Wife Not Happy About My Stamps

A long journey into my future ,filling those shelves with collections .

Floortrader,
Bingo! my Worldwide collection is stored and labelled almost identical !

Negatives: These white folders have a tendency to "lean" and pages distort
over time, I buy the cardboard binder slots to assist in this regard.

I do not use open shelving, due to my dust prevention (Wood burning stoves in winter)

I use "Lockable Stationery Cabinets"

Studebaker Don mentioned concerns about storing stamps on wood. Don, could you potentially review in more detail? Would open shelves prevent the lignin from being an issue? What about laminated wood?

If the cabinets are closed (as mine are), is there a way to mitigate the sulfur gas to prevent stamps from oxidizing?

My stamps have been on wooden shelves for 40 years ,35 years in Chicago and 5 in Florida . No effect ,mine are solid oak

ROD---Put a binder backwards in between them and then tighten up with a heavy object at the end so they stand straight ,people have that same problem with Scott International if they are not kept in separate cardboard cases.

Like your cabinet ,but it doesn't go with the furniture in the room that I have .

jkelley, my wife found the shirt on Etsy.

I have some We R Memory keeper binders and they will stand on end due to thick covers unless most binders.

The binders that I just purchased are the STAPLES standard 1" d-ring binders ,I plan to go back today and purchase the 1/2 " binders ,they are 12 in a box and cost just under $2.00 each same if 1/2 or 1 inch binders . The quality is much better than the $1.00 binders at the Dollar Store .

The key to any binder that I used is never max them out with pages .

My wife is understanding since the Zeppelin collection will pay off most of the mortgage but I have to have my mail sent to work so I can filter what she sees (sneaky). Usually the most valuable covers are the least interesting and slip under the radar. Now to get that new bookshelf.

zepman, I know the struggle about filtering from the wife. I once rented a post office box for a single stamp purchase, a significant plate number coil collection, so my wife wouldn't know what I spent on it. I was pleasantly surprised to find a strip of 5 valued at $2000 in the collection that the seller hadn't realized was in it. It was like Christmas in July twice in a row.

My wife has never been happy about my collecting. While dating in college, she learned of my passion for stamps and postal history. After we were married, she began hinting that, perhaps, it was time to sell my "stuff" for furniture.

I listened patiently for several months and one weekend, the nudging became a bit too much and she once again suggested I get rid of my stamps and covers that were taking up the closet in the guest room, or perhaps, "...they might just end-up in the trash."

I turned to her, with a smile on my face and said, "I love you, but I just want to remind you that I was married to my stamp collecting long before I was married to you! I'm not giving up my hobby." I turned and left the room. She didn't talk to me for a several days.

Today, she STILL doesn't like stamps or postal history and my collecting has never stopped. We'll be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary next year.

Me wife told me that either my stamps go or she goes. Sometimes I still miss her.

Wow. What stories. I guess I am very lucky that my wife is so understanding. No problems after 46 years. (Irish-Italian marriage)

Jack Kelley

It seems that the issues listed above fall into two categories. The more important one I think is financial in that a spouse has concerns as to the impact of expenditures on a hobby on the family budget. If you are married, and intend for that marriage to last, it seems that meeting of the minds should resolve that issue with flexibility on both sides to accommodate competing needs for money. Certainly using money needed for the mortgage is not a good decision. Renting a P.O. Box to hide purchases from the wife is probably also not as good a strategy as coming to a mutual understanding.

My only problem would be with a spouse who complained about one's collecting passion for a reason that really did not impact the other person in a material way.

I feel obliged to say that renting the P.O. Box was something that happened with wife #1 and that she was not in the slightest way pleased that I collected stamps...in fact, she despised them. One of the minor reasons (among a plethora of major reasons) that we are no longer married. Wife #2 is extremely supportive of my hobby and encourages me to build my collection within certain reasonable constraints. It's refreshing that she is actually interested in seeing my acquisitions and hearing my philatelic stories. She's even suggested traveling to other cities to shows so that I can exhibit because she knows it's important to me. Such an amazing woman.

I can always tell my wife what philatelic gifts I would like and she will get without question. It could be something simple as a ream of paper for my album pages.

She is into crafts and that hobby has a lot of tools (cutters, stencils, etc).