Spreadsheet For Newbie

Hi everyone and what a great site you guys have. I have inherited a collection of stamps, mostly US and Canada, that is quite extensive by my account but maybe not for you guys. Anyway there must be over 10,000 of them and I am trying to get them organized into a spreadsheet. Started building one and then realized how huge the task was and luckily came across this forum. I was hope you guys could give me some advise of what to use and maybe some one might could share a spreadsheet so I do not have to reinvent the wheel. I am very familiar with Excel and databases so I thought that might be best. Thanks in advance for any assistance that anyone can provide. You guys with your tips and info are really the best.

Never understood the use of spreadsheets, unless ID of varieties.
I'd counsel use of a scanner, and make an image database
Vastly more fun, and useful.

I'd wager you'll grow tired of an excel database.
But, as always, tread your own path.

Kick some tyres here for Canada images
https://goscf.com/t/51602 br /

I have an Excel spreadsheet for stamps over a certain value threshold but that is as far as it goes. I contemplated and even tried going full bore for every stamp a long time ago but it became drudgery, not to mention extremely time consuming, with little if any return for the effort expended.

Hi and welcome - yes this Forum is fabulous, I have learned so much from all of the amazing experts here.

My advice/approach as a fellow stamp "inheritor" Is to sort by country and year (easy that you only have 2 countries ;) and place them in Vario pages in order (unless they are already in albums). This will keep them safe and organized especially when you have so many thousands.

From there, I purchased used Scott stamp catalogues (World and US) and started to identify the stamps. Once I got the hang of that, I acquired Album pages for my favorite countries (so Far Mexico, US and France) - I am using Mystic Heirloom Album for US, Scott Speciality for Mexico 1856-1970ish and printed Album pages for France in a handsome Binder that I bought. My goal is to keep working these albums and add new ones such as Germany, Spain and possibly Ecuador and Sweden once I get the first three in a good place. I also agree that scanning seems like a good idea! - I unfortunately do not have one :( so I take pictures of my stuff - hopefully one day I will have a nice scanner. :) Welcome.

Note: Fixed all my typos - things are crazy right now and I am a bit distracted.

Nora.

Hey guys thanks for all of the feedback thus far and you all have given me things to think about. To update, the stamps are all in binders so I am just trying to do a spreadsheet for organization and valuation purposes. Excel may not be great for everyone but I personally love using it. The difficulty is really researching them all and assigning an approximate value.

Enjoy the research! As far as valuation goes most stamps are of the same minimum value which makes it easy if you just go by a head count.