As much as I have enjoyed having every country housed in a single volume, this 1300 page behemoth was a little unwieldy to handle, especially when working with stamps at the inside margins. And I was increasingly running into a stamps on facing pages catching at the corners. So when Subway Stamp Shop announced a sale, I bought two 4 inch G&K International Binders ($20 each, cheaper than I've seen them on eBay), stocksheets made specifically for the Internationals, and glassine interleaving. While watching TV, I split the single volume into two binders and inserted the interleaving between each page--in addition to solving the problem of adjacent pages rubbing against each other, it actually adds a touch of class to the albums. The downside is that with interleaving, the dual volumes are still pretty heavy. But the pages do lie flatter and it is easier to work with stamps no matter where they fall on the page.
The stocksheets are an experiment. If you aren't familiar with these, the International ones are thinner and more flexible than standard stocksheets. I put a set of the 5 row ones at the back of each of the volumes. The idea is to have a place to put random stamps until I can place them where they belong. This includes stamps that on occasion have fallen out the volume proper. I'll report back when I learn if this system works.
The famous stamp collector Josiah Lilly said that there were 100,000 postage stamps he wanted for his collection and he succeeded in acquiring 77,000. My considerably easier target is 35,000 of the more common stamps from 1840-1940 contained in the Scott Blue International Album Volume 1. This blog will record my progress, provide general information about Classic era philately and hopefully encourage other "Blue" collectors.
2 comments:
Good job on your progress! Becuase of your blog I've been focusing on my 1840-1940 collection and I did the same thing you did. I had to split up the albums and put in interleavings. I wound up getting two gently used blue binders. I'll have to check out that stocksheet idea.
I have been a Minkus guy since day one, but I have the same problems.
Last fall bought used a 1956 two volume Supreme Global, merged it with my childhood Master Global and now I have a 4 volume behemoth current to 1967. And I have 6 countries I took out and tossed, but even still, I am out of space. The stamps themselves make the albums thick. Then adding interleaving makes them thicker. I already picked up another binder though haven't done the shift yet.
I only interleave if I have stamps on both sides of a page. I am afraid if I interleaved every page, I would need a 6th binder right now.
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