What's Best British Commonwealth Album & Catalog Approach?

Hello Fellow Collectors,

I plan to launch into collecting British Commonwealth Classics (pre-WW-II) after several years focused exclusively on US Classics.


I would greatly appreciate a bit of wisdom regarding your experiences with the better available choices for British Commonwealth collectors for:

1) albums (I greatly prefer top-load hingeless)
2) catalogs (I have only used Scott)
3) identification numbering system (I'm only familiar with Scott)

I am starting from scratch and currently own no British Commonwealth albums, collections, or reference guides.

When researching hingeless US albums I found that some of the nicest albums cost more than I wanted to shell out. Palo, Lighhouse, Lindner, DAVO are among the hingeless albums that I compared for US Classics. I assume Gibbons plays big in the Commonwealth lines, But what are good choices for B. C. Classics that you have been happy with?

Looking forward to hearing what has worked for you!

The standard for British Commonwealth is the Stanley Gibbons catalog. You would want the 1840-1952 version. New editions comes out every year.

You can buy mint complete sets of pre-WWII material for 1/3 of the value listed in Gibbons at many auctions

For albums, your only choice is Stanley Gibbons (a new version of their 'New Imperial' album is supposed to come out this year) or Steiner.

Gibbons's printed album range covers the period to 1962. QV-GV are in the New Imperial (2 vols, fastbound, ring-bound version on its way, as CS says); GVI is in a six-volume printed set; and QEII to 1962 is in the New Age, which was in 4 springback volumes, but has just appeared in ring-bound form. The New Age has drawbacks, not least because its end-date doesn't necessarily coincide with when colonies became independent - things can, therefore, get a little messy. I'm currently considering ditching the New Age and transferring to quadrille pages.

You should find Gibbons's catalogues and albums more straightforward than Scott, as they list issues in order of appearance, rather than artificially separating air mail (not widely used in GB and Colonies) and charity stamps (ditto).

Geoff

ClassicalStamps and GeoffHa, great to hear your input. Thanks.
While I haven't delved into the European stamp market much, I have pecked around
Gibbons' website, and had assumed that Gibbons might represent the most complete
solution. But that was only a guess based on the size and heritage of that company.

GeoffHa, Just to be clear, do I understand your album counts to add up to a total of 12 albums to 1962?

And since you both indicate Gibbons, am I to assume that these are standard albums, or do you know of hingeless albums for British Commonwealth?

The existing New Imperial is fastbound and comes in two volumes - it assumes that stamps will primarily be hinged. In its current form at least, it's the most comprehensive of the group. The promised new version will be ring-bound and presumably available with and without mounts. The GVI albums now come in 6 volumes, but I'm not sure if there's a hingelss option (I have an earlier four-volume version, and I'm not clear why they've extended it to six, given that it was originally a one-volume fastbound album). They also exclude officials and posatge dues - who knows why. The new version of the QEII New Age comes in six volumes and in hingeless and standard form. You can, of course, pick up earlier versions of the GVI and QEII and reduce the bulk!

To keep beating my dead horse, another alternative of course is to ditch the album pages altogether and use Lighthouse Vario (or similar brand) stock sheets. This will give you more freedom to include whatever you may or may not want to include (and Gibbons catalog lists lots of minor varieties between shades, perf changes, watermark varieties etc) without being a slave to an illustrated page that you will most likely have to supplement if you start picking up those varieties, since few albums will show minor number varieties.

Since you are doing pre-WWII Commonwealth, you could use the 5S pages with strips 51mm high, that would provide great protection for any and all stamps of this period, AFAIK none of the Commonwealth stamp issues pre-1939 were taller than 51mm as singles. For earlier years you could use pages with more strips that are still big enough to provide full protection to standard 22x25 mm definitives.



Via Amazon or ebay you can get packs of 25 2-sided sheets for approx US$15 or so. Vario F binders to hold the pages (with slipcases inlcuded) run US$20-US$25 and can hold approx 50 2-sided pages.

DJCMHOH,

How would using Vario sheets compare in terms of the amount of space (# of binders, shelf space, etc.) compared to the same number of stamps in Steiner pages? Any ideas?

Also, it seems like this method could work out well for a country that is pretty complete. But, if you have a country that is say only 10% or 20% complete, it would be quite a pain in the butt to figure out all the stamps you don't have and make sure you have spaces for them, etc. Not to mention making all the labels for the countries and every set (or what ever you want to label) is A LOT of work too.

Just my two cents.

chris - I am not sure how it would compare in terms of space. I would *think* it should be less since you would be able to minimize the amount of empty space on a page with stocksheets vs printed pages, and unless you want to print the Steiner pages on both sides of the paper, also saves at least half the number of pages since Varios are 2-sided.

As far as layout, it isn't that difficult to work out but yes it does take some prep work to lay out pages. As I have noted before what I do is create an excel file for each nation and work a mockup of each page putting a catalog number in each cell. basically just follow the 195/x rule (with x being the width of the stamps in a set) to figure out how many stamps you can fit per row.

