Newb Just Saying Hello

Hi everyone,

I was at my mom's house for Easter, and she had dug out a bunch of boxes of my stuff still at her house. One box was my stamp collection! I started collecting stamps as a school project in elementary school, and probably collected through junior high.

I have a TON of stamps, but 90% aren't in any kind of order what so ever. I have so many collections going right now, I must say I was tempted to just auction off all the stamps. As I'm going through them though, I'm feeling nostalgic. I might end up keeping some of them.

I guess my first question is, if someone dropped of a box of thousands of stamps at your house, what would you do with them? How would you get a handled on them?

Thanks everyone!

Eric

Welcome, Eric! Hope you enjoy the forum.

What I would do in that situation is first pick out what caught my eye and put that into my albums, such as nice sets and the better stuff. Then sort though the rest and get it down to countries before going further.

Thanks for the reply.

What caught my eye, were the space stamps, and Olympic stamps. I've always had a fascination with both topics.

Can you tell me more about albums? How are they organized? Would I find an "Olympic" album?

Out of curiosity, why is sorting by country important?

Welcome Kibosh

Do hope you decide to keep some of your collection. I gave mine away when I was 20 and have regretted it ever since.

Anyway feel free to ask anything these guys are pretty smart. I don't think anything has stumped them yet.

Dianne

Eric,

I've given my thoughts on albums, here, before.

The following comments are taken from two previous posts in which I mentioned Olympian albums.

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Hello Dianne,

Since you are from Canada, you might consider the Olympian 4 Volume Album published by Canadian Wholesale Supply. The set is available through Collector's Supply House in Canada for $515.30Canadian. There is no complete alternative to this being published in the U.S. right now.

However, you might go with the Harris Statesman DeLuxe Album, or what appears to be the Canadian equivalent,the Deluxe Album, also from CWS through Collector's Supply House for a more modest $65.95 Canadian, until you are sure the hobby is really for you.

A lot of fairly empty large albums hit ebay from collectors or families of collectors whose ambitions seemed to be larger than their passion for stamp collecting. It might be wisest to test the hobby first.

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Like yourself, I like the ready-made albums and filling spaces. I use Scott Internationals but only up to Part VIII which runs into 1973. If you want to collect into the here and now, that is a lot to work with.Right now, with Scott, you are looking at more than 40 volumes, since beginning with Part IX (1973-1974) each basically covers only a year's worth of issues. (Part 40 A&B covers 2004. Thirty to forty years or so at the current rate, if you wanted to keep up with contemporary issues, would take you out to about 75-85 volumes!)

I have not seen the Olympian albums but have seen the Phoenix from the same publisher and it basically looks like a Canadian version of the Harris Albums. In fact some of the titles in the CWS line mimic Harris titles (they have a Senior album with a green cover that appears to mimic the Harris Senior Statesman, a Deluxe with a blue cover that I would presume mimics the Harris Statesman Deluxe and the Travel which I would presume mimics the Harris Traveler Album since they all seem comparable in size).

I like the Scott presentation because it gives a better display as opposed to fitting the greatest amount of material into the smallest possible space. But with Scott it can get ridiculous with so many partial pages for just a few stamps or some pages with stamps on one side and some on two sides when you go combining them as I did.

The now defunct Minkus Supreme Global Albums did well with both a pleasing presentation and picking up the slack between years. And since the Minkus catalogs listed issues chronologically and did not segrega teairs, semi-postals and officials to the back of the book, it really helped clean things up. I've still got some of these around but what I don't like about them is the poor paper quality and the way it tends yellow over time.

Scott's paper is of better quality than Minkus' paper was and since Scott has an off-white color to it,might not look like it yellows as much if it does. Harris' paper seems heavier and more durable than either, and from what I have seen,possibly yellows less over time. The CWS paper in the Phoenix album looks very white, new, and is thicker, as in the Harris albums.

For my own collection, I've kept Part I intact and combined Parts II-VIII.I'm thinking of changing this and breaking it down by regions to spend more time in areas I especially enjoy while ignoring others almost entirely.

If you really want to collect the world up to now and into the future, you might consider the Olympians as more manageable and maybe Scott Specialty albums for any areas you particularly like since they would be even more complete than the Internationals.

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Welcome to the forum. One possibility for album pages is to go to www.stampalbums.com and check out some of the pages. You have to print the pages yourself, but you can also save the pages to disk and you can choose the country you want. I believe it's $20 a year for unlimited access. If you have Adobe Acrobat page making capabilities you can also modify the pages to your own needs.

Wow! That's a great site! I'll definitely have to check it out when I'm a little more organized.

G'Day Eric And welcome to the forum
Hop you get all the info you need I know I did !

i found that sorting by country is a great start then you move on
other things like date's

Jason BD