How Do You Group Your Album Pages?

I have a complete Scott National Album (Schaubek hingeless) spanning 6 binders. Most pages ended up together in the same binder if they came together in the same volume, i.e. Parts 1, 2 & 3. The later pages, comprising supplements acquired subsequent to the compilation of Part 3, ended up in binderse 4, 5, & 6.

As a result, the back-of-book pages are scattered across 6-binders, grouped roughly with their constituents as they were shipped from manufacturer.

I'm curious if there's a "preferred" way to group BOB pages.

(1) Am I supposed to group all the BOB in one single separate binder? Or do I let the BOB pages fall where them may, in separate groups, approximately by era-years in respective separate binders?
(2) If a particular grouping on an album page, usually a definitive series, spans several years, for example 1981-1985, where do you place that page? In this example, would you put that page in the definitive section in 1985?
(3) In most of the supplements of the last ten-plus years, the pages come straight out of the envelope in the order: definitives first, then commemoratives, then Christmas-ish last. This is the order I've grown fond of. But some odd supplements don't come out of the envelope that way. I've had a few where the definitive pages are interspersed among the commemoratives, not following above order.
(4) And should definitives be grouped entirely together, completely separate from commemoratives?

I realize that most will say do as you please. But I'm just curious what the consensus is.

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

michaelsu78,

Welcome to the Stamp Forum!

To give you the short answer, it's however you feel is most pleasing to you.

As a U.S. collector, I've always grouped my album pages by type. The definitives and commemoratives are first. When you get to longer sets, such as the Transportation coils, I group those all together with all pages placed sequentially in the first year of issue. So, with the Transportation series, I have all of the pages together at the end of 1981. Then, I start 1982.

I pretty much follow the layout you would find in the Scott Specialized catalog. Regulars/definitives, semi-postals (B), airmail (C), Special Delivery (E), Registered (There is only the one!), etc.

Again, it is entirely a matter of how you like seeing them, because at the end of the day, it is YOUR collection. I know collectors who want to see everything together by year. That has the advantage of making it very clear if you have anything missing.

I also take out the pages which come with the albums for stamps I do not consider collectible for me. I'm never going to have a C3a (the Inverted Jenny), so that page is out, as are several others where the stamps are so prohibitively rare and expensive that even if I did have them, they would not be in the album. But that's me. Many collectors leave them in their albums, perhaps for the dream factor.

I hope this helps, and again, welcome!

michaelsu76,

There is no "right" way to do this. For myself:

1) BoB has its own binder
2) 1981-1985 is filed with 1981.
3) I file as you - namely definitives, commemoratives, Christmas.
4) I file definitives and commemoratives each as their own group.

Your venue sounds really nice - especially with six volumes. Sadly, the later years fill up really fast, requiring yet more volumes.

Jack Kelley

Interesting question. I organise my albums chronologically, so basically I have no BOB stamps, in the sense that postage dues, air mails etc are not 'hidden away' in the back of the book.
Well, I actually make a BOB section, but that's for other uncatalogued stuff like oddities, perfins, precancels, revenues etc, shade studies, postmarks etc. All to his own

I mirror the set out in the Scott Catalogue.

Australia my main collection (8 albums) all my other countries follow suit.

1. Australia Federation to 1966
2. Decimals 1 to 1980
3. decimals to 2000
4. decimals to 2006
5. Decimals to 2017
6. semi Postals -Air- postage dues
7. King George V and Kangaroos
8. Seals, Cinderellas, ephemera, parcel post, cut squares, indicia "what have you"

I know I am in the minority, but I really like Scott's breaking up of semi postals and air etc, I can put my hand on specific issues in a trice.

I mount by STEINER pages, so one has to break when getting to B.o.b. and make sure the pages, reside in their correct order.

My collection varies from country to country because I have a mix of printed albums and quadrille.

The printed album page creates its own tyranny, making personal choice awkward. Your description of the Schaubek approach, and its inconsistencies, highlights that. For most collectors outside the US, "BoB" constitutes an entirely different thing. In particular, charity stamps - what Scott terms "semi-postals" are within the main body of the album. In GB and other parts of Europe, air-mail stamps are too. But some European album manufacturers - eg Yvert and Davo - separate them, leading to the same awkwardness that besets Scott albums, that is, the separation, often by scores of pages, of stamps from the same set.

I do like to keep postage dues and officials separate from other stamps, not least because they don't really interest me, and I don't want them cluttering up the main part of albums. But Blaamand's approach is, as always, entirely logical, because you then see the whole range of issues in the order in which they appeared. That in turn means use of quadrille or stock-books/pages.

My US album is more or less in catalogue order...general issues, semi-postals, airmails, then back of book (limited for me).

