Storing Large Used World Wide Collections

In the dark ages, the concept of perspective was lost to painting. I wonder when stamp collecting forgot the concept of assembling a pen, ink, a ruler and quadrille pages and using them?

@Geoffa... I think it's called evolution, LOL.

Whether or not it's for the greater good or bad, I'm not wise enough to say...

Keijo - thanks, that's making sense, your figures based on Michel and mine on a combination of Scott specialised and AFA. Michel normally lists more issues as major numbers, so the slight difference seems fair.

btw - I have divided the periods a bit different from yours, (1840-1899, 1900 - 1939, 1940 - 1969, 1970 - 1999). The more recent issues I am finding less and less interesting, so frankly I don't bother too much about issues after 2000. Then I also do not need to update the count of issues every year.

Ok after many test here what I'm go do for my WW ( I don't plan for the millions but I think I can say it's large )
- All pages will be 8½x11 and insert back to back in plastic protector
- Each country will be in his own binders as much as possible
- I will use AlbumGen to make the first pages of each country and many others pages
- I will use the same double line border as Steiner
- I will remove the stamps with the same design, with difference in watermark, perforation and paper, difference in color will be keep.
- Some expensive stamps will be remove, some key one will be kept.
- Steiner pages will be used for the rest , but they will be mod in LibreOffice Draw to center them
- Draw will be used to make pages with individual stamps when Steiner use only block, se-tenant and souvenir sheets: Steiners pages with those block, sheet will still be printed, the idea is to have place for cancel stamps

Using AlbumGen for the first pages give me the opportunity to include photo of the stamps, so they are less need to use the Scott catalog to find the place

I really try to use Scott Int. but:
- missing too much stamps,
- the binder are very cheeps, they start to broke sometime after only a month
- It's a pain to open the binder to add pages or reorganize them
- They are double sided

I do have Lighthouse albums of Canada and US, I don't think I will be abble to fill the US one, so they are no use to print pages of WW with expensive stamps, I have a good budget but i'm not Bill Gates

Quote from scb:
"And I fear bit of the same applies when people say out loud (and compare) the size of collections. Each collector uses different criterias. For example I and landoquakes say both of us are at approx. 91.5K different stamps. So basically our collections should be of equal size. But likely they are not..."

I think that indeed different collectors use different criteria. For example, my approach is to add an entry to an Excel spreadsheet every time I add a stamp to my albums. The size of my collection is then what is in my albums. But that does not include stamps that are not yet in the albums, so I am underestimating the actual size of my collection.

I like the virtual Big Blue of Jim he describe on his extraordinary blog http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.ca/. Since I already own the BB, I put my duplicates there, but Jim give me this idea; I will but a red dot on the one I hve in my others albums, so I will have an idea how much my BB will be filled if I was using it as main albums

Can't argue with that.

Here, in W.Europe, we don't have universal albums, like yor Big Blue. The very few people that still collects "Universal", uses either stockbooks or "one country" or "A group of countries" albums. I have myself a 1918/1940 Baltic Countries (Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania)Yvert et Tellier Album and a 1850/1950 Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) album. Those were given to me by an old friend.
Our pages, are of sturdy paper (not less than 95 gr per sqm) and we place stamps just on one side.

Cursus

Between them the SG Ideal and Imperial constitute a universal album - or a pair of them - covering the period from 1840 to 1936 in five volumes. More extensive coverage than Big Blue, although no officials, dues etc in the Ideal You have to like real, fastbound stamp albums, however!

Geoff

Blaamand re Yvert..I don't own Yvert catalogs so I can not vouch for them. Maury DOES include such forerunner cancel vales for each colony where it is appropriate as the first part of their listings, and values according to whether item is just a stamp or a cover. The also provide a very detailed list of the post offices that used the general -French Colonies- issues before each colony started getting its own issues (provisionally in the 1880s, officially starting with Peace & Commerce issues in c 1892),

If you want extensive coverage (1840-1940) , you print Steiner pages or you purchase the Scott Brown Album ( reprint) of Subway With the hslp of LibreOffice Draw, you can even make Steiner's pages more extensives

DJCMHOH - Thanks for that info, perfect! Maury sounds like a must-have for anyone interested in postmarks from the colonies prior to getting separate stamp issues from each colony. And I find that mostly interesting... hmmm.

Area66 - I like your own 'solution' described in detail above. It's absolutely a personal touch - it seems you have found yourself the best solution to work for you - good luck with that! Question - you have the experience in Libreoffice: Will LibreOffice create album pages in a format that I can use further for making digital collections, that is, populate the album page with images of my own stamps? Or do you think e.g powerpoint will be better for such a job?

Scb... 718,000! Is this through 2014? I'll have to update my spreadsheet then. I found a great book called The Philatelic Almanac from 1936 by Lindquist that summarizes by decade the number of stamps through 1934. He stated that there were 88,180 major and minor varieties by 1934 but if one was really into flyspecking it could be several hundred thousand. If one wanted to only collect 1840 to 1849 there are only 181 varieties...
I'm always on the hunt for the better stamp holder mousetrap. We all want to spend money on stamps and not supplies if we can help it. Someone mentioned homemade pages. If I inherit really well done homemade pages I keep them and fuse them into the binders. There was once a template one could buy of different stamp shapes and people made homemade pages out of those and they look great! Blaamand, your Sweden homemade page is very striking and the best thing about making your own pages is there is no limit. I do like the black background of the Vario pages, but they don't bend well when I punch them to fit in a Harris Binder. So in the end I use binders, albums, stock books, Vario pages whatever works. I try not to buy supplies that don't already have stamps in them if I can swing it.

Area 66 hits on a major dilemma, binders falling apart. I can say this about Scott International, empty binders are fairly easy to find. All binders eventually fail. Some of the Harris ones are the worst! The exception is the ones that had a different metal mechanism with the Standard Albums. Of course these aren't made anymore. I did finally run into the ultimate 3 ring binder that had metal hinges made by the US government from the 1950's and will last until at least the 2050's. It's the old C ring style so pinching can be a problem.

I bought a collection one time on pages meticulously hand-drawn in pencil, with exquisitely neat handwritten notations. It pained me to remove the stamps from those pages. I think I kept the pages and still have them somewhere. I'm not quite able to discard the handiwork of a (probably deceased) collector who worked so hard on them.