How Do You Manage Your Dupes?

Lots of good info, I am in the process of sorting through a pile I have had for years, finding lots of dupes. I live in the middle of no where, so I have to plan my supply purchasing ahead of time. Currently waiting for some mounts, so can not put anything into my albums for a week or so and am spending this time sorting these dupes. Starting out putting them into stock books, but see I need to move some into other areas. Sounds like the glassine envelopes will work well for multi.

I had taken the same approach as philb, preparing for some future dealer or possible trades. Now I'm beginning to think it might be best to just throw them all in a shoebox and focus on my primary collections!

Amazing how these threads bounce back to life...think about it..the lowest values of my collection take up the most room...i should sell them for 15 or 20 dollars a tub and let someone else have the fun..it would free up a lot of space..WHICH IS VALUABLE !

I have days that remind of the show "Hoarders" if it takes me more than 2 seconds to say "Yes" or "No" I mindlessly put them aside to trade for things to go in my primary collections. Other days, I'm far too critical and will sit and study and sort looking through magnifying glasses hoping for a good find...

I have gotten some of those "Glad" plastic food boxes in about a 5" or 6" square size and mark the boxes with a Sharpie "US On Paper", "World Off Paper", etc. I get the boxes on sale they stack away nicely. Someday I hope to give them to a Scout who wants to work on a merit badge or sell them for a couple bucks each. I would only use stock pages or stock books for my most favorite duplicate stamps that I want to hoard - otherwise is is just too expensive.

Bringing this thread back to life again!

I was actually doing a search for "spreadsheet" and this topic came up and reading through, I love the humor!




Too too funny Puzzler! So, have the sort them selves out yet? They are probably quite happy all snuggled together!

I have plastic drawers and I label them with a Post-it: Themed, No Airmail, Need to sort, USA On Paper Only, WW Off Paper, etc. I also have a couple shoe boxes full of stamps that I thought a while back they are not as significant. I like the thought of going through them one day, because I am sure I will ask myself why in the heckle is this and that stamp in here!!




Edwin's questions are great! I go around and around in my head, do I keep this, do I trade it, how many duplicates do I want to keep?

So I wanted to ask everyone, do you all keep just ONE stamp and consider the rest all duplicates and trade or put away some where else, or do you keep a few duplicates?

I must be a horder, as if I have 5 mints, I want to keep them all, even with my used stamps, I want to keep at least 3 and if I have more than that, then I would consider trading them.

Now my other question is with a spreadsheet, but I will search more threads before I ask.

Have a good day / night everyone!
SueStampms

I've seen those websites :p

I've only been collecting for a few months, but duplicates are building up thick and fast. I currently keep mine in labelled plastic chinese takeaway cartons with a few silica gel packs thrown in, organised by country.

What to do with them I have no idea yet hehe

Arranged my dupes by country in glassines, in a plastic box from the dollar department. The 'annoying' ones are the piles of US to be soaked or those dozens of Washingtons waiting to be cataloged.

Sighh.. a such a wonderful mess

I didn't re-read this entire thread, but remember there are numerous stamp groups that would love donations of your dupes to give to young collectors or new collectors.

Also, there are large-scale non-profit art projects that would also be interested in any unwanted dupes. These are art projects, so badly damaged stamps are OK. They need them in large quantities (i.e., MILLIONS of stamps), but since these projects are long-term, they will settle for getting a few hundred/thousand at a time.

Since these art projects are not SCF members, it is not appropriate for me to post them as I come across them. However, if you are interested, you can email me and I can pass along any information on current projects that I may have received and that have good reason to believe are legitimate. You can then contact them directly if you are interested. I am not tied into any of these projects, so don't worry about any conflict of interest on my part.

k

Please remember your local youth stamp club and the Boy Scouts for merit badge work. There might also be a youth coordinator for your state stamp federation that would appreciate them and who would know of clubs in the state that could use them.

I pass some of mine on to a close-by stamp museum (Spellman) where they have 2-cent boxes for kids to pick from. Actually I sometimes sit there & pick from these boxes as well. Relaxing to say the least.

I had many of my dupes or others that I just don't collect separated by country and in envelopes in a file box (smaller than a shoe box).
These I've been selling off or trading. The stock is getting pretty low now, but haven't had a chance to replenish.

Edwin, now theres a blast from the past..when I look at the names on the ressurected threads I wonder where they have all moved on to ?

I have my dupes separated by countries in stockbooks. For each country I group them by topics and not by year. So it's for me easy to find them as many of the countries have no year on the stamp or it's not easy to find it.

I've got most of my duplicates in glassines which I then place n larger business size envelopes with the country name on them. I've sorted them by
year and/or set (Scott number). Although I've sorted my paypal account for buying, I haven't opened it for selling yet. I should probably do that soon!
It's good to recycle duplicates into stamps I need. :)