The Joys Of Transferring Stamps

It has been a long time since I worked with my U.S. Stamps. For years, they've been in a hodgepodge of places: a Victor album, a Minkus All American album, Steiner pages, stockbooks, etc.

Recently, I purchased the Mystic Heirloom and started merging/moving all the US stamps to this new album.

Normally, I hate mounting stamps. It's why so much of my collection is in Vario pages or stockbooks, but this time, I'm doing things different.

I've been in no hurry. I'm looking the stamps up in Scott to verify and just learn a bit. And I've been reading Mystic's descriptions.

I have to say this time, it has been quite a joy. I don't know, I feel like that 9-year-old kid using hinges to mount stamps purchased off Boy's Life into my long-lost Statesman Album.

I know..I know. Not a topic of deep conversation, but I thought I'd share.

I felt the same way some years ago when, after building a rather high-quality hingeless mounted US collection complete with many certifications over the course of a few decades, I decided on a whim to begin a general used worldwide collection to be hinged on Scott International two-sided pages.

I don't think anything beats the look - something about the immediacy to and involvement of the viewer/collector - of stamps hinged in albums. Hingeless albums, stock-sheets etc have their virtues in terms of practicality, but there's always an "all dressed up like a well-kept grave" look to them.

Thanks for the post. I now feel a whole lot better about the quantity of stamps that I am hinging. A consolidation of stamps from three different collections and also crazy enough to get sucked into some auctions. A task estimated now in excess of 50,000 stamps and loving every minute of it. (The honey-do list is getting rather large though) I mount protected anything that is MNH or catalog valued over $100.

Most advance worldwide collectors usually develop their own method of mounting stamps if they have a multi-volume collection .
It may be as simple of having a shoe box with glassines with a country name on each envelope and over time as they fill the glassine, they mount these loose stamps by country at each sitting . Others use stock books filled with stock pages and each page has a country name on it for organization .
My method is to have a banker box filled with file folders and each has a country name on them . As I purchase a huge bulk lot , I file album pages, stock cards, dealer cards and glassines into each country file folder. These file folders fill up over time and in the evenings ,I'LL take out a folder and mount those stamps ,so this system does two things for me first it is easy to start and stop on any given day and it keeps stuff highly organized .
As many of you already know , I never mount two or five stamps into my main collection because all stamp albums and stamp pages binders are not made to be handled hundreds of times for removal and replace onto a shelve . Handling International or Speciality binders shorten their life time also the albums pages start to pick up the natural oils and dirt from you hands , so I keep the handling to a minimum.
I solved two problems of most advance collectors the first one of not beating up the binders and pages of my main collection and handling hundreds of thousands of duplicates so I get a return on the resale of all the extras . I use a feeder set of international that is between 8 to 20 volumes in size . As I fill this extra set and then match it to my main collection , when I am finished with it then it is consign to one of the major stamp auction houses , this gives the best return on duplicates . In the spring of 2017 I will be looking for a new set of Internationals and hope in two years have that one filled up for sale .

floortrader,

Am I correct that you are using Steiner pages in all those International binders? Do you just 2-hole punch them to fit into the binders? Are they 8 1/2 x 11 size paper? If so, do they lay flat enough to work with given their size?

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing. I think you'll be happy with the Mystic Stamp album. A small suggestion. Use reinforcement rings, a must in my opinion.

ecmorgan,

Yes, its nice when you can actually take your time and enjoy what you are doing. During my migration process, I remember coming to stamps that I had mounted once before so many years ago. It opened up a flood of memories as I mounted them into my new MYSTIC albums.

Jack Kelley

CHRIS----Yes in my collection I use Steiner pages and have a hole puncher adjusted to Scott's two hole system . Yes the pages are 8 1/2 X 11 which isn't a problem .The binder are kept at 75% filled with pages .

floortrader,

Thanks so much for the clarification!

Chris

I move stamps the same way I garden... after not doing it for a while I get a real yearning to do it. I jump headlong into it and really enjoy it for a while. But at some point it dawns on me that it is a lot more work than I anticipated!
Don

Don -Do it while watching football or the news , it gives you something to do during the long commercials .

The benefit of transferring stamps gives you the opportunity to look at them again. Often, there are just a stamp on a mounted page. It brings back some memories.

I like the title, The joys of transferring stamps. I'm about to start transferring my entire WW collection from stock books to Vario pages, so I really hope it will exactly that: Joy. I'm afraid it might feel like hard work also from time to time, like Don in his garden.

I don't know if I have the time left to transfer the stamps in my 9 scott Internationals into something classier. I am almost certain I could not regain the thrill with stamps I had as a nine year old when my stamp sources and resources were extremely limited. Now its just a question of do I want the item or not ?

ecmorgan,

Transferring your stamps into your new MYSTIC Heirloom will be a most rewarding experience for you. But that may change when you get to about the year 2000. Maybe even earlier. You'll find it a chore as you'll be dealing hundreds and hundreds of useless stamps; most of which are meaningless. I still collect them but despise what the USPS is doing these days.

Jack Kelley