How do you Worldwide Collectors Manage it all?

philatelia, back in 2010 I purchased Steiner's pages on CD which includes worldwide to 2010 and classics up to 1940. Having individual countries, most times broken down by years or decades as pdfs allows me to just print what I want. This allows me to jump around from country to country and only print pages when I have accumulated what I think are enough stamps to justify mounting them.

An example right now is Chile. Like many countries, over the years I have accumulated many stamps from Chile but then, I purchased an old collection and that collection, among all the countries in the album, had a lot of Chilean stamps and my interest was piqued and I started to buy a bunch of stamps from Chile on ebay and suddenly I have a boatload of stamps that I am selecting from and mount. I focused on just printing the airmail stamps from Chile initially and so I only printed the pages from the Steiner CD that were relevant. And so it goes...I jump around a lot and I like that. It allows me to start fresh on something new if I get tired of working on a particular country's stamps.

Back when I was in college I had asked for the Scott Blue International Albums. Amos Press had a 4-volume set that had pages for only the classics to 1940 and commonwealth to 1952. After I found Steiner, I quickly dumped that as the pages were so incomplete. It still is on my shelf and I have slowly transferred stamps, country by country to Steiner pages. I also stopped using all of the Scott Specialty albums I had purchased up to that point because the supplements were simply too expensive to maintain an up to date album. I now supplement my Scott Specialty albums with Steiner pages.

I am cheap and I like cheap stamps. Some might call me an accumulator or even be a bit critical because I don't focus on one particular thing but that is actually far from the truth. I have specialized collections of US plate number coil used singles, GB machins (I also have a CD of Deegam's Machin Handbook which is exhaustive and exhausting). I recently devoted a lot of time to Romania and I can see myself diving in more to pre-1940 Romania again. There is just a lot there for someone to dive into.

There is only one country that I have tried to collect exclusively mint and that is South Korea and only because I started collecting South Korea while I was living there otherwise I would not do that for any other country. I just don't have the interest in collecting mint stamps (nor the funds) and I find used stamps infinitely more interesting anyway.

So how do I house all those pages? Right now I have 5 tall bookshelves in my office, 3 of which contain mostly 3-ring binders for album pages. The binders house pages in alpha order by country name although I have separated some countries into individual binders just because the collection has grown to a point where it seems justified. I just did this with Botswana in fact. I am lucky in that I work in a department of our hotel that has had a need for 3-ring binders for many years..large 4" binders that can house a lot of pages. At some point they start to wear to a point that they need to be replaced and I am able to take home the "worn out" binders thus saving me huge amounts of money for storage. These would otherwise be thrown away. The binders are never so worn out that they are not serviceable and I have most of the ones I have taken home since I really began to take off on worldwide stamps in 2010. Keep in mind that I don't print all pages for any given country so I still have a long way to go before I line every bookshelf with albums.

Paper? I use a Neenah paper product called astrobrights. This paper is 65lbs and the color is Stardust White. It is actually kind of a bright ivory with very light speckles of color in it. This and Scott mounts are probably my biggest expenses other than the stamps themselves. I don't like hinges, even for used stamps.

These days I take the Steiner pdf file I want to print, take my paper and head off to Fedex Kinko's and ask them to print my pages on to my paper for me rather than print on my home printer. I calculated this as being less expensive than if I were to continually have my printer cartridges refilled at Costco which also recently became inconvenient for me anyway because the store we go to regularly curtailed cartridge refilling services.

I do not draw any lines. Covers are a way of enhancing a country collection in my opinion and I have boxes of covers...even everyday US mail that comes into my mailbox. If there were any other items like booklets, FDCs, etc...that I picked up, I would add them to the collection for that country. Steiner provides a blank quadrille page that you can add a title to. I used these for supplementing when I have lots of minor varieties or items like covers or FDCs. I am not really interested in meter covers but if it has a stamp on it, I save it. Also, yes, I have another line in that I only collect used except for South Korea.

I try to buy collections, kiloware or large lots and calculate in advance the per stamp cost of both stamps and shipping. Anything less than .10c per stamp is, in my opinion, worth considering. Collections I mainly buy at our local stamp bourse. This seems to be the way to get some better material without paying an arm and a leg for it. Usually, again, when you look at the per stamp cost, it works out pretty well. The last collection I bought was an old HE Harris Statesman album that contained 4700 stamps. I paid his marked price as that works out to about .01c per stamp.

I hope this helps answer your questions. Let me know if you have more, I am happy to answer them.

My main stamp storage method are stockbooks. The stockbooks are arranged by continent, and within the continent alphabetically by French country name, with one shelf per continent, roughly. France and its current territories has its own shelf, so do Germany, the U.S., and Canada, because there are also FDC albums and yearly collections associated that need room. Within a continent, the countries in which I have sufficient holdings have their own stockbook by themselves. Special countries which straddle continents (the UN, Turkey, the UAR) are on a separate shelf, along with my old worldwide Harris albums from my grandfather. My son counted a few months ago and there were 175 "books of stamps" altogether. I will need a to get a couple more as Belgian Congo-Zaïre-RDC and well as Europe N-Z have recently expanded quite a bit. Then I have boxes of covers, duplicates, and "things that do not fit in stockbooks" in several drawers and cupboards. I show the arrangement in pictures in the My stamp Room thread ( thestampforum.boards.net/post/64922/thread ).

Hi

I am with you Terri.  I do not see how they do it.  I collect only 3 countries and world-wide boggles the mind.  Even your 20 countries is mind boggling.

