How To Organize Stamps?

Anyone that collects both themes flora and fauna, can you give me advice on how to organize both of those themes into a stock book. I just put them in and leave room if the set is not complete. I have on all the right pages only animals and plants on the left pages. How do you do yours? Pictures would be appreciated.

ever consider doing separate pages for each species/sub-species/etc. a page full of Bengal tigers, a page of Siberian tigers, a page of African tigers, etc. with this approach, you don't even have to leave empty spaces for incomplete sets, as they would be scattered, anyhow.

I like seeing a complete set on one page. Besides, when I have a page full of one species, I will have to go to the next available empty page to start a new page of them. It would be a mess.

How about by catalog number? My topical interest is different (airmail and aviation themed stamps), but I imagine that the problem is the same regardless of the topic. In your case, the only difference I might see is whether to mix the two, or keep them separate. Catalog number also has the advantage of being mostly (but not always), chronological.

My son has a topical theme collection...in his case it is Scouts.

The way he does it (well, actually I started him off) is by Country...
First row (occasionally two rows if a larger set) for mint stamps of the set. Spaces indicate any stamps needed to complete a set.
Below that is an FDC or cover or postcard with at least one of the Set to show a cancellation.

With flora and fauna you have more difficulties if you go for Species and not Countries... for instance do you categorize by Latin name, local language name or English name? Many flora and fauna stamps have been issued with mistakes and errors in the naming. At least if you display by Country name you don't have too much trouble in finding the correct place to put a set.

I don't follow any order. I just put them where there is empty room and leave empty space to finish the set.

Some good ideas are available here: http://stamps.org/Beginner-Information

Whatever you do, there's a fair chance that, a little way down the line, you'll decide on a new system. Stamp collectors just cam't resist pulling things out of albums and putting them in others, on each occasion convincing themselves that they've found the perfect system.

That is why I use albums with fixed pages only in the rarest of circumstances (my GB collection which is largely as complete as I want it) and I use loose leaf for everything else.

One solution is to buy some manilla stockpages that fit in a 3-ring binder. Use them as you organize. An individual page can be pulled out from its place in your binder and put into a different place as your organizing principles evolve. You can experiment with different arrangements of various sets on these loose-leaf pages. Once you are pretty clear about how you want to organize then you can move stamps from them manilla stockpages to your nice hardbound stock books.


http://www.subwaystamp.com/PKG-100-...nfo/ZMN714R/

for a package of 100; packages of 10 are also available--one could buy 2 or however many 10-packages as one needed.

You could, of course, do the same with loose-leaf plastic (Lighthouse Vario) stockpages. But I find it quicker, when sorting stamps around, to get them in and out of them manilla stock page rows.

I'll give the loose pages a try but I'll check for cheaper prices. Hope that will suffice.

It does not matter now you organize your stamps ,everyone of us does it a little bit different . But do remember that you need to have it organized that makes sense to the viewer of your collection . As your collection grows it may need adjusting to keep some order . It is a shame how many collections come up for auction and all I see is a mess and can't figure out what the original owner was trying to do other than keep buying stamps and adding to his pile until the point he lost control and just quit because all he understood is to buy nice material but never finished any of the many accumaltions that have been just thrown in the box ,never taken the time to explain and organize the stuff he was working on . sad to see

A pack of 10 might be all you need. Like I said, you can also use the Lighthouse Vario plastic stockpages the same way (or the G & K Centurion knock-off version of the same plastic stockpages. The point is that single looseleaf pages can be mixed and matched, moved around, as you figure out how you want to organize things long-term.