How To Set Up Album For Aviation Collection

I have started to separate my airplanes and put them into an album.
What is the most common way?
1. Alphabetically ?
2. By region or area
3. By continent. Then how to do islands? Oceans?
4. Any suggestions?

I always wondered how people organinzed topical collections. Are you just collecting aircraft or is there some other aviation related theme such as events (first flights, etc).

At the most advanced levels of topical collecting (i.e. exhibiting), the arrangement "tells a story", thus would typically group the images by topic ignoring the country of origin. It might trace the development of flight and group the stamps by balloons, then gliders, then pioneers like the Wrights, military aircraft, jets, supersonic, etc.

As the earlier replies say, "airplanes" and "aviation" are two different things, so you'll have to better define for yourself what you mean. Catapult mail? Ballon montes? Zeppelin flights? Or just issues that depict something flight-related? There are a number of topical albums available if that's the way you want to go; otherwise once you have segregated all the relevant stamps, a certain order may just present itself to you.

To offer some particular answers, almost every island belongs to a continent, (the Caribbean islands to North America, for example), so no issue there… but since you want to collect topically, breaking things up geographically just undoes what you are otherwise trying for. Alphabetically, same problem… and you have to decide what alphabet to use: English? French? Other?

You could try a pure chronology, regardless of geography… when was the first balloon shown on a stamp? Who issued the stamp with the final depiction of a propeller-driven craft? Etc.

Hello Zman

have a look at this website: http://www.walter-kalt.ch. It's in German, but it will give you an idea of how to organise your collection. Walter can also help you with the identification of aircraft types, as the names in the catalogues are not always correct (but often copied incorrectly from one catalogue to another...).

Best regards from Switzerland

André

As others note, much depends on your own individual interests and how you want to approach your "airplanes."

Are you interested in the aircraft by their types (lighter than air, unpowered, powered; heavier than air, fixed wing in multi/tri/bi/mono flavors, piston/jet, or perhaps rotary, gyrocopter, seaplane, glider)? or are you more interested in the places issuing?

As you mull your dozens of possible arrangement hierarchies, you might want to experiment with vario pages so you can keep re-arranging your stamps without bogging you down with album mounts and paper pages that want labeling.... You can then see what organizing principle(s) make(s) you happiest. This exercise is actually a really fun part of collecting in a topical area.

I have a way back-burner project of collecting airplanes on stamps. I started and quickly got overwhelmed. You can get a checklist from the ATA which helps a lot. My plan was (is?) to organize them chronologically, telling the story of flight. . .I'm will never likely do much with this idea, but I started narrowing my scope to aviation before WWI which still includes the vast number of stamps commemorating the Wright Brothers. I also started paring down the countries and years I collected since I got very discouraged with the countries that issue zillions of stamps aimed primarily or solely at topical stamp collectors. I'd be interested in knowing more about how you collect airplanes on stamps.

There is some interesting ideas that was brought up. My main interest is airplanes only. The website that Zuerich4 posted looks to be a good idea.

I just group things in ways that look good to me haha. I would do more chronological or story form if I was wanting to "show it" but I do what I like.