Topical Vs Country Dilemma

As a newcomer to the topical collection area, I'm wondering how those of you who also collect by country deal with the problem of a stamp that fits into both categories (when you only have one of it)? Does it go with the country or with the topic?

I feel the choice is particularly difficult when the topic stamp is one of a set, and the other items in the set have no connection to the topic.

Thats a hard one. Try flipping a coin! Here's how I looked at it: You have a Primary Collection and you have a secondary collection -- which is the most important to YOU! This hobby is what predicated on what makes YOU happy...not others. Personally, the Topical ALWAYS came first. Here's why. If you get tired of a Topical Collection, it is easy to breakdown the individual stamps and placed them into an album. It is always harder to do the opposite. Do what makes YOU happy. Go by what your gut feeling tells you, or that little voice behind your ear that tells you to do. If you do that, you'll never go wrong and you'll always be happy.

Have fun,
Hal

The answer is really quite simple.
One simple employs an image database for country.
Then employs a good naming convention.

The rest is a couple of keystrokes away

Consider :
Uganda 0234 1943 24c gorilla wwf
Tanganyika 0334 1953 $01 gorilla zoo

You can search Gorilla ; wwf ; zoo ; year; country whatever takes your fancy
The answer globally is immediate.
You just need a computer and a scanner.

If you need hardcopy, then that's your problem, do you collect on album pages under country or Thematic, your decision.

Country is generally best, unless you have a particular thematic discipline planned.

Thanks for these comments, and I realise that I didn't make it clear that I was referring when it comes to actually putting the stamp on a page.

OK..You have a big decision then ...Good Luck.

I simply collect the stamps I like from whichever country and period and don't follow any format.

Way back, I collected the world -- kids have no idea what that entails. When I got re-interested in philately in my 20s, I was mostly looking at USA stamps, and I used preprinted album pages. I came to realize that to have a really decent USA collection, a great deal of money was going to be needed. When you're a young adult, you are not normally settled enough to have large amounts of spare cash.

So I found topicals to my liking and checkbook, and quickly settled primarily on waterfalls on stamps. These I put in, and still use, both manila stock pages and stock books with interleaving. My intention was to place the topical on home made display pages, but it never got that far. I had even purchased fine paper for the purpose. All of this literally and figuratively went south when my job moved from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.

I have partially/loosely organized glassine envelopes and stock books with the 'rest' of any set that had just one or a few waterfalls. That's in the hope I'll be able to put them back together if necessary if I dispose of the collection. The limited span of time when the country/topical questions came up for me, the topical 'pull' had gotten stronger than the countries and so it was never a question -- the topicals always took precedence.

I think the answer for anyone would be which is more important. If you want to fill in a position in a set, obtaining an inexpensive copy for the other collection could be an answer.

B.G.

If you have only the 1 topical stamp, put it with the topical collection.

If yo have the whole set, put it in the country and purchase the topical as a single.

I don't usually bother collecting full sets or completing any specific collection which can be stressful. I must admit that stamps with high catalogue value is a drawing factor. Bargains is often a strong motivation for me to make single stamp purchases. You are right in that deep pockets is needed for serious stamp collecting when one moves into collecting rarities, which is why serious stamp collectors are never kids.

The only time I've come close to this dilemma was with the 1937 Coronation omnibus and my Great Britain collection. Needless to say I have two examples of the issue from Great Britain.

As long as it's not an expensive stamp, I would get two, one for each collection. Otherwise, do what makes YOU happy as it is, after all, your collection. Anyway, you can always switch it to the other collection if you don't like it.

I was about to start a topic asking the same question (Do people mount stamps of topical interest with their country, or in a dedicated topical album?) until I saw this thread.

My non U.S. interest is primarily topical but I also have close to 2,000 non U.S. stamps. My personal view is if I own a stamp I want to identify it and place it in its appropriate place in an album. I'm working again with my collection after a 15 year hiatus (from organizing, not from collecting) and my interest has grown by several topics. I'm also starting to inventory my collection with the StampCat database (this program is no longer available for purchase but it still works for those who own it).

What I've decided to do is organize all stamps by country, then tag in the database any stamps that fit into a topic I'm collecting. I'm discovering that sometimes (not often but often enough) a particular stamp may fit two different topics of interest ("Red Cross" and "Bicycles" for a recent example I ran across). So, I'm avoiding the dilemma of deciding what topical album to put that stamp in, unless I can find another copy, which isn't always that easy.

With the database I can easily print an inventory or want list of stamps in each topic. A spread sheet, or even a hand written list, could work for this also.

I like crossovers like that. For example, I have a postcard written in Esperanto (one of my topics) with Denmark #342 on it (a stamp featuring the image of a runestone, another one of my topics). I keep it in one of my Esperanto binders, whereas my mint copy of the stamp, FDCs, and maximum cards go with my runic collection.

I naturally keep the J.R.R. Tolkien Prestige Booklet from Great Britain in my Tolkien topical collection, but since it has Anglo-Saxon runes on the back cover, I also list it in my inventory of runic items.

I have several topical collections, and some stamps belong to both topics. For example, an Olympic hockey stamp, for example, goes into both Olympic and hockey collections. Normally, I would store it physically into the Olympic folder, but since I display my collections online, I would display the stamp as a part of both collections.