Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

Dennison's go for moon-money now.

Good alternatives are Fold-O-Hinge (flat or folded)
and Harris Honor-Built (vintage).

They cost less and are suitable vintage hinges, IMHO.

John

At our recent club auction, a collector looking to sell his collection lamented a bit at the low prices stamps were goin for. He put in a pack of Dennison and a pack of Fold O Hinges and you bet they sold well. We should all have invested in old hinges ;)

Here is something I am sure that you never seen before . We all seen album pages with stamps of various shades but have you ever seen a album page where the security printing is in different shades or intensey of ink . This different
printing of the security color makes the printing ink of the stamp look like a different shade .

Although I do not collect WW with an eye toward having as many all-different stamps as possible, I have always been fascinated by the topic and love to read how other collectors undertake building such collections.

As far as a count of all-different stamps, what methods do some of you utilize to maintain an accurate count?

And when deciding on what counts toward the total, how do each of you define "different?" Do you include or exclude varieties such as perfs, shades/tones, watermarks, papers, dies, etc?

Shermae ---- I belive every collector you ask that question to ,will give you a different answer .

Each collector collects for a different reason .Since each collector who attempts to collect the world and it is a life time effort , they will also respond with different answers at various times of the journey .

On the question of counting the stamps ,the answer my daughter gave me was count every 5th album for a
total per album and be honest with yourself ,then count the total albums and I would come up with a net total

I count each and every stamp , I don't use my albums for duplicates or mint and used as seperate stamps ,but got maybe a thousand stamps that are nice cancel or unusual s-o-n cancels .Those are on the album page .
.

Regarding the original post, here's a website of Dr. Cheng Chang (hope he is not forbidden) who tries to build up a single collector's ww collection.
What do you think of his collection? Is he really a private collector?
http://www.worldstampalbum.com/main.aspx?MenuId=1

There are over 90 Scott binders in the image on homepage.

Very nice collection he has . I believe he was at Greg Manning Auction in New Jersey in the late 1980's and 1990's . That was the center of the universe for worldwide collections and country collections .

For me, I count the number of different stamps in each album... The tricky part is after awhile you need to be careful not to count duplicates, since I use a couple types of albums and pick up deals when I can.

I maintain two different types of counts, one that is physical written down in ink and paper and one that is digital written in LibreOffice System/Excel depending on if I have the proper licenses for the product.

1) Regarding Physical: I usually take my Scott 2008 (or later editions as I get from the library since I only own 2008) with pen and paper and a notebook and start documenting it. This takes a couple of hours a day to be honest to finish one country depending on the size. Currently, I am going through my Europe section with Hungary and due to it's size I have been doing this for a couple of months. When the Europe section is done, I will usually mark it and put it on one side.

2) Regarding Digital: I take what I wrote down in notebooks and then copy it on to digital format like in Excel or LibreOffice. This helps me with a concise numbering system, documents my collection for perusal if I have to buy anything online and maintains an accurate count. I will usually print a summary to carry with me if I go to any physical stores.

I count everything that the catalogue says. If a stamp has ten varieties, suppose, then that to me is ten different and unique stamps.

Katchem I am curious if you are using some form of optical character recognition application to convert your hand-written documentation into digital info for Excel?

No, I type it out by hand. I don't write in type I write in cursive and as a result optical character recognition does not work well for my handwriting. Its much easier, and faster I find, to type it all out.

Some stamps escape you your entire life ,never been able to complete this set . The complete set always was just out of reach until this MNH set appeared at a public auction . Always from a early age had pieces half mint and half used .

Katchem ---- I just go on a estimate and use the method my daughter told me about . No reason for a accurate count because by next week the numbers will change .

The number count got inbedded into my head ,when I was 7 or 8 years old,the older boys who traded stamps on the front porch in Providence Rhode Island had a H.E.Harris sales catalog and inside there was ads for 1,000 different stamps then 2,000 different stamps all the way up to 50,000 different stamps . As a young kid I though someday I will be rich and can maybe buy the 10,000 or 20,000 all different stamps offers in the catalog .

65 years later ,I wish I could invite all those older boys over to my house in Florida today ,boy would they be surprised about that little kid they gave their extra duplicates too .

Since people who are interested in worldwide collections are the one's who read this section of the Stamp Community Board , I like to bring up a important point for you to think about .

About three years ago here ,I made a remark and I repeated it once or twice since . The posting was about stamp auctions that sell WW collections and post the estimate number of stamps were getting about ten cents per stamp and that was a new high ,remember I been buying collections when they were 4 cents or 5 cents per stamp. So it was a surprise to see the big increase in these counted WW collections .

Guess what ! This week Kelleher Stamp Auctions listed a collection for sale for the end of June , this collection is starting at over 12 cents per stamp ! May not sound like a lot but think about this new event that other auctions houses are looking at this also . It will be interesting to watch this auction and where the price will go .

Sure I will agree with you that it depends on what kind of stamps are in the collection . But the hobby world to me is made up of 2 cents stamps .