don't "mix" the years. And if all the stamps on one page are from one and the same year anyway, there's no use in writing the year under each stamp.

For the writing I'd use a normal pencil. Or anything else I could erase, if I made an error.
I have all my stamps in stockbooks with small "paper pieces" next to them, where I write the catalogue number on, as well as some notes, if necessary. Sometimes I'm doing this for hours, just writing numbers and I for my part always make some errors sooner or later

Here you can see how that basically looks like:

The stock book idea looks good. I am currently thinking over a way to organize and house my British stamps. I have quite a number of the Edward VII and George V stamps collected by shades. Can you get the stock books with the transparent strips but a white background?

Yes, I think.
But in my opinion the colors of the stamps come out more brilliant, when put on black pages.
Although I don't have many of the black albums, because they are a lot more expensive then the white ones with pergamin strips.

Welcome Stampcollector89

Like you I like my stamps for what they are and do not care about value. I am a begginer also and have removed and re hinged stamps when I have made mistakes. As long as you let the hinge totally dry it can be removed with no noticable damage to stamp, you just have to be carefull.

I make up my own albums also I bought binders and a three hole punch. I buy my paper at staples it is archival quality(acid free and all that) this is very important to protect your stamps. The paper I chose is smart paper in natural cotton. It is only 24lb paper but because of the cotton content it feels much heavier.

I would deffinatetly sort them by country first. That way you can sort out duplicates. If you're just wanting to display stamps that you have then I wouldn't worry so much about placing them chronologicaly. It may work better for you to place them so they have an attractive look. That way you won't have to worry about moving them around as you get more you can simply start a new page.

Hope this helps a little. Don't forget this is your collection and you should display in a way that will give you the most enjoyment.

Dianne

Finding appropriate supplies can be very difficult. Try Subway Stamp Company. They are on the internet but also publish a hard-copy catalog which is my personal preference. They are reasonally priced and should have everything you need. By the way, I have had very good luck with their proprietary hinges.

If there are certain stamps you really do not want to damage, you may be able to find a starter pack of stamp mounts, a stock book, or loose stock pages at a hobby store ie. Hobby Lobby. I know carrying all those Scott catalogues is cumbersome, been there- done that.

Subway Stamp Shop Inc. 2121 Beale Ave. Altoona, Pa. 16601 phone 1-800- 221-9960 I am sure they will be glad to send you their latest catalog...i buy from them at the big New York shows and save the shipping !! I do the heavy lifting !!

From a "beginner's" point of view I would agree, but I personally ran into some problems with this method (I collected like this, although in stockbooks, when I started) when the collection grew. If you have two or three pages of a country, you're fine. But just think, my East Germany collection alone consists of 12(!) stockbooks! The problem that arises is that you have to search every page, if you want to sort out doubles.
So you have to sub-categorize somehow, if you want to get some kind of order into your collection.

There is no single way to do this as have learned. I think most people do it a little different.

I use the stock book format because it works for me, in addition you can change things around quickly.

I certainly would not worry about mounting used stamps with hinges, there isn't enough value to even worry about loosing with used stamps. Of course if you cause a tear or thin when removing this might be a different story. Though in over 30 years I have never done either taking an older hinge off.

In addition I do have some very simple albums. I just bought nice binders and used stock pages to arrange my stamps too. The main thing is that I'm not a world wide collector and when they started to grow in numbers I found the above ways worked for me.