Diary Of A Wannabe Worldwide Collector

Eeek!

Well current plan, sort of:

I already have a few countries sorted and catalogued to an extent. They are sat in stockbooks with cat numbers on bits of paper (Great Britain, Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Austria and what little I have of Aaland Islands, Albania, Andorra, Armenia and Azerbaijan). I'm going to mount those to keep the numbers ticking over. Mostly at the weekend when I can actually get some decent time in making the pages etc.

Meanwhile, mostly on weekdays after work I'll start sorting the 'stock'; first by Continent, then by Country. Then I'll work through each continent starting with Europe, and each country in alphabetical order (as you may have noticed with Aaland Islands, Albania etc above) soaking each one in turn.

So basic plan is: sort-soak-catalogue-mount. If I get this organised properly I should constantly have something going on for each stage at all times...I hope. I know this approach may sound more like a production line than a relaxing hobby, but it's how my brain works




I've been using an ancient (2007) copy of MS Publisher. It can be a little clunky (probably because I've never been taught how to use it), but I'm happy with the results. A few examples (I know there are typos on the Olympic Games, these have been fixed since I uploaded the piccy):

I like the way you show the St Edwards Crown watermark. Cool.

Jack Kelley

I like those pages. How long (average) does it take to create a page?

Thanks As there are 5 or 6 sets of Wildings and on the face of it they all look the same, I thought a little pic of why they are different would be quite nice.




Depends. Most pages are variations on a theme, but it takes longer depending on how many stamps are in the series that I am creating the page for and whether I already have a page created for that series template.

For example, the Coronation of QE2 and the Olympic Games page (above), both have 4 stamps, the same size. So when making the Coronation page, all I had to do was open up the Olympics page, change the text in the banner and stamp info boxes and save as.

If a series has a different number of stamps and/or different sizes to any page I've already created, then I have to spend time messing about with the spacing etc which takes a lot longer. I'm probably doing the spacing in a long-winded way, and there are probably shortcuts that I'm missing but as I said, I've never been taught how to use MS Pub.

So on average I'd say it takes between 20min and 40min (including cutting, sticking the mounts) per page.

The back side (on left) of every album page is a great place to put details in a way Mystic does it such as watermarks, die varieties, postmarks, etc to tell a more complete story.

Wow. I'm jealous of all the British stamps you have to go through. Send some my way! lol

What a fantastic idea! hmm that would mean re-doing the 30 or so pages I've already done though..I'll have a ponder.




Watch this space (well the contests, giveaways board anyway), as I think there may be some dupes giveaways in the not too distant future :)

Maiden,

Welcome to the club! Collecting worldwide is a journey that will never really end. There will always be one more stamp.

I've also been following spain's thread and enjoying seeing his progress. It has inspired me as well to begin trying to work through my accumulation. In my case, I opted to go with Steiner pages. I don't think I have the patience to create my own pages.

I look forward to reading more on your progress in the days to come.

Dale

Well in between rearranging the furniture in my bedroom to accommodate a new bookcase to house some of my stamping paraphernalia, putting together said bookcase and sorting one of the many boxes of stamps I have, I managed to put a few new pages together.

Maiden:

Nicely done pages!

Don

In between the continuing sorting of one of the mixture boxes, managed to get some more pages done for Great Britain. As I move into the late 1960's and on through the 70's and 80's, sets of 2 or 4 of the same size stamp seem to be the norm, which shoud speed up the page-making as I can just keep re-using the same templates.

Maiden,

Your pages are gorgeous. But are you being realistic? If you put 10 stamps on a page, you will have to design and print out 10,000 pages to meet your goal of 100,000 stamps!

Jack Kelley

True, though when the longer definitive sets kick in (machine for example), I'll be able to fit a lot more on a page. Besides, I'm in no rush :)

Why would you want to be realistic.....when collecting stamps. 10,000 pages and 100,000 stamps was something from my past like 1982 . Way past that now .