Update - Stan Cornyn & Murray Geller "Collecting The World " Article .

It has been 50 years since ,one of the most famous articles written about the accomplishment of these two men has been written .

It is time we look back and see how the world has changed and how it would be done today .It would be a interesting read if someone would try to repeat their effort .

Is it worth bring this story back to life ,the answer is simple ,yes because we see it everyday with the large amount of clicks by visitors right here on the STAMP COMMUNITY we are getting hundreds of views daily on this subject of WW stamp collecting .

I have no context for this topic- is there a link to the article available?

I think this was the previous discussion, shermae -

https://goscf.com/t/87195

Thanks Geoff

Here is the article from the APS site that triggered the earlier discussion:
https://stamps.org/Portals/0/Articl..._Jan2011.pdf

It takes some material from an article In the Washington Post; a pdf of the article is in this thread:
https://forums.delphiforums.com/sta...?msg=31818.2

Here's a gift link to the Washington Post article, text only with some scanning typos, but a bit easier to read:
https://wapo.st/3RMp12k

Thanks MOKSHA . Someday I will learn to link a page .

The biggest change on this subject is the cost of Hinges . They paid 25 cents per pack of 1,000 hinges . so their hinging 200,000 stamps would be $50.00 . The cost for the same Dennison stamp hinges is over $4,000.00 .....What !!!!!

Yes, all the associated logistics blows my mind ... before I even get to the problem of all the stamps to line up. Hinges, albums, catalogues, space to store, space to work, all the duplicates that have to be moved out.

I have a Vintage Reproductions set and just handling it ... I have a lot of moments of "what was I thinking?"

Thanks floortrader for bringing this one back to life

Sadly, Stan Cornyn passed away in 2015... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Cornyn I was fortunate to have an e-mail correspondence with him in 2011 when I was working on that article. He was kind enough to answer some questions for me... I asked about hinging all those stamps and he said: "Yes, I did, licking the hinge back, then front, then applying each stamp."

Of course I had more questions! Most of this is in the article. I never had the chance to talk with Murray.

"How'd we keep a stamp inventory before Excel. That was Murray's task. He loved little pieces of paper to write on with his pencils, stub length. We both wrote and wrote and wrote. When I'd take a trip, I'd have our Want List with me, hand-written or hand-typed.

Most memorable stamp store? They're all pretty introverted places, of course. I remember walking into one in Munich, and just handing them a list (not using any German stamp catalog's numbering system), and they walked into the back room, then came out with good stuff for me.

The most frequently visited was in Los Angeles. I think it might have been called Superior Stamp Store. They got used to Murray and me, and if they'd bought a big collection from someone, they'd just let us go through the albums, extract what we needed, and they'd do the pricing when we were finished, based on a percentage of catalogue values. But these stores needed to put up with nerds like we.

I was the traveler, and whenever I had to go abroad, mostly to Europe, stamp stores in whichever town got hit on by me.

Collectors these days have viral connections to like-minded collectors. They can amass them on Facebook, so much easier than sending a letter (with a stamp on the envelope). Take advantage of today's communication media -- have a Blog of Your Needs, and lure people to visit it. So much easier than finding a stamp store in the Sudan.

Looking forward to the article.

-- Stan"

It was fun revisiting those old Delphi posts.. I almost forgot about this. I think his binders went up to around 2000.

"I knew one collector once who tried collecting the world using three ring binders and homemade pages. He had 175 three ring binders, and it took up two bookcases. In the end, he had spent so much time making the binders and writing the scott number for each stamp, he didn't have much time to fill the binders!" Yes! he wrote all the scott numbers on three hole lined paper! He had lots of stamps off paper and never got around to mounting many of them except for a few countries.

I'm not sure if anyone has been able to repeat what they did with the first 11 volumes of Big Blue. I think others have completed part 1 though, which would be the biggest challenge. I have 37% of the first 11 complete, so the chances of me completing them are pretty small! As anyone out there tried to duplicate what Stan and Murray did? It didn't seem to take them very long... a couple of years? The key seemed to be having rather full albums to pull stamps from and put them right in.

" Im not sure if anyone has been able to repeat what they did ..... "

Thanks for sharing the articles on Stan Cornyn and Murray Geller.

I never read/heard of them or their collecting until now.

For any worldwide collector, well worth the time following both links to read.

The article states they accomplished the feat in 6 years.

Working the numbers, this team added roughly 89 all-different stamps to the collection every day, 7 days a week, for the 6 years. Also equal to adding 2,711-odd all different stamps every month.

To put this in prospective ,here is the page that they would of filled for the first part of St. Pierre and Miquelon

Two important items

First new readers and new collectors can see the difference between the first page of SPM in the Scott International vol I to the first same pages in the STEINER series of album pages .

Second item ---More experence collectors can now compare what CORNYN &GELLER was filling to complete pages for their collection to what Floortrader has in his collection again same pages . So if I claim mine is twice the size now you can at lest ,see what I am saying . Please understand my goals were different than C& G ,they wanted to fill spaces ,as for me I just want to see how far down the path I can go to have a decent collection .