Foxing, rust, staining… The arch nemesis of stamp collectors has about as many names as forms. Though I try to be very picky with what I include into my stamp albums, every once and awhile I notice that some stamp in my collection has developed the dreaded red brown spots. Usually I just go sigh, and bin the stamp… But sometimes it’s not so easy, especially if the stamp in question is not so common. My question is, what do You do with stamps that show any signs of foxing / rust?
Not so long ago I started experimenting with something I’d describe as mounting collections digitally. In practice, it’s very similar process to creating DIY stamp album pages, but there’s one major exception: the pages are never printed on paper. They remain in digital format all the way, meaning that I even mount my stamps (or more precisely images of them) digitally too… Below is a small teaser how my collection of “Russian Empire era Finland” looks when done like this.
I’m a general worldwide collector, but I do love to dig in deeper too. My current approach in building “slightly specialized” country collections, as I pick up any easy-to-spot differences I happen to come across. And then I randomly do dig in a lot deeper (like with the Hungarian Castle-definitives or GRD 5-year plan definitives).
One of the most often discussed topics relating to stock books seems to be the question about page color. Visually speaking I do prefer black background as it makes the stamp stand out. But that said, I have few years back opted out of buying new black background page stock books due to quality issues. The problem can be best summed up by an photo.
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 makes one way to keep a stamp collection in order better than other? IMHO absolutely nothing… I’ve seen collections ordered by shape of stamp, size of stamp, by colors etc. And against all the “official recommendation” odds, they do work and make their owner happy. That said, this post is about how I keep my worldwide collection in order. I know I’ve covered this topic briefly several times, but let’s digg a bit further this time.
One of the topics wished for last month’s survey was the question how I keep my collection. Let’s begin this journey with a topic that is IMO essential, but far too few discussed question – how to keep a stamp collection safe from dangers of natural surroundings.
So far I’ve focused on “old school” methods for stamp collection storage on this series. Let’s take a look of some of the new (”only” 50 years old) and intuitive ways.
Blank album pages are…well, blank…something a collector can fill anyway desired. The most common blank stamp album pages are not totally blank, but they have grid of grey dots as well as black page border. These are usually called quadrilled album pages.
Many stamp collectors will try and use DIY stamp album pages because they want to either save money, take part in exhibitions, or they are not happy with commercial offerings. Anyone wishing to enter the path of DIY album pages needs to make some long-term decision and be prepared to pay them accordingly.