Worldwide collections - How do you organize them?

Jon (blaamand) - nice thread and lots of ideas. I have been thinking, for the last year, that a decent WW collection is impossible, unless you have unlimited financial means.
This is why I plan (and the plan has to have a date....not yet) to reduce my collection to Countries of interest and get all others somewhere (this is the hard part). At times I feel overwhelmed with the quantity of Countries in my Inventory and the "paucity" of stamps in some Countries. With 357 Countries and 40,000 stamps, FDC, S/S mostly, I feel I should put aside 90% of these Countries and concentrate only on the ones I have a decent amount of Classical stamps. At my age, it is still fun to have lots of Scott Albums and Custom Albums but there is no end. I am doing France right now, using Scott 2019 and Maury 2017 and if you do a good inventory and try to identify all Types etc.....it becomes a Sport with no "rush".
Just some thoughts on this CANADA day.......but my decision will soon happen and a lot of stamps will go elsewhere 
The fun part is that some big Countries have not been touched yet (ex: Italy - Suisse etc etc). I have already eliminated DDR/one done !!


René

For now, I organize by countries in Scott name order so countries that go through a name change may be in different binders.
I have one exception regarding Malaya/Malaysia/States. These are all together in one group organized by state or Federation. My US collection is separate.  British Virgin Island is in the V's but I do plan to move it to B's.

Since I mostly collect British Commonwealth I have thought about doing it by region. British Africa, Asia, Oceania, Atlantic, etc. This would have British Africa (colonies) and later independent countries in same album.

I sort my stamps by continent first. Then, for each continent, the countries are in alphabetical order (in French) with the name of the country as written on the stamp. So Ceylon at "C" and Sri Lanka at "S". Some countries where the continental location is non-obvious (to me, such as Greenland, Turkey, UN, UAR) I keep them in stand-alone stockbooks. For countries in which I specialize (France and French Territories, Canada, U.S., Germany and German states) I have separate stockbooks again.

Thank you all for sharing your ideas / concepts. As one can expect, we are all having more or less different approaches on structuring a WW collection - that's just a sound reflection that our collections are 'personal' - and any approach is as good as any other.

When I returned to stamp collecting some 20 years ago, me and my brother barbu opted to simply let all areas strictly follow the order as listed in SG WW Simplified. We made a set-up distributing about 800 areas in alphabetical order through 160 stockbooks. However I became increasingly dissatisfied with this solution over the years. A good example is already pointed at by angore - following my previous 'SG setup' all the Malayan states are distributed across lots of different albums and sitting in albums with other areas they are not related to at all, rather than being put together like angore has already done. The same basically applies for any other small areas, states, dead countries etc - by placing them in alphabetical order they all ended up sitting in albums with other areas they were not related to. Over these 20 years of stamping we've got increasingly fascinated by both political history and postal history - and this 'random' order of organizing the areas did not allow for seeing a historical timeline.

This led to our new 'concept' - organizing all areas in such a way that the historical timeline of a current state is reflected in the albums as well. Example given the Germany albums will start of with the former German states - followed by the North German Confederation, then the 'Reich', Post WW1 and WW2 issues, BRD, DDR then finally current Germany (united).

Neighboring areas very often have both their political and postal history somewhat mingled, in terms of occupation issues etc, so we want such neighbors to be neighbors also in our album shelves, paving the way for a 'Regional' structure. Obviously some compromises had to be made, and arrived at 25 defined 'Regions'. Now all the regions (and areas within each region) will follow the order of a imagined 'world tour', travelling across the globe, starting at home with the region 'Nordic countries' and eventually ending up 'down under' and finally in the Antarctica... a rough idea of the Regions and sequence of the 'World tour' is indicated on this map:







Edit - hmmm, that map became disturbingly small and difficult to read on the forum, my apologies. Here's a close-up of Europe for a better idea:

This 'regional' structure has now also been adopted to my excel 'inventory'. Each single area has been allocated to a region, and the consolidated data for each region is presented on the tab for 'Region' as below. Never mind the figures (not updated past 3 years anyway), just thought you mind find it interesting to see the list of regions and how many areas are within each region and number of stamps issued in total and for different time periods.



These screen shots seems to get a bit unreadable on the forum unfortunately, click on the image for slightly better resolution.

Well, the collections/areas have already 'shifted album' in the excel inventory...but not in real life yet! Quite a more time consuming task to shift and re-organize the actual stamps...