However, the ww collectors always have something to collect and work on.  They can buy large collections, bulk lots, etc. and always find something.   In some ways I envy them.

Jerry B  

I dunno... I gather stamps, get a huge backlog of a few countries, and add one of 'em in.  My binders are grouped by region (continent), but overflow routinely. I'm into 2 bookcases not counting literature and unsorted stuff. If it creates less "awe", I say I'm worldwide, but I only have a handful (maybe 12?) countries that I am even slightly satisfied with. But I see stamps for sale for ridiculously low prices, I tend to buy 'em and let the other shoe fall later.

A worldwide collector's work is never done!

I just started collecting in March of this year. I decided to focus on US because I assumed that would be plenty to keep me busy. I was certainly right about that! But then someone gave me an old collection that they didn't want anymore. It wasn't in great shape, but it did have stamps from quite a few countries around the world. It's not what I would call a "collection", but a good place to start. For the moment, those are sitting somewhere to be dealt with later.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with my US collection. I'll get to the rest of the world in a couple of years.

Cut-off year: 1980 (around Disney, Princess Di, Silver Wedding)
Storage: Vario G binder.
Which catalog? Scott supplement by SG
Album: Steiner, some custom as needed, print on demand. I add cat numbers and page numbers
Collect to the album: Yes
Area: British Commonwealth, around 170 countries so far with at least  few stamps.  primary is common KGVI and pre-60 QEII.

For organization as my collection grew started to rely on StampManage (software) to inventory everything. Stamp Manage is a Microsoft Access based database that has data for most any country listed in the Scott catalog. The listings are not complete but better than nothing as I have supplemented a lot entries myself (over 8000). The program uses Scott numbers so perfect for using Steiner pages. The data is NOT locked in any way so you can export it in any number of ways. That is, if you wanted to use Excel, you could export all the countries you want into an excel file. It includes image for many issues but not as many as listed. It grows in part based upon user feedback. I do have to keep track of entries not in StampManage and add those as time permits.

I initially started with spreadsheets scarfing information from various places but this got very time consuming. This has been a key to staying sane. I do not have many want lists or spares list yet in StampManage as my focus has been on getting and not disposing.

Now, no matter what country, I can quickly check StampManage to see if I own it.  

This works for me because I collect more by album space and not seeking out other material (covers, cinderellas. etc).that requires more thought to organize.

Since I am just getting back to my collection after almost 20 years, I decided to pick up a disc of the Steiner Album pages, which arrived yesterday. I had started using his site way back then for some of my albums. Once I get caught up (LOL), I thought I would get the subscription, or if it takes too long just get another disc.

Now I just need to figure out where to start.

Well, I thought about starting a new thread for this, but then I thought, perhaps this thread started by Terri (philatelia) might be a better place, since my new idea is based on a WW collection.

First, I want to acknowledge that it was Chris (cjoprey) with his "Great Re-set" for Belgium and Al (angore) with his "A Stamp for Every Country" project that have inspired my new direction.  As I work on some of my WW countries like Cape of Good Hope, Hong Kong, Danish West Indies, Denmark, Germany, Kenya-Uganda-Tanganyika, etc., I realize that there is no way I will have enough time to do much with many other countries unless I limit my interests even further than I have already done (mainly pre-1930).

So, my new idea is not one stamp per country pre-1930, but rather one set or stock sheet per country.  As there are 10-15 countries for which I already have more in-depth collections, I will probably keep some of those, but I think that outside of that certain group, I will start getting really selective and either pick one set or good representative stamps that fit on one sheet from each country.

Some may argue that this plan sounds a bit like what the blue Scott International (Jr.) albums do already, similar to what Jim (jkjblue) shows on his blog and in his thread, but the key difference for me will be that for the most part, the Scott Int'l often only provides spaces for partial sets, which is one the things I have never liked about it.  But using the Hagner stock sheets, I will be able to choose the stamps I want, create the old album header for the top of each sheet, and work on filling in the sets that appeal to me most.

I think I have found a solution to my own dilemma in this case, and it will mean that I need to start getting much more selective in the future.

As always, comments and other opinions are welcome, of course!

Do you think you will stick with pre-1930 sets or sheets Chris Beryllium Guy ? I did not see you mention downsizing your collection as I know some members have and just concentrate of specialized areas. Personally I have not reached the point of selling off countries or collections. I have sold off a few Cinderella items of late but have added others so I seem to fail at downsizing.. . As I have mentioned in posts before I limit serious buying to Canada and provinces along with British America countries. I will buy old world wide collections if they are presented to me and are cheap just for the fun of going through to them. I try and move the left overs on pretty fast so my total duplicates would fit in a small stock book. 

Cut-off year: None - I like new issues from too many countries to have a hard cut-off date for any country
Storage: Vario F binder (prefer them over the Vario-G, more compact per album, and pages easier to turn in them in my opinion)
Album: I make my own. The stamps go in Vario stockpages and I make "page keys" to map out where stamps go on each page and place the keys between the stock pages. (See the "Show Your DIY album pages" thread for examples of my page keys)
Which catalog? A combination of Scott, Michel, Gibbons or Yvert and if possible the relevant local specialized catalogue for the country, synthesize all the info and make pages based on that (something that my work at Colnect helps with greatly)
Collect to the album: Once made, yes
Area: Whole World - with focuses on Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA. But I've never met a stamp I didn't like and someday will get around to making albums for the country it comes from.

Many countries usually have at least definitive set that is classic for the country. For example, we know the Cape of Good Hope set.