Breaking the mold
As some of my single country collections have lately reached over 50% completion level, I’m beginning to approach the situation where I have to start making some major decisions about the final storage and output of these collections. Should I continue to keep them on pre-printed / DIY stamp album pages. The more I have thought about it, the more I believe I need to break the mold. Pick up the best of both worlds so to speak.
What I like with stock books is the ease of use. Just place a stamp (of any size) inside the sleeve, and it’s there safe and sound. As there’s no need to mount or hinge anything, this approach is a huge time saver. And the fact stock books have very low operating costs doesn’t hurt either.
With pre-printed (DIY) stamp album pages I like the fact that there is a space (and some background details) for each and every stamp. And the possibility to pick out a page and display it as separate entity makes them very attractive as well.
If I didn’t have to consider the total storage costs of a worldwide stamp collection, I would not have a problem here. There are several solutions that already combine these factors. Such as hingless stamp album pages by commercial manufacturers, or use of (Showguard or similar) mounts on DIY stamp album pages, or use of clear/transparent stock pages on top of DIY stamp album pages. But as I do need to consider how I spend my stamp related budget, these options are definitely heavily overpriced.
Anyway, here’s my first attempt to break the mold. Below is a normal stock book page, but it has printed placeholders for missing stamps:
Some West-German stamps on stock book page. Notice the use of placeholders for missing stamps.
I think it looks somewhat good, and cost wise it is also very cheap roundabout. The only “real expense” is the price of keeping spaces blanc for missing stamps.
I’m quite sure out there are collectors who have tried or use similar method. I’d definitely like to read of Your experiences (pros and cons) and opinions before taking this “experiment” any further.
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Sorry I can’t help you with your question, and I don’t mean to get off subject, but I have a question of my own. I notice that the orange(?) stamp on the bottom row still has a little extra material on it. What is your rationale for not tearing off the two extra bits of material to make the perforations look more regular?
No reason particular…As they don’t bother me, I’ve just left them as is.
The display looks great Keijo.
I use a combination of hingeless and DIY pages for my WW collection, but I also have a couple of small topical collections that are mounted in stockbooks with generous space surrounding them as you have done here.
Leaving extra space by skipping rows to enable the entire stamp to be shown does add quite a bit to the cost for a large collection though.
Thanks for the reassurance, Keijo. I was worried that you would say that it would be considered altering the stamp and thus devalue it.
I like your method of space filler markers in your pages. Some counts seem to really get out of hand like Russia. Russia has some interesting stamps, but there’s lots of them by the 1960’s. I’ll bet Russia alone could take up 10 stockbooks by itsef. No matter which way you go, stockbooks, printed pages or albums, it will take up a lot of space in the end to account for the majority of issues, especially from the 1980’s to the present.
I can say that the 6000+ Soviet stamps will require only 6 or 7 thick (64 page) stockbooks. LOL… So far I’ve got approx. 35% completion with Soviet era stamps and it fits into 2 heavy stockbooks.
Keijo
wow, just found your blog via a search on Nicaragua official stamps – another topic
Anyway my questions today are related to the “breaking the mold” post. I have many preprinted Scott/Minkus/Lighthouse etc albums, which I like because once stamps are mounted they tend to stay mounted. But I am intrigued with your suggestion. Two questions:
1. regarding the pictures that you include in your post. Are these “loose leaf” stock books or bound stock books?
2. My concern with stock books is that stamps can from time to time fall out of the book. How do you deal with that.
Thank you
Dell
Hi Dell,
I use mainly bound stock books (mainly Lighthouse, but also some Lindner and Davo). The main reason for this is simply total costs / budget required to house a stamp collection of this magnitude.
As for falling stamps… With loose leaf stock pages this can occur if the page is not hard (stiff) enough; it can bend and stamps may fall out. The solution to this is simple: choose a better brand with stiffer pages…. With bound stock books this problem applies mainly to black page stock books IMHO. These have occasional issues with strips falling apart (and making the stamps fall out). This is why I personally have stopped buying black paged stock books; and prefer 16 or 32 white pagers only these days.
Keijo
I use stockbooks for my worldwide collection too – but I stop at the 1930s to keep it manageable.
One idea you might consider is the way you are presenting your stamps. The method you are using is effective in use of space but not terribly attractive, as you have not tried to present a symmetrical layout of sets etc. I have found that you can get a reasonable density of stamps per page – and an attractive layout, as you can use (more or less) all the rows of the stockbook page, but leave gaps on the sides – much like the printed album pages.
I also use small white cards (with calligraphy) to head up each country or major section – fairly easy to do with a bit of practice. I add handwritten notes with small card to describe particular issues/features
It just means that the whole collection is a lot more attractive to look at.
Hope this helps…
Hi Hilary,
I agree that separating the sets by space could make the collection pages look more attractive. But based on my “experiments” I’d say that the costs (and increased need of space) could easily become too heavy if applying this into a grand scale collection – for example I expect my collection to house approx. 562 stock books WHEN/IF completed… In that scale even the most modest changes in stamp density easily scale as tens of new stock books…. But I’ve come up with couple of new alternative, more “display friendly” methods I’ll try to write about in near future.
oh, and an additional advantage is for many african countries i have mint (and unfortunately previously mounted with hinges) stamps and I don’t want to re-hinge them or spend the money on mounts (as i do for mint Europe in my DIY albums). So stockbooks especially seem the way to go when I reorganize them. Now to talk my wife into a nice set of shelves for “the stamp room”.
Keijo,
Don’t you think it would be easier and cheaper to use DIY pages (from Bill Steiner on CD) & then hinge stamps since you collect used or CTO, you don’t need mounts (which are way more expensive than hinges).
That way you could only print out pages where you have most of the stamps & wait to procure others. You won’t have as many blank pages.
Ram
@Ram… Few years back I did some research where I calculated the total costs of various “stamp friendly” storage methods – http://www.stampcollectingblog.com/storage-summary.php
The total cost of DIY album pages would become over 2x more expensive than use of stock books – even when using hinges!!! I’m not saying the figures I came up are “universal / absolute truth” (as the availabililty and pricing of products ranges from country to country), but I would consider them as a rough guideline that any collector can use as a starting point for their own calculations.
As for being easier… It all depends on how you view at it… Personally I like the stockbook way: just slide the stamp in / out of the sleeve when required. Fast and easy… With hinges and mounts, it gets much more complicated and slower IMHO.
I agree it it MUCH slower to make DIY (or use Steiner’s) album pages, but I enjoy seeing a description of the stamp next to it. My plan is to continue to print album pages for Europe but use stockbooks for the rest of my ww collection — a “balanced approach”.