Wow Jon! (blaamand ), that is so over the top for me! (This is the 2nd time re-writing this - mouse went back a page & I lost everything I just typed - back on trackpad for now.) I do have spreadsheets for most, but nothing for Germany, as I just started collecting it, same with Turkey. I used to keep track of everything, but with me "out of sight, out of mind." So if the spreadsheet isn't up in a window, I never see it, so I don't think of it. Then I cringe at what hasn't been done. I haven't updated everything since last Fall, IIRC. I don't have near the numbers of stamps you (or most others it seems in here,) but what I do have keeps me busy enough. That's another chore for "one of these day" to get done! And that'll be a job & a half!

For my way of sorting, major collections are in their own binders. For Germany, binder 1 (soon) will be definitives, airmail, officials & the BOB, binder two: commemoratives and binder three the immense issues of semi-postals. My German collection just has the Empire, 3rd Reich, West Germany & the Federal Republic. No others, no states, no Berlin, no DDR. They just add far too much in my eye. That is the about the same with Luxembourg. Binder 1 has definitives, commemoratives and BOB. Binder 2 has all the semi-postals. All other countries, I lump the semi-postals with the commemoratives, as most countries don't go overboard with them like Germany & Luxembourg. Other countries in their own binder have everything in one.

Canada has its own series of binders of definitives, but on collecting it again, everything is being sorted chronologically. But the definitive series are kept together no matter the date. I have all the QEII era's to sort out, so man of them. Christmas, OTOH, I kept separate as there were booklets, mini-sheets etc that just seems to clog up everything else.

A country like Yugoslavia, not that I have any, would be sorted as Yugoslavia, followed by all the countries it split into. I'd probably sort by date each issued stamps. If not in a separate binder, it and all subsequent countries would be at the back of the binder, or at least in the last binder.

I did collect general world wide as a kid, but I suppose I just felt overwhelmed by the 1,000's I did not have. I focused instead on Canada, Jersey and a couple others which to my mind was much more manageable. I still kind of feel that way with everything I have outside the scope of separate country collections.

As mentioned by brightonpete - larger  'stamp-areas' obviously go in their own albums, or even several albums. Whilst 'smaller stamp countries' - even having issued thousands and thousands of stamps - can be put together in a common album, simply because those stamps don't come around too often, unless actively purchasing them. At least not to my corner of the world!

It is the order of all these 'smaller areas' that has given me the headache in the first place. If each area could have it's own album it wouldn't need much planning at all. There's another 600 or so 'small areas' (dead countries, states, occupation issues etc) not even mentioned in the album titles I am planning, will just be included within, as per current name of the area.

While I am already at it (sharing my 'concepts') here is my new 'Album-Status-Chart' below. The titles gives the sequence for how I am intending to navigate through the world of stamps. As far as possible trying to keep related countries together in the shelves, but obviously there must be some large 'leaps' at some points of the trek around the stamp-world...or should I say some large Voyages?

Well, even though it might look like the stamps have already moved into their new albums, in real life that job still remains to be done....keeping myself busy for the next 100 years 

(Click on the 2 images for readability)
(Never mind the colors on the chart. They are only to give me an easy reference of bad / neutral / positive parts of my collection - the colors have nothing to do with the structure as such)

Thanks angore - I like it! The way you have collected colonies separately was the alternative concept that I was seriously considering. Actually I would love that, e.g albums of purely British America would be a wet dream.... However as a WW collector, it would give some other challenges. Example given if Africa was split between all the Colonial Empires - there would hardly been any countries left - Liberia? And some colonies have been under several empires, so how to say which goes to which empire? I abandoned that plan, but kind of wish I only collected the colonies and could go that route. (as already mentioned by stainlessb about self control, I am completely unable to limit myself )

What I have done, in order to almost achieve something similar - is to sort e.g. British colonies within each region into the same albums. E.g.- the 'Caribbean region' has been sorted into 7 albums for British Colonies, 1 album for Spanish colonies (later US), 1 album for the other colonial Empires (French, Dutch and Danish) - and 1 for the independent states. Done similar for e.g. West Africa, Pacific etc. So, I have sorted regional - but also by colonial empires as far as it's been possible.

Obviously that wasn't achievable for certain areas e.g. like Morocco, where several Colonial Empires have had their post offices and shares.

