Question To The Other Platers..

Right now I'm currently keeping each stamp in it's own dealer display card, clear window with a black background, and write the position on the top of the card.

What are my options for organizing the stamps in order of the plate? Are there wider stockbooks available with enough room for 10 stamps in a row and 10 rows, without piling them up, and are any of you using something like that to help keep organized?

Wondering minds want to know! Thanks, Ray

Ray, I mount mine on Scott Specialty blank pages in plate and position order (sometimes with more than one example of each item per page). I'm not concerned with reconstructing panes or sheets in the original dimensions because I include stamps on cover as part of my replating process.

One option might be to use a three ring binder with double sided Vario stock sheets. Assume you have a bunch of such sheets in the binder. Now you open the binder flat, with one stock sheet facing up and flat on the left, and one on the right on the other side of the binder rings. You place stamps starting in the upper left corner and continuing across in a row, and when you reach the right edge if more room is needed then you jump across the binder rings to the left edge of the opposite sheet.

The largest stock books I've seen are 9" x 12" and I don't think you'd fit 10 US classic stamps in a row without crowding. The method suggested above would permit inserting small paper labels between stamps, indicating the plate and position, or a single label on each side referring to all positions represented in that row.

Ray.mac. I plate the first emission of the Netherlands. A plate of the first three stamps was 100 stamps, divided into four blocks of 25. Small enough to fit on a regular page. Four pages are of course needed for the complete plates, and separate pages for covers.
I also plate a Swiss stamp, the 750 year anniversary of the city of Bern. This stamp is the size of a US commemorative and thus will not fit nicely on any pages I have found. I keep them in Vario pages for now.

Peter

This is my choice as well but even with the Varios I'm still not organized. Last week I started playing with stamp tag software and the printer because I got sick and tired of forgetting which was which.


I don't like the tag size of these but I'll play with the font and borders.

I can't help. I am hopelessly disorganized!

You probably need the over-sized binders and paper used by scrapbook hobbyists. I've seen them with grid sheets that you could customize somewhat. My wife's company just threw out a couple dozen old MSDS binders that would be about the perfect size for a plating album.

What do you value more? Display or organization?

For pretty displays, I would go the Vario page route as previously suggested in a layout of 25 per page which Petert4522 describes. That should allow you to fit in a few extra copies.

For organization, I would stick with 3x5" dealer display cards. Two "index card files" such as http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000J07JYQ would hold a lifetime's worth. To separate them, "blank index card guides" such as https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E67FN...=cm_sw_su_dp can be bought in quantities cheaply enough to demarcate each plate, pane, and individual rows.

I am with Sinclair in that I am hopelessly disorganized. I prefer organization over display, but do not yet have enough worthy of proper organization.

I would not count myself as a "plater", certainly not in the class of you all, but I custom made my "albums". I have limited "stamp" money and am loathe to spend it on supplies unless I have to (otherwise I envision the wonderful stamps I'm losing out on as that money goes to albums and pages...). I have them in mounts hinged to black stock paper. The pages are placed in clear sheet protectors and then into 3-ring binders, all of which are cheap. But what I really like is that the pages give me a lot of flexibility for layouts.

Scrapbooking pages have bigger sizes that might be able to hold even more.

I thought that I sent this earlier but it must not have gone through, but just wanted to thank everyone for your ideas. I was really hoping that maybe somebody knew of a stock book that was made particularly for this- non standard size maybe wider than most. So I'll continue to look and thanks for the suggestions.
Ray