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

I'm very keen on stamps from the various French territories in the Middle East and South East Asia, but some time ago I resolved I'd try not to actually pay for other French Colony stamps, just pick them up as and when they came along in mixed groups.

I have lapsed occasionally, a few months ago some large lots came up at knockdown prices from an ebay seller who was clearing out his storage unit. Most places seem to appear fairly frequently but not French India, so this is a most interesting page I think.

The Memel pages are great too. As somebody noted above it's a challenge to collect them used, but they are most interesting stamps in any condition

Another page from my Scott International {big blue } vol I of French India . A completed Volume I sells for over $30,000 when completed and each spot has the correct stamps .

Most completed volumes 1 sell at auction and always have active bidders . I haven't seen one go up for auction recently . Most are the one book older variety ,but mine {still working to complete it } is the four volume new edition with books 1A ,1B ,2A and 2B . Everthing is more spread out and neater looking .
My goal right now is to go after a very special lot coming up next week . Something most collector miss for building a worldwide collection .

@floortrader, Do the blank spaces also need to be filled to count towards completeness? If so, how does one know the correct stamp(s)?

I think the publisher of the album left room on various pages because they were not sure which stamp should be included or there was disagreements in their own staff which stamp was more likely for the collector to own .

Crispinhj ----Thanks for the positive comments .

I grew up in Chicago which had a very strong European stamp community . Most collectors at the many stamp clubs I visited were more than half European collectors . So that was my main interest building my collection .

floortrader, sorry if you've mentioned this earlier in the thread - do you house your collection in both Scott and Steiner album pages? If so, how do you choose between the two?

Gvol21 ---- I have both , for 35 years I mounted everything on Scott pages both the Internationals and Scott speciality albums . Then about 13 years ago I started with Steiner pages .

Since I already had a massive inventory of duplicates it was easy to get my Steiner pages started , over the past few years everything goes onto Steiner pages and any purchases go on Steiner . My number of 330,000 plus is all on these new pages .

Being retired gives me a big advantage time wise and being financially stable gives me the ability to make purchases at the various stamp auction firms .

Floortrader, you may have mentioned this before, but how many binders does all those Steiner pages take? 330K would make for many binders!

Landoquakes -----Good question and I understand your request .

But I am going to dance around your question .

The simple answer and most collectors would print pages and put everything in A to Z ,much like the Scott Internationals ,with many of those collectors refiling those pages so each countries pages are all together . Then keeping them in those large and heavy 3 inch or 4 inch binders .

I don't like those heavy 3 or 4 inch binders ,pain in the butt to move around and hard to work with flipping tons of pages . I prefer 1/2 inch ,1 inch and 2 inch binders .

So I been playing around with some countries like Canada, France and Germany have 1 inch binder for pre-1940 then maybe two or three 2 inch binders for post-1940;s ,like Berlin is in a separate 1 inch. binder .

The problem that I am working on and have not got a answer for is those countries that have 10 pages or less of Steiner Pages . What I did as a short term answer for right now, is I went to Walmart and purchase paper file folders. These are the ones that have two pockets on the inside and sell for 25 cents each . Then slap a label on the front with a country name on it . The 1/2 inch binder is over kill for 1 or 5 pages ,so I went with file folders for now until something better comes along ;

So to answer your question , I will end up with 300 binders and maybe more once I start filing forgeries and Cinderella into separate binders like Africa ,South America ,then Europe countries getting separate binders so that can be another 100 binders .

I know this sounds silly to many collectors but I like everything in its own binder .

ps----- I even got my used U.S. plate number coils in a seperate binder.

To new collectors and new readers here .

Please understand there is no standard or examples to follow . There is nothing in the philatelic press of what the Worldwide collector can review.

You need to go back before the 1890's to see how collectors kept their collections . In the 1890's was when you could buy one book and use it as a guide on how to collect stamps because everything would fit in one binder. The preprint album gave you a establish way to collect .

Then album makers expanded those volumes into sets which grew each year . We gotten to a point were a complete set of Internationals is now a $12,000 to $15,000.00 purchase . crazy !

This new trend of print your own pages on demand has kept the goal of collecting alive . But there is no information on how to do it and what problems do you face .

So to sum it up , if you go down the path of worldwide collecting you get to the place your searching on your own and just do what your thinking is right and works for you .

Well said.

I've said it before elsewhere, but I also use Steiner and varying widths of binders. Unlike floortrader, I put multiple small countries in the same binder. I keep everything A-Z and for any country that can be it's own single or multiple binders, they get put there, immediately following the binder where they alphabetically fall. I don't split classic from modern, but I have been thinking about doing so. The reason is that the classic doesn't grow much and so no need to really disturb those binders.

I don't collect everything anymore, but I arrange countries by area. So for British Commonwealth, they're grouped in GB, Ireland, rest of Europe, Middle East, South Asia etc. Similarly for France and colonies.