Brand New To Stamp Collecting

@1840to1940

I am finding out that you are right about the stamps. Even with the supplements the stamps I have are not in them. They must have been printed after 1991. Not sure if I should just set them aside or buy more supplements. Thing is I would need 23 more supplement sets.

Hi Susan and like everyone else welcome to SCF. If you buy any binders buy the three ring D binders. The pages will lay flat. I too had an oversize Harris two ring binder. I studied it very carefully for a month then Trimmed all the pages with an office paper cutter I already had the long ONE Arm Blade. Then I punched new holes with a three ring paper hole punch that I already had. It came out perfect. Remember to practice with blank paper before cutting and punching any pages
also remember if the pages are not numbered and even if they are to start at the back of the album and work forward keeping the pages in order as they come out. The important thing is to go slow, take your time. Make sure the pages are lined up on the cutter then lock the page guide so the pages are all the same. When putting the pages into the hole punch make sure they go in all the way. You will have to dump the little hole catcher several times so it doesn't keep the page from going into the punch all the way. Remember there are no second chances. TAKE YOUR TIME. You can cut and punch three or four pages at a time. You can buy the D ring Binders at Walmart's.

@Tinman
I already did that. I just don't like post albums. I have worked with D rings in scrapbooking so I bought scrapbook albums and repunched my sheets. Scrapbook albums are a little larger so I didn't have to trim any of the pages.

What 1840to1940 meant was not that stamps would be missing because they were issued later than your supplements. He meant that the Harris Statesman and any two volume album covering from say, 1840-1990, as yours does, with supplements, even so has to select from among the hundreds of thousands of stamps issued. Up to about 1940, about 85,000 stamps were issued worldwide. (Many thousands of more variants on those 85,000.)

Today, as I recall, the total number of worldwide stamps issued since 1840 is about 600,000. Your album with supplements to 1991 might have what, 50,000 spaces? 75,000? Therefore it has to be selective. Of course it will exclude a lot more of the expensive early stamps, percentage-wise, than it excludes from 1940 to 1990. But it will exclude stamps from 1940-1990 as well. Whether the ones you can't find spaces for were really issued after 1991 or were issued before 1991 but were excluded from your album you can tell only by consulting an up-to-date catalogue. You'll find a starting point at www.stampworld.com/en/ though to me it's clumsier to use than printed Scott Standard Postage Stamp catalogues (but they are expensive--6 volumes, about $50 each even for ca. 2008 editions on www.ebay.com/b/260/" rel="nofollow">ebay).

Sometimes, of course, you can tell because the stamp carries a date of an event it's commemorating or carries some other marker of when it was issued. Or has a cancellation date that is legible.

So my suggestion would be not to buy any supplements for now but to get oriented, see how many of your stamps actually are post-1991 (keep them in envelopes or perhaps acquire a stockbook or two). The Harris Statesman is a good level of selectivity for starting out with worldwide collecting. If you decide to specialize in certain countries, you can acquire individual "complete" albums for them (Scott Speciality albums or Bill Steiner pdfs from www.stampalbums.com).

You may decide that 1991 is a good cut-off point--it's before most of the newly liberated Eastern European countries started up again with stamp issuing, often in high volume. On the other hand, perhaps it's exactly those newly liberated countries that you discover you are fascinated by. IF so, then you'll want to buy post-1991 Harris Statesman supplements. But give yourself time to decide which you prefer.

You wouldn't really want a comprehensive set of worldwide albums to 2014 (quite apart from how expensive and bulky it would be)--the 5,000 or 10,000 stamps you might assemble in a few years would seem lost in a sea of empty spaces. So Harris Statesman to 1991 is a good way to start and then see if you want to go past 1991 or not.

For now, you can sort stamps using web resources, put the ones before 1991 into your Statesman albums and only buy print catalogues and supplements at the point you know better what you want to include and exclude.

And have fun.

Albums are usually a tradeoff between comprehensiveness vs. space and affordability. This is often a great conundrum for new collectors. Most affordable albums - relatively speaking - are largely incomplete, whereas more complete albums aren't very affordable and/or they take up too much room. There's not really a perfect solution, but finding one that works for them is something that almost all collectors have to come to terms with sooner or later.

I use the print-your-own pages from stampalbums.com ("Steiner Pages") as they are both complete and affordable, however they're not very economical, space-wise. I have more or less complete pages for about 3 dozen or so countries and the binders just for that would stretch close to 20 feet, if laid end to end. And that's less than 10% of the total amount of space it would take to print a 100% complete worldwide-to-date album on those pages.

Pre-printed commercial albums can usually fit more stamps per binder than Steiner pages, but shelf space still becomes an issue eventually if one collects worldwide or multiple countries. Many mount on blank pages or use stockbooks as a solution.

Susan buy or borrow a three hole punch and make your pages three hole and you can get away from the two post pages and albums. Just Keep the cover inserts and you can use them in the new albums/covers you bought elsewhere like Walmart's.
You may have to-trim them too but so what.