Overwhelmed By Ww Collection And How To House It All

Sometime before Christmas I bought a WW collection . The guy passed away and his heirs wanted nothing to do with it so price was definatly really right. Now I have patiently waited until holidays are over the tree was packed away and started digging. Every country is in seperate glassines/ envelopes banded together and on top of that he even lightly penciled scott catalog numbers on the backs even all the back of the book series . Sort of takes all the fun out of it but now I am wanting to see what is really here. On top of the organized countries is also a box full of bags of 500/1000 again all scott numbered but all mixed. At first I assumed all duplicates but then there are bags and glassines that say duplicates and also many more 1000's in countries but not numbered . All in all the number of stamps is over 100,000 with an estimate of 80% unique but its just boxes of god only knows unless I can look at what I have here. I've done the stock book thing and got really tired of moving and shifting all the time and since I will likely sell much of this I really just want to be able to get a good view . Vario pages are the easiest option but hate to buy a wack load and end up selling most of this off.
So other than this being a big rant of poor me I have to many stamps, does anyone have a simplified method to deal with this type of battle ? I know 1 country at a time would make sense but I guess I really have to decide if I am now a WW collector or pick and choose which countries I like and unload the rest. My original plan was pick a few sell the rest but this is a relly great starting point to a nice world wide endeavour and hate to say goodbye to even the oddest country and then have regret. The other downfall is I'm not seeing alot of major high value issues so if I keep it I know its gonna cost me large but its a great start.

Nitrolures:
With the exception of an intervening period where I became involved in higher priority you have just described the last several years of my life. I acquired a similar inventory, consisting of seven shipping cartons of stamps, many well organized in glassine envelopes, many half-done , grouped in large envelopes off paper, and many loose stamps. Been playing 'catch up' ever since. In my case, I wanted to know what I had.
I started by "picking the low-hanging fruit," by grouping first by country (for all countries), storing them , then cataloguing and recording the identified stamps, (Including booklets, and philatelic material.)Then I took on the more common remaining inventory. I still haven't gotten to the bulk of the material in the last carton.
My dealer also had many lots in glassine envelopes ready for sale. I have not added them to the computerized inventory and am now readying them for sale on ebay.
May I also suggest that you count your blessings. Organizing the collection/inventory is less problematic, allowing you to get a handle on it much quicker than with all unidentified inventory, For me, glassine envelopes are better for storage, although I realize it is inefficient to sort them for counting and pricing, then resorting and regrouping for sale.
Good luck.

Confusion .....confusion .........reading your posting above makes a few things very clear.....here is my take of what your saying ........first seperate those areas you want to keep and set those on the side for yourself and plan on mounting those to add to your own collection so buy enought stocksheets for those .Then place a large carton under your sorting table and call it ,the junk box, were you discard all the stuff you want to sell and recover some of your purchase price .As your junk box fills up then list those on E-BAY,wether its country lots or mixture boxes.

I could write for an hour, but here is a cost-saving tip. Forget about buying expensive glassines or stock sheets just yet - you can buy a box of 500 white business envelopes for $5 to $10 at Staples or Office Depot, and each will hold a considerable amount of loose, on-paper, already-in-glassines, etc. Country name at upper left, where your eye naturally falls.

The first task is always to separate by country, not to get sidetracked by decisions at every turn. What fun!

And how to start? Make piles by alphabet - 3 rows, A to F at the top, G to N in the middle, and O to Z at the bottom. I've found that breakdown gives you fairly even rows. When you begin to overflow, separate the A's into business envelopes, then the B's, etc., and when finished, start making alphabetic piles again. Repeat. Repeat. Go to bed. Dream alphabetic piles. Get up. Eat a taco for breakfast. Repeat.

Good advice doug2222, but as everyone knows, it is cold pizza for breakfast.

At MY house, there is no pizza left over for breakfast. It was all wolfed down by 7 p.m. the previous evening. Maybe if we ordered two...?

But nobody eats all the tacos.

So definatly keep my sense of humor is key- Thought a good sticky jelly doughnut would make tongs needless for awhile.
The majority is as suggested in white envelopes sometimes 3-5 per country- In each he has small glassines that say 1-499, 499-999 and so on . then a seperate for C series , J series all sub categories . The missmash is the overflow box- I took a bag marked 1000 and sorted last night with all being south america countries. Again each of these is marked with Sc # so I should be able to quickly check if these are dups or need to be placed in the envelopes. One cool thing is 25 yrs of complete Russia with pages and red russian albums that should be a tension reliever to play with.
Did I mention the son that had no interest brought up that his Dad had told him at one time he had 1-2 stamps worth 10k . If he had told me prior to paying and loading I would have thought BS sales pitch but it was an after the fact statement. Not knowing even 1/50th of what I'm looking at makes any treasure a true needle in the haystack and more of a reason I'd really like to know whats all in here.
I'll keep everyone posted as I go and I'm sure a bunch will be listed for grabs on here soon.

Sounds like he was pretty organized, as far as he went. He grouped them down to the point that he was just above the issue level.

The glassines are for sorted, catalogued and priced inventory. Buy one 1000 envelope box at a time.


Probably, the only way you're going to find his prize stamps, (unless he sold them) is start with the well-organized stuff and work your way thru it.

