Stock Pages

So I have finally started to put stamps into my albums and there are ALOT of stamps that are not in the albums. So what to do. Someone mentioned stock pages but I'm not sure what I need and how to use them. Do you try to date the stamps and put them in order? Sorry I'm so pesky asking all the questions.

Thanks
Susan

I am building a collection of the British Commonwealth during the reigns of Queen Victoria through King George VI in a rather piecemeal fashion. For some colonies for which I had a good representation from a larger collection I purchased I printed out the album pages I needed for the stamps I had (Steiner pages). Now as I add to the collection I am using stock pages (Vario) to store and identify stamps for which there are not yet album pages. I am also planning out putting together a collection of Iceland stamps I have, those are in stockpages (Vario) until I can get the album pages printed.

Now that I think of it, one of these days I am going to need to print some more album pages.

...To the forum Susan, you should have a catalogue for
What ever country you are trying to put into an album..you will need Scott number associate with each stamp...What ever is left over (duplicates), you can place in a stock album for selling or trading or for future use.

And dont be afraid to post pictures or ask questions from people on this forum..We are here to help...

What countries are you collecting..?
Robert

I AM A NEWBIE. I AM DOING HARRIS STATESMAN WORLDWIDE 2 VOLUME SET UP TO 1991. THE STAMPS I DO NOT HAVE SPACES FOR ARE NOT DUPLICATES. THEY ARE EITHER POST 1991 OR JUST NOT IN THESE ALBUMS BECAUSE THE ALBUM JUST HAS A SAMPLING OF THE STAMPS FROM EACH COUNTRY SO I NEED TO DO SOME SUPPLEMENTAL STOCK PAGES.

Exactly...With stock pages you can add, is the easiest way to make space as you catalogue everything....That way you can insert stamps by number as you go along.

Just one way to keep track.

Using 102B cards, another way

102B cards



102B card box

One favorite of collectors is the Lighthouse Vario stockpages. They are versatile and priced equivolently to new album pages. The following link is to a seller on ebay that has the best prices. Look at any of his listing for Vario pages for an idea how they are used.

Brian

http://www.ebay.com/sch/mit_63/m.ht...047675.l2562

Harris albums are no where near complete in any sense of the word. This is a problem you will continue to have with Harris. I assume you have the Statesman or something equivalent.

I had an expanded version of the Statesman as a kid and the lack of completeness, even just lack of space for high values in a set, or the cramming of so many issues on each page, back to back drove me nuts. Of course, I didn't really go beyond just very casual collecting, so I didn't know that I could (1) use a catalog to learn more about my stamps and organize them properly and (2) specialize so as to reduce the enormous number of potential stamps to collect to a manageable number.

Looking back from now the two things that would have kept me collecting into adulthood (rather than taking a 30 year hiatus) would have been:

(1) Steiner pages (and a computer and printer to print them)
(2) Access to at least the Scott catalogs in a local library

That's probably way far afield of your actual question of what to do with stamps that don't fit in the album. So here are my suggestions:

(1) Buy blank Harris pages on which to organize and hinge your "missing" stamps. Add them to your existing Harris albums.

(2) Use separate albums to house your "missing" stamps using Vario pages, custom designed pages, or Steiner pages.

(3) If you think stamp collecting is something you really want to get into, for years to come, dump the Harris albums, buy the Steiner pages on CD for roughly $30, specialize in some way, and print your own albums.

If you think you want to pursue option #1 I can probably send you a few packets of blank harris pages (several years old).

Edit: Oh yeah. So if you add stamps to blank pages, Vario pages,stock books, cards, or whatever, even Steiner pages, you should work with a catalog and organize your stamps in some fashion, most traditionally by date or by set, usually following a particular catalog's presentation. If you decide to use Steiner pages, they follow Scott catalog in order and presentation.

Susan, I use Prinz or Hagner stock sheets. These are hingeless and give me the flexibility to move things around as I want. "Regular" stamps (definitives, standard-sized commemoratives, that sort of thing) I put in 6-leaf single sided sheets, bigger stamps or blocks in 3 or 4 leaf sheets. Miniature sheets display nicely, but these stock sheets are no good for covers. Spare stamps I find quite easy to handle and can be arranged in whatever order you like. I generally use SG, catalogue order, but for Iceland I use printing date, following AFA rather than Facit.

I would not be in a hurry to decide. Use stockpages or blank paper pages for now. I use Steiner pages but unless one plans on developing a collection of 20,000 or more stamps to 1950 or 30,000 and up to 1980 or so, 8,000-10,000 will look orphaned in Steiner pages up to 1980. If your current stamps go up to 2000 or 2010, then 10,000 of them will look even more orphaned on Steiner pages to 2010.


