Struggles Collecting World Wide

Been there too. I started re-organizing my collection few years back in order to get (more or less) consistent looks. As anyone can see from below photo (about 1/3 of my collection) I'm mostly done - few random stock books still remaining. But I'll finish it one of these days ;)

(sorry for watermarking the photo... I've had more than fair share of people misusing images of my collection)

If I could do something differently, then I would not purchase 64 page stock books I acquired on younger age. They are simply not as practical or durable as 16 or 32 pagers.





That's a pretty sweet price. Here Varios (and similar Grande 7S) pages cost from $90 (discount price) to $120(list price) per 100 sheets.

Stock books (Lighthouse & Lindner) on the other had are way cheaper than in US :)

Having experienced Varios and stockbooks, I find I prefer stockbooks for long term storage. Of course, for display of a collection, nothing beats an album.

I finally reached 100,000 different stamps! It took about 8 1/2 years, 54 albums and numerous box lots, trading and hinges. These take up 38 feet of shelf space. It would take me a very long time to reach 200,000 but it would be fun to post that image too in the distant future. Lots of lessons learned. One funny thing is that I picked up a random old packet of 1,000 stamps two weeks ago and found 12 right away that I still needed.

landoquakes - congrats!!

I reached 100K on early June, and have already started my (long) journey towards the 200K landmark.

-k-

thank you scb :) I suspect the next 100K might be a bit harder, but luckily for us there are still lots of cheap stamps out there!

Very nice display, you can't leave us like this, we, at least me want to know details....the Scott are from 1840 to .... the brown ar ....

Nice collections ,always enjoy to see how others keep their worldwide collections. I also have a decent size worldwide collection .

Storage is always an issue for worldwide collectors. Thankfully I have my own "man-loft" which I keep my stamp-related stuff in (it's the top floor of a 1950s-style Cape Cod, nice huge space :) ) For albums I use Vario Stockpages and each country has a binder, which I mark with the coat of arms I printed out on silver label paper with my printer.

Here is the main part of the collection, with USA, UN, start of Canada, and about 2/3 of my French Colonial collection albums (which continue around the corner.

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landoquakes - very impressive - 100,000 is a real milestone!

The pic of your collection housed (mostly) in Big Blues is a lovely sight indeed.

Do you happen to know how much of your collection is 1840-1940 versus 1940 - ??? (Whatever date you collect to?)

DJCMHOH - I like the look - a lot!

Are those binders mostly Vario G's or Vario F's?

I love worldwide collecting. I could add 1000 new stamps to my collection every month literally till the day I die (I'm 46 and in good health) and still not run out of new stamps. Until recently, I had only collected a few dozen countries, only a handful of them very seriously. I hesitated to take the plunge into WW collecting until I settled on Lighthouse stockbooks for storage. They are simply the most economical (both monetarily and with shelf space) and simplest storage method there is. Assuming a full stockbook and average sized stamps, the average cost of storage is about 1-2 cents per stamp, less than the cost of a mount alone, with no need to purchase pages or binders.

Obviously a 100% complete WW collection is impossible (at least for me), but I'm not even all that concerned about achieving 50% completion or any other milestone, the exception being my German-area collection, which I'm very serious about completing. Anyway, I buy opportunistically, keeping an eye out for good deals and whatever might catch my eye that day. I'm having a blast at it.

They look like the Vario F's. The Vario G's usually have 2 gold stripes at each rib, vs. 1 stripe on the F's.

JK there are 70,253 in Big Blues from Pt 1 to Pt 23. Part IA and IB have 18,392. They are about 1/2 full and it's surprising how sparse some of the pages look. As you have found too about the shortfalls of Big Blue I resorted to quadrille pages inserted in where they match the closest. I do include perf and watermark differences in the count. A big pain were the legit countries that were excluded from Big Blue over the years. China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam etc. Some of these had a home in Minkus. Then there are countries like Mongolia that Harris does a pretty good job with. I also included Sand Dunes and dubious "countries" such as Lundy. There are 3,038 stamps that are in this misc album. Artfulhinger, I'm 46 too and it is comforting to know we could collect as long as we can and not run out of stamps. floortrader, that photo of your collection awhile back has certainly been my inspiration. DJCMHOH Those binders look great. That is another struggle I've had is having a collection that looks nice. Having the same kind of 3 ring binder helps and I have gone through quite a few to get ones I like.

Art, how do you figure out spacing for your stamps? Do you move stamps around often to adjust for space or do you leave a lot of open pages? What model Lighthouse books?

jkjblue - Vario F binders (don't like the bigger G binders with their square ring mechanism, pages harder to turn)