I'd start with US and Western European groups, where the prices are higher. I've gone through some countries and found very few above the minimum.

There is probably some good stuff that he probably did not find, that you, with your high level of expertise and adroit task-solving ability, will uncover. He may not have had the level of expertise to discern the varieties, etc.

Find yourself a small desk-size cabinet with shallow drawers that two rows of glassines will fit into. Dump the envelopes as uickly as possible. My view anyway.

There is also a new ilustrated around the world album that I blieve is about 500 pages and not a hinge mark within. About 60% of this was purchased from Kenmore and just the receipts I had totaled just under 5k . I'm guessing his goal may have been to try and use the album at some point. Just out of curiosity does Kenmore write the scotts numbers in pencil or is this just a collectors preference? He also had everything with backs facing outward and cardboard inserts in every glassine so it would seem he was more concerne with catalog numbers than the stamps themselves. If he was ying I'd be yang cause I want to see them all.
The US has some bank notes and many $5-25 items and some revs but actually quite a bit of modern used which although is not my thing is interesting. Another good thing is just in the 1 bag of 1000 I went through last night there are many complete sets . There is quite a bit of Germany that I know can hold some goodies so I may jump into the middle of the alphabet after I sort through the unsorted favors. This is where being a cancel specialist could be really beneficial, so I wll rely on being a scanner specialist and let you guys assist.

This sounds like my accumulation. I have 8 moving cartons of stuff to work on and no way on earth could I sort all this A-Z as a first step. So the method I have used is take a large fist full of stuff set it out, sort by country and then mount all of them. As I run into duplicates I keep the best copy and the duplicate goes in the duplicate box which is now I moving carton in its own right. Those to be p[hotographed and sold, traded, donated, whatever someday. It is a small step at a time but has worked for me and my space.
Nick

I don't dare purchase any more bulk..sure its an economical way to acquire stamps...but what to do with the vast majority of ordinary stamps ? For example high catalog Great Britain and Ireland stamps..Scott says the catalog value is high..but no one seems to want them !!

Organization of a stamp collection has always been problematic and the problem only increases over time as we expand our collecting interests. I have been a stamp collector for over 50 years but it was only about 2 years ago when I realized the collection was beyond control. The albums required to hold 100,000+ stamps were prohibitively expensive and the bookshelves required to store them required more space than my wife was willing to give up. A few months ago, we went to a State Equipment auction preview & noticed a Library Card Catalog up for auction. I went back for the auction with a "104" card in hand. The card fit the drawer of the card catalog, I bid & won the unit. I have since purchased another & now believe I can store 120,000 different stamp scenarios. Some cards have complete sets & some only a single stamp. When I find better copies there are no problems removing the old and replacing with the new or just leaving them all in place. I paid $225.00 for the 30 drawer unit (30 X 1,200= 36,000 stamps) & $200.00 for the 60 drawer unit (60 X 1,200 = 72,000 stamps). These units are not antiques, have plastic drawers with fake wood fronts, but are extremely presentable. I despise stamp hinges and this storage solution is working well for us.

Interesting - I have considered going to cards for my dominant storage. I'm going to keep thinking about it. There is something throwback to it - like baseball cards.

Don't forget 2-piece postcard collectors' storage boxes. They are about the size of a shoebox, and hold several sizes of glassine in the 5 to 7 inch range. About $4 each, less if purchased in quantity. I have 70 such boxes full of glassines in alphabetical order. I have another 25 full of covers, a slightly wider version. "Long" covers can be put sideways in the boxes; it's the height (of European covers) that's sometimes a problem.

Hi Nitrolures,

How exciting! Saw lots of input from others but not anything about what to keep or get rid of.
Here's a suggestion that would allow you to keep at least some of the stamps from each country:
Become a world wide collector, but only up to a certain date. Say 1940 or 1950. You can use the procedes from the stamps you get rid of to help fill remaining holes.
Also, I'd work on one country at a time and only need enough stock sheets for that country. I'd sort them by Scott # on the stock page. There will be a lot of repositioning, but since yours are already Scott # ID'd, you can lay them out on a table first in Scott # sequence. Then get out your Scott catalog and transfer them to the stock pages after verifying they are the correct scott # and also watching for varieties. For example, you may have a dozen of what he had identified as the same stamp, but when you double check, you may find that he mis-identified some/all of them based on perf count or watermark etc. You may also find Scatt # varieties such as different shades or tagging variations etc. When done sorting and transferring the keepers to an album the remainder will be left in Scott # sequence in the stock pages. Now you can sell/auction/give away these non-keepers. Whatever doesn't sell you can giveaway. Then the stock pages will be empty and you can move on to the next country. - Just my 2c. And yes, it sounds like you have way to much to ever get through in a lifetime.

Hey, I'd be interested in your duplicate w/w pre 1950 e-mails so don't forget to list some here for sale/auction/trade!

Dave N.
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Found these some years ago at my local 'Big Lots' but that was before they changed their Marketing strategy and became a small
grocery store. Maybe you can find it through a Furniture store, or Google it with the pix.
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Each drawer holds two rows of No. 3 envelopes, or will handle one row of No 3 and one No. 4.

I added the separators.