As you proceed, if you discover that for some countries you exceed the Statesman hugely, whereas for other countries the excess is not too great, you could use Steiner pages for specific countries and instantly have coverage to 2013 or 2014 (whereever he is at in updating at the moment). You can get the entire Steiner system for $50 (could be more, I haven't checked recently) or so and that gives you a "specialty" album waiting in the wings for any country you need them for. (You could buy Scott country Speciality Albums for the countries where you hugely exceed the Statesman, but these albums are expensive and would give you less country-specific flexibility than the Steiner CD.) Of course, if you want updates to Steiner pages you have an ongoing subscription cost but for your purposes, getting the whole world collection on a CD at one point in time would meet your needs, unless you are trying to keep up with new issues worldwide.

The Minkus Global Supreme and Scott International have more spaces to 1940 or 1950 than the Harris Statesman (they all have 35,000+ but for Scott International and Minkus, those 35,000 only go to 1940/1950 whereas the Statesman goes to 1990 with 37,000. So, they would leave you with fewer orphaned stamps but only up to 1950. Not really all that helpful.


The upshot is that one can't really decide quickly, intelligently, which strategy to follow at the outset\. So for the time being, stockpages (or paper blank pages) to supplement the Statesmen are the most prudent course. Over time it will emerge whether you want to aim at 20,000 or 30,000 worldwide or, instead, want to expand a few countries a lot and keep the worldwide general collection more limited. And the stockpages will always be useful, for duplicates etc. later on.

Manilla stockpages are available. They are much cheaper than the plastic Vario (etc.) stockpages but it's easier to damage stamps slipping them in and out of the rows and you can't see the backs of the stamps.

Finally, one can use stockbooks as an alternative but the looseleaf stockpages permit easier rearranging and sorting. Hinging on blank paper pages would be a somewhat less flexible alternative but deserves consideration.

Susan

Hello! The broad choice is between stock-books or pages, or a mix of both. Stock-books are a bit fiddly as you assemble a lot of stamps, but are easier to manage in other ways (eg on shelving). Most album manufacturers produce stock-sheets. Lighthouse does a range of high quality books and sheets in a variety of sizes (Vario, Grande (which I use)) and more. Lghthouse products are probably my favourites. I'm also conscious that they're rater higher quality than what I put in them. If I were you, I shouldn't jump to anything fancy and expensive at this stage. Buy a couple of reasonable stock-books and use those.

I sold say that I very rarely bu new stock-sheets, books or printed albums. As time goes on, and you pick stuff up at auction, stamps will tend to come housed in various sheets, books and albums for which the previous owner paid a fortune Nd the auction purchaser picks up for virtually nothing.

On Steiner, there is an excellent thread elsewhere on here that gives links to free album pages from around the world. Don't buy before you've checked those out.

All the best.

Geoff

Here's a link to iHobb manilla stockpages. Other suppliers have equivalents on offer. Buying a lot of the plastic stockpages adds up, which is not so much of a problem if you intend to build a collection housed to a significant part in stockpages-the cost of the stockpages is set-off against the cost of expensive more-comprehensive-that-the-Statesman albums or the cost of all the supplement pages for the Statesman to 2010 or whatever.

For someone not yet sure about long-term storage strategy (long-term stockpages, long-term stockbooks, Steiner pages, Scott International album, Speciality Albums etc.), the manilla stock pages offer an inexpensive way to sort out your stamps, get your sea legs, figure out where to go.

But yes, stamps are more vulnerable in the manilla stockpages. Just don't be in a hurry and keep them in protective binders and keep things from rubbing across them and they can be a good way to sort and mix and match and rearrange. In quantities of 100, they cost about .50 each. That's about 1/2 the cost of Vario plastic. The advantages of the plastic may be worth the extra cost . . .


http://www.ihobb.com/c/MANILA_STOCKPAGES.html

I make my own pages on Photoshop, then have them printed out at Office Max at 22 cents per sheet. If only the pages were 8-1/2 x 11, I could just print them out myself. All stamps that belong in my album are there and it makes things look neat and tidy.

Here's whwer you can get some Vario stock pages which are popular. Don't know why tho...https://www.collectons.com/shop/ite...ages?Id=2952

You need never apologize for asking too many questions around here.


-IBFS

I'd also recommend stock pages for the time being. Manila stockpages are about $1 each and can hold the most stamps, but they're really not great for viewing them. Vario pages are a bit more expensive on a per-stamp basis, but they look great.

Others have mentioned Steiner pages, which is what I use. I ran into the same problem with album space a couple years ago. Worldwide albums didn't have enough space, more comprehensive albums are too expensive. The print-your-own Steiner pages are a great compromise. However, I'd recommend holding off on printing a whole bunch of pages right off the bat. Stock pages are probably the best solution until you get a better handle on which way you want to go with your collection. If you keep active at your collection, you'll soon have a better idea of what appeals to you and what doesn't and go from there.

