Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

As someone who has come back to the hobby for the third time in my life, and actually getting serious about it for the first time, reading these posts and the number of stamps and binders you all have in your collections is awe inspiring, motivating, and a little intimidating. I almost feel unworthy of adding to the discussion.

What I'm trying to figure out is how you track what you already have. Are you putting little check marks in an old Scott catalog? creating spreadsheets? some form of software? maybe you just grab a handful of stamps out of a glassine and start flipping pages to see if you have those already mounted in the proper place? This really has me curious.

- Lance

I scan everything that passes my desk,
so I have 400,000 images
That could be stamps, meters, cinderellas, text notes, ephemera,
booklets, postmarks, ad nauseum.

I gave up counting stamps after passing John Lennon's record (627 stamps)
Just seemed like folly.




With an image based database, that's the easy bit
Say a Norway 40 ore, stamp arrives
Just insert the text string "40o" and up pops every example you have.

Duplicates immediately go in the free swap basket for SCF members

No spreadsheets, no specialists software, no endless thumbing through Albums.
Just a scanner and the world's best (opinion) file manager
XYPlorer

Lance { Going Postal } asked " How you track what you already have " Simple answer ,is I have no clue what I have . I have albums and binders that I have not open up for years . I know what I don't have .

That may sound strange ,but my goal is to see what the limits are for one person to collect in a worldwide collection ,I hope someday to have a decent worldwide collection and have fun doing it .

My collection isn't a one trick pony show of filling empty spaces in a pre-printed album . I have some interesting fun stuff like Forgeries ,Cinderella stamps , U.S. Plate Number Coils , Clipper Cover collection , Spanish Civil War issues, Early British Plate numbers and corner letters ,Swiss Officials,Iceland number cancels ,Album pages for stuff rarely seen like the Black Flag Republic ,China Liberated Areas and other stuff that rarely comes on the market .

I should tell you I hope to pick up a new area in the next two weeks that my collection is weak in , it depends how much I spend depends on what my Disney stock does tonight when earning are released ,goes my way then the collecting area will get some serious attention .

There is ALWAYS a new area to start expanding into .

I don't know exactly what I have and I haven't yet reached the point where I worry about that since I haven't really had new batches of stamps to weed through. For anything new that I get, I go through the process of identifying them and placing in glassines with a narrow strip of a white index card that lists the catalog numbers for what is in the glassine (10 unique stamps per glassine max). The white index card tells me I have not reconciled this with what is already mounted. When I find the time, I open the binder and check to see if I need to fill a space. Anything that remains in the glassine would then be declared a duplicate and I will either insert another thin index card strip, but this time one of color, to indicate the glassine is full of duplicates or replace the white strip with one of color and rewrite the catalog numbers that remain. At a glance, this becomes an easy way to know what glassines I need to care about should I want to print new pages and mount more stamps.

That said, I will someday create a list of everything I have mounted. But, it might be easier just to keep track of everything I don't have, which is significantly less, especially for certain year ranges. Perhaps a combination of both. Keeping track of duplicates is a very different task.

Going Postal,
I do use red tick marks in a 1992 Scott catalog to indicate that I have the stamp. What it does not tell me is whether the stamp is in my 11 volume Haris collection, my 6 volume Scott International, various country albums, my box full of glassines with to be mounted stamps, or some combination. Some stamps I will have mounted in three different places and that is why my total mounted is over 100,000 stamps and my total different mounted stamps is under

For areas of high concentration such as US, Germany, Italy, Canada I find it easier to keep track of what I don't have. I keep simple lists of scott numbers I need in either notepad or excel spreadsheet. Easier to keep track of the 300 stamps you need then the 2300 stamps you have.

Going Postal, I tried various ways to track what I have. Most of my collecting history I did not keep any record other than what I spent.

I tried check marks but too confusing as not enough information as to what I really have, and I could not always get that check in the exact spot on the fine printed catalogs. And with want lists.. I found doing this more tedious than data entry in a spreadsheet.

When I got a computer that had spreadsheets for my daughter for college in 2010, I got one for myself too. I saw what a spreadsheet could do and so started my listings.

I do this tedious thing because, at the present time, I just want to know:
What I do have
What I don't have
How many do I have
How much it cost me
What the catalog value is
What is the condition of what I have, such as if mint, used, a block, a cover, etc.

