Broke The 6000 Stamp Mark In My International Part 1

With 35,000 spaces, it's just a drop in the bucket but a big milestone for me.

I started this project about 6 months ago with a used album that had about 500 stamps in it.

My goal was to get to 10,000 by the end of the year but I've been moving right along and got to 6099 over the weekend.

Been doing this with just stamps I already own, breaking down the collections I had already purchased in old Junior International albums and duplicates from my specialty countries.

Been a fun little project so far and am keeping a spreadsheet of all the countries and total stamps of each so I can just add whatever I put in the album to keep the stamp count climbing automatically.

Anyone else doing something similar?

I have trouble enough trying not to buy the same stamp twice!

Okay... here is the deal. I have tub of foreign stamps off paper. I will give a handful to first five people who give me a snail mail address. I have know idea what will be in the grab. I will just reach in and stuff them into an envelop. I suspect there may be many duplicates, but for FREE, you can throw away any you don't want or need.

@Mike33.... You've got a good thing going on in there. Reaching 6K months in 6 months means you're doing some sweet progress.

My world collection (1840 to date) is ticking at 98,300+ major items (about 10K being from the classic era, and anything post 2010 being not included in numbers) so far. Had a few quiet months because of life throwing all sorts of obstacles to my stamping, but I'm catching up once again ;)

-k-

Mike33 - Good job on your classics ! Would love a peek in your album....

I am doing something similar with regards to keeping an inventory, however I'm too lazy to make a record for each single stamp.

My spreadsheet has one line for each area, with columns for 5 separate time periods. Additionally I can register number of stamps within certain value categories, and thus make an algorithm estimate total value for insurance purposes. Simple but sufficient to keep an overview as the numbers grow.

Mike33, congrats on reaching 6000. When I started, I, too, kept stats by country. But eventually I became lazy and now just track the total number. I do think it is worth going the country route, because there is something interesting about knowing that percentage, watching which countries are nearing 100%.

One thing I was always curious about were the countries for which I had zero stamps. I haven't checked in awhile, but I think there are still a few. That means no stamps from these countries ever showed up in the albums I bought, in APS sales circuits, or in the stock of the couple of worldwide dealers I frequent.

Mike33- Congratulations on reaching the 6000 mark. Isn't it a lot of fun?

Five years ago I started my own quest to fill Big Blue, and initially bought some BB feeder albums off of ebay.

Here is a not unusual scene in the guest bedroom when we are not having guests. ......



Long story short, I now have some 28,000+ stamps in my "virtual" BB, and 44,000+ stamps for the 1840-1940 (-1952 British Commonwealth) era in Deep Blue (the classical Steiner pages).

I keep track of my inventory with an "analog" method- I mark up the Scott Classic Specialized 1840-1940 catalogue.

I also keeps stats on total stamp numbers by country.

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...lection.html

So Mike33- five years from now, who knows what your BB collection will look like?

Thanks guys, I'm pretty sure I can get to 10-12k with just whats already laying around. So glad I never got rid of or sold any of the stuff I wasn't collecting at the time. Never know when one might want to do something with it.

As far as keeping stats by country, I've been just keeping the spreadsheet open while working on a section and update the country before moving on to the next. Sometimes it's one stamp, sometimes 30-40. Pretty easy once you have all the countries typed out. Every now and then I'll double check my counts by randomly recounting a few countries.

At the bottom of the spreadsheet, I just have it autosum to give the total

Love it Blue... that's my guest bedroom also. I don't see plastic storage contains from WalMark and full of overflow stamp items on the floor around the bed, thou..... =)

One of my goals (before I die) is to catalog all my stamps on spreadsheets. That way my legacy won't have that difficult of a time with all of it. I'm a "pigeon hole" collector and have a compunction to fill in spaces. When my Scott International collection gets full of a country and there are no more spaces to fill in, I start a specialized collection on Steiner pages. So far I have a couple done. Here is an example of my Swiss. I also have done my Sweden and Newfoundland among others. Cheers! Wolf-==-