Storing And Organizing Stamps By Scott Number Ideas

Hoping everyone is well and enjoying the hobby. Lately I have been thinking of reorganizing my collection by Scott number and preferably in a binder.

My first idea is to use Dealer Sheets, but it seems that every site I've looked at is out of stock. Been checking for a while now and the only site I found is Subway Stamps. Even though I placed a small order to see, I doubt I'm getting them. It's been a week and they haven't updated anything, maybe I'm being too impatient.

My second thought is using dealer cards and then putting them into album pages. Maybe Vario as that is my current setup. Problem is, it's just randomly organized. Think this will be better but not sure if I'd like the way it will look. Plus, I have a lot of large blocks so I'm not even sure if they would fit into the cards.

Ideally the stamps would have the Scott number written somewhere on a card or page. Then put in order into a binder so it's easy to look at.

Hoping to get some better and/ or other ideas, suggestions. Thanks for taking the time to read through and commenting.

In catalogue order, eh? I think you may have re-invented the wheel as that is the normal order most collectors use, in case you didn't realize that. But whatever system you use should make sense to you.

Most collectors have traditionally used a printed stamp album in which to mount their collection from the beginning onward. You seem to have forgotten to mention what stamps you collect, so it's a bit hard to make suggestions. But for many countries, loose-leaf printed albums are available sometimes offered both with stamp mounts already included (expensive) and identical albums without mounts. Adding blank pages to a printed album would allow you to mount blocks and so on. For U.S. stamps, a very popular somewhat more advanced album is the Scott National Album.

Others use blank page albums and label it themselves and organize their collection whatever way they want, often chronologically.

Some use "stock sheets" like Vario pages in a ring binder of some kind. These don't require the use of stamp mount or stamp hinges (though the stamps tend to move around a bit!). With these, you will most likely need a lot of binders since these plasticized sheets are pretty thick and heavy compared to the paper used in other albums. In these, you cannot write or label what the stamps are or their dates or details, so you must add a small printed card where necessary.

Another option is to print your own albums pages to put into some kind of binders. One popular option of these is Bill Steiner's albums pages which you subscribe for and then print out as you want. I used some of his pages in my own collections, though I alter them by adding a different border and changing his fonts to suit my taste. Saving his pages in Word allows me to edit them.

For topical collections -- birds, trains, the Olympics, art, and so on -- most collectors use blank-page albums and mount their stamps in whatever order seems appropriate but often by country or time period.

I've purchased collections on Vario-style plastic pages and they look very nice, but those pages take up a lot of space and are quite heavy. With a collection that I might mount on standard album pages in two or three volumes, Vario-style collection can easily take up twice as many much heavier binders. And they almost never have "write-ups" by their former collectors, only small slips of paper with a year date or some note. So they are less personal and always seem to me more like "storage" than actual albums. Clearly, I prefer the flexibility and personality of standard paper albums, myself.

Most collectors today use stamp mounts, not hinges, but hinges are fine especially for stamps that are already hinged. For mint stamps, it's generally better to use mounts.

Whatever you do, do it the way you prefer, and have fun with it!

Since this is the general forum: most collectors will NOT organise their collection by Scott number.

OP did not tell how (if at all) OP organised the collection, just how OP wishes to do so in the future. I do not think that is re-inventing the wheel, but just an intention.
OP is being very informative.

I don't understand this comment? Did I mention Scott catalogues? I don't think I did.

Most collectors around the world do mount their collections in some catalogue order -- which is simply oldest first followed by later stamps, so hardly surprising -- but of course that is never necessary. In the U.S., it's the Scott catalogue that is most commonly used. Elsewhere, so no one feels offended, it's other catalogues, Yvert, Stanley Gibbons, Michel, and quite a few others. That approach would seem to go without saying, but again it is entirely up to every collector how they organize their collection -- forwards, backwards, upside down, randomly, topically, by color, or whatever way they chose. One of the great appeals of stamp collecting is the freedom to do what you want with your collection.

