As said in previous post about my collection, stockbooks are my choise. In these I place stamps side-by-side (loosely) in every other row (meaning I use 40-50% of maximum storage capacity); each page accommodates approx. 30 stamps.

I have 4 reasons why I place stamps this way: 1) it looks better (than overcrammed pages) 2) long/tall stamps fit better (and don’t get damaged/stuck with other stamps) 3) there’s room for notes (I insert small pieces of paper where necessary) 4) adding single new stamps/items is somewhat easy as I can always use the extra/spare row either below/above.

Stored this way a complete worldwide collection of 530,000 stamps would take approx. 18,000 stockbook pages; or 562 stockbooks of 32 pages. As stockbooks cost roughly 0,30€/page, the cost of complete worldwide stamp collection storage solution would be 5,400€ – making this is a very space and cost efficient solution.

Another reason I prefer stockbooks is ease-of-use. I think this is pretty self explanatory for anyone who has tried other alternatives.

However, stockbooks are not a problem free solution… Thick stockbooks (meaning 64 pagers) have durability issues; at some point they usually break from the back (binding). The “oh-so-popular” black-paged stockbooks with transparent strips have similar durability issues with glue used on strips (I have 4-5 stockbooks that are falling apart strip by strip)… For these reasons I personally prefer either 16 or 32 A4 sized quality (meaning Leuchturm/Lighthouse, Linder, Edelweis or Davo) stockbooks with white pages.

One of the biggest woes I hear from several short-term/new stockbook users is the need to move stamps around (from page to page, from stockbook to stockbook) as collection grows… Well, it’s bound to happen in most storage solutions unless you preserve an empty space for each stamp from the beginning. One can always make some precautions (like using only every other row) that make this process smoother and in best occasions it can be postponed with several years.

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