Storing Large Used World Wide Collections

Area66 - Thanks a lot for that teaser for Sweden, now that is really inspiring! Question to you: Is this LibreOffice (edit:) PostmasterGS Stamp Album Page Generator for Scribus free?

All you guys have really got me into reconsidering my philosophy for storage, actually getting quite tempted to swop for both vario pages and Steiner/modified Steiner.

Just for the curiosity of it, I have also made my own album page for Sweden. It's quite basic. Just wanted the feeling of it in order to consider if it would be worth the massive job on moving all those stamps into a new system. The dimensions and outer frames got messed up when converted to jpg, still gives an idea:



Now compare to my 'original' stock page (where my collection is stored in real life)



It's fair to say it's looking better on the 'proper' album page than in stock book.
Now I guess the big question if it is worth the extra time and money So far I have only made a 'cheating' start by starting to store them on digital album pages
I seriously need to reconsider, thanks for all inspiration

The doctors were issued in March, not May.

blaamand - it really is up to how refined you want to get for each country. For me, I've decided to organize based on the best specialized catalog for the region, supplemented by Scott and Michel. But I am the type that likes to have spaces for all stamps cause you never know what stamps you might find in your hunting.

For French Colonials, you have 2 choices, Yvert and Maury. Maury is more detailed, and the empire is spread across 4 different volumes. Yvert is slightly less detailed from what I have been told.

Jon-
I must say, I still like your stockbook arrangement. Aesthetically, it looks nice, and it is clear you have put much work into it.

Beware of the "grass is always greener elsewhere" phenomenon.

(I'm susceptible to that myself!)

Jkjblue - Jim, thanks a lot for your concern, guess you are right on that 'green grass' phenomen. Humans are like sheep sometimes...

Guess the reassurance from you was the best inspiration of the day

And being lazy by nature I would not need to redo everything...more time for good old stamping

DJCMHOH - Thanks, I need to consider Yvert. I am particularly interested in French stamps cancelled in french PO's abroad (PC / GC postmarks), and also the general french colonial stamps that are postmarked in the various colonies. Can you tell me if Yvert is doing full listings of such forerunners? That would absolutely make Yvert interesting, Scott classic specialized is not covering that field very good. (at least not my 2010 copy)
(shermae - sorry, this french stuff is really an off-topic issue on your thread, beg your pardon)

I wish to say for the record that I didn't start this thread so that we'd all stick rigidly to a particular interpretation of the subject matter. I think any contribution that adds to the collective enhancement of our philatelic enjoyment is spot on. I can certainly see how Vario pages could be a method to mount a very large WW collection, especially if the collection were mint stamps. Most stamps issued before World War 2 are small format, so you can cram an awful lot of them in an 8 slot Vario page.

I built a MNH collection of KGVI-era Commonwealth that was more than 95% complete (as far as basic face-different stamps, plus perf, watermark, paper, and shade varieties). In almost all countries, I went beyond Gibbons in terms of shades and utilized V.17 and V.18 of the Commonwealth Catalogue to help sort them. Vario pages were indispensable for this task as I needed to pull out various parts of the collection to sort and label various shades and printings. For this purpose I used 32 lb. acid-free paper cut into tabs that were placed next to each variety.

As far as how many stamps should be in a collection, or should be considered as "different" for a large WW collection, is a matter of how an individual collector defines "different." There is a blog where someone mentioned there were 527,000-odd different stamps issued as of 2009, with an estimate of 15,000 more per year. If this is all true, then approximately 600,000 different stamps have been issued. Clearly, this must exclude almost all varieties such as perfs, watermarks, shades, and anything that would potentially exclude a stamp from being "different" in terms of design, color, and denomination (e.g. stamps given "a" numbers in Scott's and Gibbons). Including those varieties would add thousands more stamps to the count.

So, if we are saying 1 million or 2 million "all different" stamps, how would that be defined?

Why, however you want. Ain't it grand?

Don't forget postmarks...

I have a few Vario pages for Russian geometric postmarks. Not that many different stamps, though, by catalogue number, as they are usually found on the lower values.

My own WW inventory spreadsheet says some 435.000 major numbers until my cut-off at year 2000, which seems to fit quite well with your other reference.

Millions of stamps really makes me interested

Blaamand,


Yes, it is free. See here: https://goscf.com/t/32942&SearchTerms=scribus

That's my blog ;) But why stick with 2009 numbers, as I've published more up-to-date figures almost every year (you really need to read/visit my blog more often, LOL).

That said, I can give you current stats straight from the horses mouth(Michel). Their current catalogs list 718,000 major number items, and about 1,2 million varieties. If using Scott or SG or Yvert as your baseline, then the figures will likely be somewhat different.






If the stamp has got a major number like 123 in Michel universe, it's a 1 in my counts.
If it's a color, watermark, type etc. variety with minor number such 123a or 123X or 123I, then it's a 0.
So when I speak/write 'different items', I mean items assigned with unique major catalog number in Michel universe.

That said, it does have shortcomings because of different editorial styles used over the decades. For example why are the Finnish watermark differences assigned a major number, whereas similar items from Romania are just minor number varieties? And then you've got differences between catalogs as well. It's like comparing apples to oranges... 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...

As for what constitutes a 'large collection'... I'd say that anyone having a collection stored in more than 50 large sized volumes is eligible to talk about about the true challenges of keeping everything up and running. The number of stamps in itself is somewhat non-essential. It's more about how to keep everything in order, how to find stuff quickly, how to find enough space to add new items and variations, how to control storage conditions, etc. And most importantly, how to scale up (because that's the only direction worldwide collections will go).

Just my 5 cents worth,
-k-

keijo - - you nailed it The scale-up part is definitively a challenge. I am getting into just cramming the recent years into the back of the albums with not much consideration...
May I ask what your calculation of different major no.s would be until 1999, excluding 2000 and later?


ClassicalStamps - Much aprreciated

Blaamand Personally, I prefer your stock page setup (I also use stock books). To me, there is something very satisfying in seeing duplicates stored together I also like the fact that stamps in stock books can be very easily handled, added-to or re-arranged.

Jenny2U - Aprreciate that


Yepp, that's absolutely satisfying

Lots of good arguments for any way of storage, guess in the end it is simply down to personal preference. For now I will stick with the stockbooks. Will rather create some 'digital collections' https://www.stampcommunity.org/topi...42545#364003 in those cases I would like another presentation. So basically storing the stamps the easiest way possible, still keeping the option to 'digitally' arrange them in any thinkable presentation. Best of both worlds

@Blaamand... Sadly I can't provide the numbers for 1840-1999, as my database is for periods (1840-1940, 1941-2000, 2001-2010, 2011-)... But if the counter stops at ~494K by the end of 2000, then I'd say that 460-470K should be in the proper ballpark.

-k-