From a worldwide collecting perspective...I have actually recently separated out all my Airmail and Semi-postal stamps into separate binders. So I have a classic worldwide airmail collection in two binders and a classic semi-postal collection in another two binders. All my other regular stamps are still in BigBlue.

I will try it for a while and see how it "feels"

This is how I have it... All my Binders are Lighthouse Vario Gs.. Mostly on 8S pages + interleaving pages with my notes/id charts etc

Binder#1: US Definitives
Binder#2: US Comm 1893 to 1980
Binder#3: US Comm 1981 to 1994
Binder#4: US Comm 1995 to 2005
Binder#5: US Comm 2006 to Till date
Binder#6: US Airmails and BOB
Binder#7: India, Nepal and Bhutan till 1970 (paused there to focus on the rest). Next wave will need another Binder.
Binder#8: Canada and France - till 1950
Binder#10-12 Worldwide ( Came down to three binders because I moved most of them into my 1941 Big Blue)
Binder#13: Topicals and oddballs.

As I house my collections on Vario pages, I am free to organize my collections based on stamp issue date, with regular, commemorative and BOB all together. This lets me show the evolution of a country's philatelic history with all the various kinds of stamps issued in a given year together.

One of my major areas of focus is French colonials and the post-independent successor states. Since I use a chronological approach I can deal with change of names of a territory easily to show the evolution. so for example Obock --> Somali Coast --> Afars & Issas --> Djibouti are in one album together.

Arranging a collection by date and following the postal history also seems to me to be the most logical way of arranging one's collection.

I fail to see any advantage of categorizing some stamps as BOB when their primary purpose is to convey mail. Perhaps someone who does follow this methodology could explain what advantage they see in separating their collection into commemoratives, definitives, airmail's and the unfortunately named semi-postals which to the best of my knowledge are in fact full-postals with a secondary fucntion of raising money for a particular purpose.

That being said, and it may be bias on my part having until now mainly collected Commonwealth countries, I do see some merit in keeping postage dues in a separate category as they serve a very different function to all of the above-mentioned groups of stamps.

Clivel I guess for me the argument to put dues in together is that would show where in the philatelic chronology their use by a PO to indicate a deficiency in prepayment of postal fees paid by the other stamps (regs, commems, air, charity) began.

Also at least among the French colonies the issuance of a new design for dues was often paired with release of a new pictorial definitive series, so they -fit- as part of an overall new chapter in the philatelic history. See for example the Senegal pictorial series of 1936 which had defins, airs and dues all introduced on the same day.

I am a worldwide collector and sort my pages by country. I use Steiner pages and only print pages that I have stamps for. I have many binders. :)

Within a country, I follow the Scott catalog order. Regular issues by year, then the back of the book section with semis, airmails, special delivery, revenues, etc. If needed I include a page for cancels or significant varieties.

I have separate binders for specialty collections such as precancels, perfins and Belgian Railway Cancels.

I don't use supplements, but if I did, I would either follow the general order of the catalog listings, or else sort the definitives first where they are separated out. Hopefully in this thread you will find some ideas with which way you want to go!

Alan

You may be confusing common practices with how you're "supposed" (to use your word) to arrange your albums. You're "supposed" to enjoy your hobby whatever way you like. If you chose, for some reason, to mount your stamps in reverse order, or put one stamp on a page, or put Air Mail and Semi-postals with all the other stamps, people might call you crazy, but that's your business. The last suggestion is what I do.

Scott catalogues have the bizarre organizational system which puts Air Mails and Semi-Postals after all the other usual stamps, excluding postage dues and so on. This makes very little sense to me. Air Mails and Semis were issued at the same time as the other stamps, they reflect the style of that era, they are about similar or the same subjects. So they belong with the other stamps. In my opinion. Only the Traditionalist who is wedded to the Scott catalogues and albums would disagree.

The system I prefer is really the Minkus system. Whatever you may think of Jacques Minkus, he was a lot more logical about organizing his catalogues and albums than Scott Publishing ever was. Having begun their organization of stamps in the late 19th century, now Scott is "stuck" with its ancient system as it can't very well go back and renumber everything. So we're all stuck with it.

As for your albums, I'd rearrange the pages in what seems like the most logical way. I suggest you keep most stamps from each year with other stamps from that same year. I'd certainly keep "regular" and "commemorative" stamps together chronologically. There's no reason to separate them that I can see. But if you want to, that's fine, also. I use mostly Scott albums, and I put Air Mail and Semi pages right after the pages for other stamps of that year. It does't always work out so neatly since sometimes pages contain stamps from multiple years. But it works out reasonably well.

The White Ace albums, I've noticed, use entirely different albums for regulars and commemoratives. Do what you like. Move your pages to whatever order seems logical to you.
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