Thanks for your  contribution kostia84 - appreciated!!
That's funny, seems we are well coordinated Kostia    Cool to see others are thinking likewise. Particularly for keeping everything in chronological order, it is by far more common to follow the catalogs system, with a section at B.O.B. 

thus far I have 8 pages for Great Britain (all Penny Red plate numbers)... almost have my best examples transferred into them and besides #225 I am close to having all the rest (though some improvements are in order!)

France "Peace and Commerce" issues - 4 pages... still sorting and may well need to revise as I think I would like to add graphics showing the difference between Type I and II, but I've printed out the first "draft"

Next up is Early France - Ceres and Napoleon, with one-to-many page for Ceres (perforated) just for postmarks!

Followed by Belgium  King Leopold I color /shades will likely be several pages

and then..... I circle back around and put more effort into the earlier Great Britain stamp[s prior to the #71 - #225 plate penny reds

stainlessb - Wonderful, Ceres and Napoleon, my favorite stamps! Can it ever be too many pages for postmarks on those?

Magnificent Stanley. May I suggest you start a separate thread for your penny reds? We will love to see images of your work

This is what I also want to do (make my own pages). I have used "Steiner" pages, but it irritates me that he uses the "Scott system" by seperate semipostal and not semipostal, I like cronological system, but maybe put series together even when they are not issued the same year, but are close in years.
And as you do, put the "modern" stuff on "vario" pages. But the cost of "vario" pages- albums is high, so upp til now I have a unlogical mix up with stock books and "Steinar pages".

I forgot to mention that I register what I have and what I want and what I have for exchange on www.colnect.com. I backup this to the stamp inventory program Stampmate ( www.catamates.com/stamp/ )

Tanks for your kind reply as always tobben63 ! Ok, we are getting slightly side-tracked here discussing Steiner rather than the larger album structure as per intent of this thread. But why not, more and more WW collectors are looking to Steiner as a solution for structuring their collections, so why not include it in this thread.

Exactly as I am thinking tobben! So I am using Steiner as a starting-point just for getting the boxes right (in more or less correct sizes anyway...). His pages are then significantly reorganized, re-formated, changed descriptions and adding spaces for perforation/wmk varieties, shades etc - and all the B.O.B stuff is incooperated with the regular issues in a chronological timeline. I also find Steiner is spreading the stuff over way more pages than I think necessary, will simply require too many albums for a WW collector. So I am using much smaller margins to increase the available space on each page - and generally get things more compact. I also prefer not having his large and 'showy' 3-line titles above each series and huge 'country' header at top of each single page. I prefer the pages more simplistic and down-to-earth-style, like the fantastic old-style and more sober classic French and German stamp albums: using a neutral one-line description, yet more informative. I find the simplicity of style more elegant in the long run than the large showy formats. As with everything else, this is a personal preference.

Sharing a few samples to illustrate how I prefer my pages: Thight - but yet with room for varieties (and descriptions and images of the varieties)
Don't understand why the screenshots/jpgs looks this messed up on the forum, still gives an idea)

British Virgin Islands




Bermuda








Actually the price of Vario and Grande Classic Lighthouse binders are not bad if you purchase from Nordfrim (Denmark - free freight) - much cheaper than from your local store in Bergen. The price I got from Denmark was half of the 'offer' from Bergen. I got a very good deal on a large order, and the price calculated for storing each single stamp was actually the same as stockbooks. Keep in mind one such album with 70 Grande sheets (=140 pages) can house more stamps than 2 pcs of 64 pgs albums!! 

Good reflection angore - guess the organisation part is some of what attracts us to this hobby in the first place - feeds my OCD at least  

Obviously you are right - with binders the pages can easily be moved from binder to binder, so it is easy to re-organize as you go. I like that attitude. I am not yet used to that possibility, as I have been 'bound' by stockbooks before - binders are way better that way.

Thanks for the kind words of my excel inventory database angore. I do like working with excel, so the program I've made up do have a few features I am quite satisfied with. The analysis I have shared in this threas is only bits of the capabilities in there, but I shouldn't get started on excel details as well in this thread....But as much as I love excel - I do not like writing articles 
Might be an idea for another thread some day, use of excel for area databases. Anyone up for starting one?

I agree about the price for Vario - it is actually cheaper than mounts and album pages. Hinges are not for me either - I need the possibility to easily replace a stamp for a better copy, or have another look at wmks etc, that seem to me too troublesome with hinges. I find Vario being less time consuming and cheaper than album pages for the massive amounts of stamps issued from 1940's onwards.