Interesting. Here's what axc77 said: "Lately I have been thinking of reorganizing my collection by Scott number and preferably in a binder."

"Reinventing the wheel" references his thinking that he might organize his collection by the most common method used to do that which is in catalogue order. It means to spend time coming up with something that already exists and was meant as gentle teasing. I"m not sure why this requires a debate, but with all respect I think you may have misunderstood both what axc77 and I said.

There, hardly, is a stamp album that exactly follows the order of any catalogue.

Some US publishers may, I doubt Yvert does.

Axc77 - Your question sent me to looking for sales sheets and I was shocked to see as you mentioned there are none to be had. I do know that a lot of these sheets and cards (102 etc.) are made in Canada so maybe this is tariff related? Not sure.

Gee ..... I didn't know about any of this !

There are only two rules to follow :
Your method is expandable .
Your stuff is keep in some kind of order that other collectors and dealers can understand .

I placed an order for BK102 cards with Subway about a month ago, and they informed me that they were currently out of stock and will let me know when they come in. No update yet.

My collection is mostly United States and China though I do pick up stamps from all over the world. And while I do know that it's nothing new to organize by Scott or catalog number, I was wondering if there is a better way then the way I thought.

@DrewM Thanks for the suggestions, I may try just writing the catalog number on a card and insert them into pages. Most of my collection are in Vario pages already. Probably have to move a lot of stamps around, should be fun.

axc77, Vario pages are ideal for that kind of album. They are not particularly expensive (maybe 50c a page which is what blank album pages cost), they are easy to use, and they look good. So what's not to like?

Well . . . theyr'e heavy as I mentioned, and you cannot write on them, stamps must be placed in the rows in one line so creative arrangements are not likely, and the stamps will inevitably slide around a little and can fall out of the slots they are in. Those, added up, convinced me not to mount my many collections on Vario-style pages, I do use Varios for First Day Covers which I've somehow managed to accumulate a lot of. I use the three-row Vario pages to hold three FDC's each on both sides of each page. Mounting the middle cover farther to one side than the other two allows me to see nearly the entire cover. Covers are thick enough not to move around. I have 12 binders of Japanese wood-block cachet FDC's mounted this way. But I digress . . . .

I use mostly Scott albums with Scott paper pages and my own stamp mounts. Not very creative, pretty standard in fact, but the pages end up looking really good. I also have a few Davo albums with my mounts added which look good. And I have a few Lighthouse albums with mounts already on the pages. Those were very expensive. But these choices may not appeal to you.

If I did my collections over again, I might mount some of them on blank pages and add my own write-ups to make it more personal. That's a type of collection I really enjoy looking at. It's much more personal and less formulaic than printed page albums -- the kind I use! Many European collections seem to be mounted this way, especially many British collections, so they seem more personal than printed albums. I have a Canadian collection I bought where the collector hand-wrote comments about most of the stamps! It's pretty unique so I haven't had the nerve to break it up (yet).

One great thing about stamp collecting is it's not rule-bound (despite the efforts of some collectors to insist you do it their way!). Any collector can mount his collection as he chooses. Any way you mount your collection that makes sense to you is going to be just fine.

"I was wondering if there is a better way then the way I thought."

There are other ways than by catalogue number/issue date. One way is to organize your stamps by topic or era. Chinese stamps about Sun Yat-sen and Jiang Jie-shi and the Republic would go together while the takeover by the CCP would be on separate pages. Of course, the catalogue already organizes stamps this way.

I might creat an historical album grouping stamps about separate Chinese events and topics together even if they were issued at different times. The Cultural Revolution and Great Leaps Forward and other campaigns might all go together. Chinese topical stamps like birds and flowers and so on might go on separate pages. Artworks on other pages. Famous people might be grouped together in a different section. And so on. That's a very interesting way to organize a collection that is not strictly by catalogue order.

One thing you might consider is NOT putting your stamps in Scott catalogue order, but arranging them logically, so that issues from a period sit together, rather than being artificially separated by the odd discrete categories such as air-mail or charity stamps that Scott uses.