It is slow, and I do a spread sheet when I add something to a country. This lets me review what I may not have looked at in years and so correct misidentified stamps or note small flaws I may have missed. I enjoy going through the collections again, and occasionally, I find a pleasant surprise. I don't like sitting at the computer entering data. But, for me, the good outweighs the bad.

Hi everyone. I was just reading through this and am very humbled. With respect to tracking though, I have been using a purchased database product for about 20 years and have found it to be awesome. I can run reports, want lists, totals, etc. I just spent several hours today adding to a few countries. I used to do the tick marks in the catalog and decided to embrace technology! I would really recommend it! Thanks to all of you for helping me continue to learn about my lifelong hobby (50 years now!)

SHADES ----- There seems to be a lot of questions when ever I discuss the number of stamps in my collection . A area that needs to be clear up is how many different stamps I have in my albums .

What is consided different ?

Below I put a scan of "different" stamps that I classify as different in my collection . , other posters here differ or they are not understanding when I say these are different ,since I don't have over the 250 different worldwide specialized catalogs or reference books to see what all the experts classify as different .

Since I am in a race to see how far I can get in my life time,I don't have time many specialist have to research each and every color/shade variety with tons of catalogs. I mount them and call them different ,as for you make your own decision and put in your collection with what is comfortable to you . .

Philippe Ferrary had long discussions and opinions at stamp club meetings over this same subject 120 years ago in Paris and with dealers as he traveled around Europe , He was the first to make this a issue .

FLOORTRADER - My OCD kicked in when I saw your suggestion. I had heard of random sampling before but did not think of applying it to the collection. My binders vary from 4" to 1" to stockbooks to country albums and, with that variety, I did not think sampling would work. However, I immediately had to try it .... twice. Each time I started at a different random spot in the collection. What was absolutely amazing was that the two estimates were VERY close. One gave me just over 176,000 and the other just under 184,000. In terms of % difference, that is amazing to me. I do not remember enough statistical analysis to know if that falls within expected parameters, but it was a great suggestion. Thank you!

In response to your recent post about shades. I tend to do exactly the same thing as you. If it looks different, then it is different. And as to counting, if it is in the album, then it is counted.

BACKROADS --- Congratulation on reaching that level , the difference between the two totals is about 4.5% which sounds close enough .

When discussing shades each collector has their own opinion .

Going into a different direction as a worldwide collector ------- Each collector has to decide how they are going to develop their worldwide collection .

The most common choice is to fill blank spaces in a worldwide collection with the cheapest stamps possible . That is the biggest type of worldwide collections we see at stamp auctions .

The second most common collections we see are those collectors who chose to develop one or two countries into a more advance collection . Some even have five or more countries they enjoy and build up . The Cherrystone Stamp Auction firm even wrote about this type of Worldwide collecting back around 2004-5 in one of their catalogs .

The third area that appears once in a while are the ones who still hold themself's as worldwide collectors but add more expensive stamps . Thru their collection you find some very nice and expensive auction type material ,these are usually pulled by the dealers or auction firms to be sold seperately .


After many years of viewing various collections at stamp auction firms across the country and reading the many auction catalogs , there seems to be a big group of countries that are missing or are very weak in these various worldwide collections . That sparked my interest and decided to go after country lots at auction for those rarely appearing countries . Those would round out my collection and give me a higher level of attention as the years went by .

floortrader, in my opinion you have at least one area that rarely appears at auction, british New Republic.

I don't remember when I saw it or where in this forum you showed it, but really very impressive for a worldwide collector.

New Republic is a country I have 0 stamps. Same with early Uganda and British Madagascar. They are all kinda ugly issues, but they are legit issues.

Good luck, and hope competition is not too tough. It is really stiff competition for rarely appearing areas, ie early Ethiopia ovpts, Indian states, and spanish colonies, to name only a few. I rarely get collections that have these, as when they come up prices are in high percent of scott.

Hunh?



C'mon, man. That ain't bad.

(I can only show about half of these...we'll have to wait for floortrader to show us a full page.)

I confess I neglect the last couple letters of the alphabet in my albums, I concentrate on A-G too much.