Since in this earlier period Mr Carazo is thinking of collecting has in general only a few standard sizes for the stamps, it isn't too difficult to work out the layout. Most of the small keyplates are going to be 22x25 mm in size if vertical, 25x22 if small horizontal. Since the vario pages have strips that are 195 mm long (and varying height high depending on the number of rows) you simply divide 195 by the width of the stamps in each set. For 22 mm wide stamps, that works out to a maximum of 8 stamps per row without crowding. A 40mx25mm pictorial definitive or commemorative would fit 4 across, etc etc, while the vertical counterpart could fit as many as 7 across.

Yes the laying out of the pages does take some time, and a bit of practice at the start, but it provides something philatelic to do when you need to conserve money for stamp purchases, and once it is done, it is done and afterwards all you have to do is open up your spreadsheet when you get new stamps, find the catalog number and match it to the vario page in the binder. No cutting mounts, no hinges.

Dan,
If you wander into any British South Africa Company's (BSAC) stamps you will want to bone up on fakes and forgeries. Be wary of higher value 'postal used' stamps as many have been cleaned and fake cancels applied. Here is an excellent online resource with a large database of fake/forgeries.
http://www.cjrstamps.com/forgeries-database.html
Don

DJCMHOH,

Thanks for the information. I can see the benefit of using Vario pages given the flexibility, protection of the stamps, and no need to buy expensive mounts and hinges

And they look great in Vario-F binders!

I might try it with a country or two initially.

dcaraz1949,

Didn't mean to side track your thread, but I do believe Vario pages could be a good alternative "album" for a British Commonwealth collection, particularly if you are going to collect mint stamps and given the expense of hingeless albums.

Dan

If your interest is primarily pre-WWII, have a look at these helpful threads -

http://globalstamps.blogspot.co.uk/...446672489137

And at the risk of promoting the competition -

http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopi...56&start=100

Geoff

GeoffHa,

When I indicate interest in the British Commonwealth, I am unclear if the New Imperial 2-volume include Great Britain, Canada & Australia as well, or only the colonies, protectorates, etc? I'm surprised that all of that would fit into 2 albums. BTW, you always provide great support to our community. Thanks very much for your suggestions. I will certainly check out your links.

51studabaker, thanks for the warning! Since I'm still ignorant about the range of rare items, I just ordered my copy of the 2014 Gibbons Commonwealth & British Empire 1840-1970 Catalogue which I will soon be studying.

DJCMHOH, thanks for the details on the Vario pages. I have the catalog for that line, and it may be the answer for the different varieties that may not be printed in the available Gibbons albums.
However, for my primary use I like having the catalog number and illustrations to help quickly identify each stamp. I insisted on having Scott numbers for my US collection. Since Gibbons appears to be the first choice for Commonwealth collectors, I'll take a closer look at the company's products before buying.

Chris2015, not to worry about a side issue question. All good and helpful info shared here. This Community, including folks like GeoffHa has been an incredible resource as folks share their knowledge base and experiences.While I am not as knowledgeable, I still attempt to help newbies when I see requests for help. That's what our Forum is all about!

Dan

The Gibbons albums include all of the Empire - GB, Dominions, other colonies, Protectorates (for example, the Imperial includes Iraq and Egypt). The Imperials are big, fastbound albums, although the promised ring-bound version will doubtless be easier to handle.

Thank you for your kind words - they aren't deserved, but I'll pocket the compliment with gratitude!

Geoff

This may be another option, although I haven't seen or used these -

http://www.seahorsepublishers.co.uk/

dcaraz1949: you of course should collect the way you want. As a US collector, I would recommend that you stick with the Scott numbering and use Gibbons catalogues solely as references. One of the more frustrating philatelic things for me is when I encounter some nice British Commonwealth singles or collections and they are priced in Gibbons, by US auction houses. I don't buy because I have no idea of the real value here in USA. And, I've always felt that Gibbons pricing tends to trend higher and perhaps is a way to jack up sales prices by US auction houses.

I continue to use the Scott Blue International pages altho for more important countries; important to my collecting interests; I now use the blank quadrilled International pages for Part I (1840-1940). I also extensively use the Scott International glassine interleaving. I use Vario pages only for modern US souvenir sheets that I've acquired, and the few covers that I have. Again, as a US collector, I do not recommend using British/Gibbons albums unless you intend to sell in Britain or Canada. In the mid-1980s, I bought a three volume world collection contained in Gibbons Ideal albums, from a Canadian dealer/auction house. All the British was priced in Gibbons prices and I came away with a feeling of being ripped off as the Gibbons catalog prices seemed to be 20-30% high than Scott. As an aside, I still have those Gibbons albums; but keep them solely as reference material and housing for duplicates.

Sorry to maybe rain on some parades. But I think it is important for you to hear both sides of the Gibbons & Scott relationship. Steve