If you want to keep collecting the entire world, what *might* be a nice eventual compromise solution is to keep your Harris Statesman for less-common countries and print Steiner pages for countries where you've outgrown the Harris. This way you're not looking at thousands of empty spaces in either album.

You could also "collect to your album". In other words, instead of buying mixed worldwide packets hoping the stamps you get are in your album, you could look at the empty spaces for, say, Mongolia in your Harris album and then try to to find those stamps on ebay or elsewhere. Most of the illustrated stamps in a Harris album will be both inexpensive and easy to find, relatively speaking, although knowing their catalog numbers might be helpful in locating them for sale.

Collecting to the album at this stage would be exorbitantly expensive and inefficient for someone at a beginning stage. This is true all the more so for the vast array of stamps after 1960 or 1970. If one were collecting only to 1940 it might be different.

Anyone collecting worldwide to 2000 or beyond cannot, practically speaking, initially collect to the album. A new collector needs lots and lots of the common stamps and cannot efficiently even identify by catalogue number which of the tens of thousands she is missing. Even if he were somehow able to establish what he is missing, he'd spend a huge amount more to acquire them than if he bought bulk lots, at least for a while, and used them to build up a basic collection of mostly common stamps. At that point she can collect to the album. And at that point one would also be better able to decide which storage to use long term.

This is true for worldwide collecting. If one were specializing in certain countries then it might be more possible to collect to the album.

Manilla stockpages do not cost $1 each. They cost half that much. I am not pushing them, merely trying to ensure that Susan gets accurate information. The purpose of using them at this stage is NOT to display the stamps long term but temporarily to house them while sorting things out and getting oriented. And all of that in order to eventually be able to decide what album/stockbook/stockpage storage and display options one wants long-term. But because of the ridge under the flap where the flaps were glued on, one has to be careful inserting stamps lest perforations be damaged. And full manilla stockpages do leave part of each stamp exposed (so do album pages, but plastic stock pages do not). On the other hand they are cheaper. Moreover, it is in fact easier to insert and remove stamps than it is in plastic Vario/Hagner/Prinz stockpages because of the plastic cling effect over the whole stamp.

Having written all that, I hasten to add that one might quite reasonably choose the more expensive plastic Vario/Hagner/G&K Subway stockpages for the sorting/orienting stage. Unlike manilla stockpages, the are capable of making a transition from orienting/sorting stage to long-term storage and display if one decides not to go the album/paper pages route.

Hieronymus - what you say about collecting to the album is true for the most part. Buying specific stamps or sets will be more expensive on a per-stamp basis, i.e. buying a specific set of 4 or 5 stamps might cost $2 vs. 2 cents in a bulk packet. But it fixes the problem of having a whole bunch of stamps you don't know what to do with, which was my point. And you're also guaranteed to fill those particular spots in the album rather than just hoping they show up in the next mixed batch. Don't get me wrong, I love mixtures, I buy and sell a ton of them. It's a great way to build a collection and one that I wholeheartedly recommend. But...if that's what you buy and you have a beginner album, some spaces will never be filled and you'll end up with zillions of extra stamps that don't fit. It's just something to think about, that's all.

I've only bought manila stock sheets on ebay a couple times, and they were usually about $10-$12 with shipping for a 10-pack. I've never priced them by the hundred as I don't need that many.

Well when we are talking regarding arranging collection, may it be worldwide or Country wise, we encounter same scenarios.
Please Do not get me wrong I am trying my self these arranging. Thought will get some ideas if telling other helps me. I will not mention of UNO and Canada collection. Right now USA is my first Priority. In this collection I have singles, Blocks(Plate, Zip, copyright etc.),Full sheets and then Plate no side strips of panes. In First Phase I arranged all my Stamps in Protector sheets and stock sheets.
Now I am in Second phase arranging, as first time I did not arrange Country and year wise. Sheets and Strips am arranging in Protector sheets Putting Card stock page in between it makes both side usable. Those Protector sheets are arranged chronologically yearly Issues Of USA. Putting them in to Avery 3" Binders. Years are from 1971 to 2015. My thinking is that at least surplus I have in one place. I am using Protector sheet reason is that some sheets do not fit in
vario sheets. Up till I am able to do 1980 to 1995 filling up five binders, all Mints stamps.

After sheets will arrange blocks, booklets and single in vario sheets,most useful I found is 5,4 3,2 and 1 Pocket sheet. these are my new year work plan. (>300 lbs was heck of a task).
By the way I will ask expert collector, How to proceed with extras.

tikithindi