Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

SNOPES ---- Thanks for your question .

I had a problem 8 years after I did a hard count of 155,000 different stamps . So I asked my two daughters during a Thanksgiving dinner ,they looked at everything and came up with a answer . They asked how many binders I had at that time {220 separate albums } . They said to count every 10th album only and then total those and then work totals out times 10X . That was where I got the 330,000 .
Now that was many years ago , also about $100,000 ago ,so my numbers are larger now .

The number of albums grow at a good rate .I hope over the next 10 to 15 years I can expand all these numbers ,that will give me a decent collection .

Great, your daughters worked smarter, not harder.

Another method is to do what floor trader did but do it two-three times and do it at random each time. If you get roughly the same number the second or third time, you know it worked.

Snopes, Once you do the initial count it is pretty easy to keep up. In every album I have a tally sheet at the beginning of each one and when I add more stamps, I add to the tally and have a spreadsheet to keep track. My main Frankenstein album run is 126,714. It's best to start early! I picked up a two volume Minkus (18,496) and a six volume Minkus (29,424) and counted them up too. I just have an album handy while watching a show or listening to something. So few people count but it is fun to guess how many is in an album and then see if you are right.

landolakes - That ongoing tally sounds like a lot of work. But knowing my obsessive-compulstive tendencies, I'll probably end up counting one day (and for many days afterwards).

gvol21 What makes me happy is to get an album with lots of runs of used stamps that are neatly hinged. Crystal mounts will drive you batty. I've been having a lot of fun with my 2 volume Minkus. How many can one put in those before you have to split it? Did you get the 1959 version of the 2 volume Minkus?

Snopes, I do tend to use a lot of those charity note pads one gets in the mail ;)

I think some old Minkus albums are in my future. Over the last 40 years or so, I've been accumulating bits and pieces of various collections and I'm now working on incorporating those into my main volumes. I'm guessing that will take me another year or two ... and then I'll need more material.

Here's my system for counting stamps in worldwide albums although I am at a lowly 22,397 (in four volume Scott International volume I to 1940; have not yet inventoried later ones although I collect up to Volume V which goes to 1965). I scanned the full album (without any stamps) into a PDF, then I open/edit the PDF and put a green dot by each stamp I have. It only takes one click to enter a green dot so can be done very quickly.

Then I have a spreadsheet (one line per page in the album) with count of spaces, which I manually update (based on the PDF). However, I am a techno geek so what I would like to do eventually is write a program to automatically count the green dots in the PDF (per page) and automatically update the spreadsheet.

Here's an example of a page in the PDF with green dots. I just updated the whole inventory last week and while doing so took specific note of the empty Bulgaria 1931--which Floor just posted today (nice set!). Of course, note that the International only has spaces for 5 of the 7 stamps in the set. That's probably why the set rarely if ever appears in the album. There are more than 30 listings currently on Hipstamp, but each listing has all 7 stamps. But 80% of the value of the set is in the 2 stamps which don't have spaces. So it's difficult to justify purchasing the whole set when there isn't even space for most of the value.

Tomorrow at Kelleher Auctions two stamp lots come up for auction .

These are the last two of a three part series of one massive worldwide stamp collection , the first has already sold ,The first part was offered at $25,000 last year and realized a price of $51,000. So I am interested to watch this bidding on the last two parts,which is estimated at $25,000 each .

They are lots 782 and lot 783 ,both contain many $100.00 to $1,000.00 stamps or sets

As of this morning, day of auction, the openings for both lots have been advanced from $12,500 to $22,000. Whenever people show their cards early like this I expect the bidding to really be aggressive. My bet is that the final bids are in the Part 1 neighborhood if not more. Look for the buyer of Part 1 to be back because they have seen the goods in detail and if the hype was real they will be happy to bid more.

Yep, I got the '59 edition in two volumes. Nothing special in the way of 19th century (my favorite), but a lot I can use for my Scott International 1840-1940 collection. Something about seeing so many of the 1940s issues present makes me consider extending my collecting time window out a decade or so... we'll see!

The Minkus pages are certainly an interesting change from the Scott format - especially compared with the vintage Brown albums, which I use, that often feature quite a bit of white space per page. I'm sure the limited space for certain issues would drive me up the wall - just like the Scott blue album eventually did - but there is something quite nice about how pleasantly crowded the pages are, and there's no denying you can fit quite a few stamps in two binders that way.

My issue is that I collect used, not mint, and a lot of the singles and longer series here are mint. I'm sure most people would love to have that problem!

tsmatx - I need to be realistic and accept that I am more of a hashmark guy than a green dots guy.

Had to change my posting from this morning , the lots come up for auction tomorrow not today . Yes the auction started today but the two lots are in tomorrows offering.

tsmatx 22K though Volume V is not too shabby! I'm amazed that you scanned all the pages into PDF's.. that would be handy for checklist purposes for sure.