Year Books : Do You Keep Them ?

Hello everyone,

I was doing some sorting through the forgotten boxes of my collection when I came across several German yearbooks (from 1978 to 2005, West Germany and Berlin).

I was wondering whether you keep this kind of thing or remove the stamps to put them in your albums. Are they collectible items or just disposable junk?

For some yearbooks, the answer is easy: they're just pieces of cardstock with nothing more to them. But these are little booklets with descriptions, illustrations of first-day cancellations, etc. So it's not an easy decision for me. I have to choose between keeping my collection consistent (same albums, everything organized in the same way…) and keeping things that don't quite fit in.

That was my rambling for the day!

The way I see it and what I have practiced is if there is space, I keep everything intact. If there is a need to transport or ship those types of things the extra weight goes. Unless of course I know that the presentation/storage medium adds value. Sometimes you won't know for 100 years from now if the packaging is worth more than the stamps just like old toys.

Example: My wife is online selling some die-cast car models I purchased long ago. The pristine intact boxes are getting me good money while others of the exact same models sit unsold.

I worked in Germany for a year. When I left, my colleagues presented me with a German yearbook. That was in the early 2000s. Of course, I kept it.

In the late 1990s, my father and I spent long weekends in Spanish cities. He spent the winter in southern Spain. I bought yearbooks in the cities we visited. Most post offices no longer stock them. So, I have been ordering the yearbooks every year for over a decade. They are very informative. They also come at a discount to the face value of the stamps, even after postage, and I do not have to pay for an album for the stamps. Ranges of those yearbooks go for a fraction of their cost at auction.

I struggle with this myself and I can't say there is one definitive answer. I'm thinking if it's just going to sit in a box with no chance of seeing daylight then why keep it. At the same time depending on the country I've recently started loading up page protectors and binders so I can access and retain certain things.

I used to keep everything! If I received an empty GB presentation pack I kept it. Now I can raid it for the mnh set and discard the pack. I'm also to the point where I'm getting rid of post Office forms and advertisements. Additionally I moved across country 4 years ago and I ditched around 8 boxes of stuff some that I can't even remember what it was anymore..

So do what you're comfortable with/have the room for. Having recently joined a local ish stamp club I found my sweet spot is hauling whatever to the monthly meeting and leaving it on the free table.

Various collections of German stamps in collectors' albums I've purchased have come with most of the stamps mounted with selvage attached. This seemed a bit odd to me as almost none of the selvage was in any way interesting. It was just blank selvage with maybe a control line or two.

Having sworn years ago (ask my wife) not to drown in my massive collection of stamps, I swore off everything but the stamps themselves. This means I throw away a lot of things others might keep. I remove stamps from album pages I've bought and throw way the (perfectly good) pages. Right now, I'm stripping a Switzerland album. I throw away album binders I don't need. I throw away almost all material stamps came attached to. Some countries I've had stamp subscriptions with used to send me Xmas cards with a postmarked stamp attached. Very nice, but I did not keep them. All subscriptions came with the stamps in little envelopes or folders I did not keep. Those that came in lavish books with details about every stamp, I took the stamps out of, enjoyed reading the descriptions, then threw away the (very nice) books. Hate me if you choose, but I collect only stamps, not books about stamps.

As for the piles of selvage I removed from German stamps, I do not collect selvage, either, except when it has a control number or some interesting added item I don't mind saving. Hey, no one's perfect! When there were lots of collectors around, I'd have given much of this away (including my duplicates and albums I don't need). Today, I don't see any other collectors often enough to do that. So for my (and my wife's) sanity, out it all goes. Except the stamps.