Feeder Albums Yea Or Nay?

We occasionally discuss building a collection via feeder albums. The idea that feeder albums reach a point of diminishing returns is almost always raised. I was planning on working on the France Offices in China portion of my collection and I had 2 decent collections on International pages that I wanted to meld into my Specialized collection. Here are the pages I wanted to incorporate;








These 4 pages in International Album are represented by 24 pages in my Specialized Album.

The International pages have spaces for 183 stamps and my Specialized Album has spaces for 599 stamps.

The International collection on the left has 116 stamps and the collection on the right has 122 stamps and my Specialized collection had 154 stamps.

On the International pages there were 80 stamps common to both and 36 unique on the left and 42 unique on the right. So almost an even break between common stamps (80) and unique stamps (78).

After I went through both collections I was was able to add 56 stamps to my collection. Of these 20 were common to both collections and 36 were unique stamps. Shown below are the results;






There are more than 56 stamps because I found a few in glassines between pages.

I understand this little analysis doesn't prove anything but I was a little surprised how many unique stamps there were in these 2 similar collections and I was very satisfied harvesting 56 stamps. I'm sure as the collection grows it will get harder and harder to find stamps from feeder collections.

I am a big fan of using feeder collections. I have built my France and Italy collections using only feeder collections and my France is quite strong with Sc #21 and complete Semi Postals mostly unused and MNH after 1935. To date I have bought 35 France feeder collections but the reason this works so well for me is that after I take the stamps I need I resell the feeders on eBay. I have actually sold the feeder collection for more than I paid, and as I always say "free stamps are a good thing".

Thanks for your numbers and analysis. It is cool to see the how the numbers worked for you.

I like feeder collections. They work for me. My world wide pre 1940 collection was built on a couple of WW albums and country collections. I am now at the point that a few countries are getting very hard to fill with missing stamps. I am working on other countries for now. I guess I could move up to specialty albums.

I love them also although they are not easy to find in my specialty

Peter

That is interesting, thanks for sharing. I used feeder albums previously for Canada, but now the collection has "matured" beyond that point. But still finding it a great way to add to my French African & Ecuador collections, and have been able to usually sell the dups for more than I paid for them, which is a great feeling.

I build my own feeder albums ,because my main Scott Internationals are 52 volumes . So I have a 9 volume International sitting on my desk right now and fill that with stamps and then once every two years ,I match that up to the main albums . Then I ship those 9 volumes to a auction house and start again building a feeder album .

Interesting information about these two collections, Ken.

I'm not at all surprised that two feeder collections produced a fairly significant number of unique stamps. That's been my experience, as well. Two, three, maybe even four collections of the same material often give me stamps I don't have and make the purchase price worth it. Getting percentages as high as Ken did from the second collection is very good indeed.

But there clearly is a point beyond which another collection will produce much less of what you need and won't be worth it financially. After that, it's almost all redundancy. That point is going to depend on how extensive your initial feeder collections are, of course, as well as the depth of each new collection you buy, but at some point, looking for stamps you need in yet another feeder album is not going to pay off much, if at all. That point is going to vary depending on these factors -- plus what you collect, and so on.

Buying beginner albums over and over again is likely to provide the same easily-found stamps over and over again with little that is unique. To begin my current worldwide collection, I purchased at least six (6) Volume I Scott Internationals each with quite a few stamps. The first two or three volumes were very useful with many unique stamps, but with each subsequent volume I found fewer and fewer stamps I needed. But I did sometimes find a better copy of a stamp I had, something a "redundancy" statistic won't necessarily reveal. At this point, I think buying another Vol I would be a waste of money. A better approach for me now is to buy individual countries whose stamps I'm "thin" on. After that, to keep adding stamps I need, I'll need to look for individual sets of stamps. That's when the price r-e-a-l-l-y starts to go up.

My own general rule is two or three collections of the same material are generally worth buying, but a fourth or fifth is rarely worth it. This applies to general worldwide material by country, however, not specialized material. Two or three albums or sets of Scott International pages of the same country generally pays off, but a fourth or fifth isn't likely to be nearly as good. My experience anyway. Your experience depends on what you collect and your degree of luck. After all, somewhere there's a guy buying his 7th set of the same Abu Dhabi pages and still finding material he really needs. You never know.

I suppose that what Floortrader describes is more what I think of as a feeder collection. In terms of country collections, I also bought a few French collections. The key tends to be how much you can afford to blow and when. The last collection I bought was a bulging Yvert album covering the 1840s to the 1980s. If I'd been able/ready to spend that sort of money at the outset, I shouldn't have bought any of the others, and I'd have simply been able to pick off more specialised areas - parcels, pre-cancels etc.

Acquiring (paying for) anything beyond what you actually need for your collection makes little sense unless you are a successful reseller such as Ken. I tried it for different Countries/Areas long ago and the cost analysis ended up ugly. I also always ended up with material that did not fit in quality wise with what I already had. I can see it as a way to shotgun in a whole bunch of stamps when you are starting out filling wholes in an unfocused manner in a massive WW undertaking. Personally I enjoy tracking down singles and sets individually. Isn't that a giant component of the hobby? The hunt?

I like to add to the subject of Feeder Albums .

If any of you have the many years of experience that I have , will confirm those big blue binders of the Scott Internationals and any of the Scott GREEN speciality series these binders as they get filled and especially if they are taken off the bookcase and carried to a desk,or layed on the floor next to the desk . Then picked up worked with and the put back on the bookcases .

After a few hundred times over many years ,those ALBUMS FALL APART . Yes they are not made to be handled hundreds of times in your life . The quanity of the binder just is not there . It is not misleading to say your going to be replacing those binders in your generation ,forget about the next generation which by that time will be covered by tape to hold them together .


That is why I use FEEDER ALBUMS to reduce the wear and tear of my set of Internationals . Now my binders come off the bookcase maybe 4 or 5 times a year . You just can't take down and put back up a Blue International binder 52 times a year and after 10 or 12 years expect the binder to still look new .

Some folks also get the enjoyment of the "hunt" from finding items to fit their collection in a bulk lot purchase. Personally enjoy both - it's a great feeling to purchase that nice stamp that you know will fit that empty space perfectly, but also great to find an unexpected quality stamp for your collection in that feeder album lot.

~Greg

I've had my Scott blue internationals (Vol 1-7) since 1974 and although lately they've seen little use since I switched to Vintage Reproductions a few years back, the binders still look pretty new (the pages do have mild toning of their exposed edges). I spent decades repeatedly taking them off the shelf, adding stamps, and putting them back up, and there's not a spot on them that needs tape. Admittedly I treat all my albums as though they were made of nitro glycerin, but it pays off in the long run.

Nitroglycerin? Do you have a lot of exploded booklets?

Good heavens, no, they're all un-exploded, but one moment of carelessness and...