Organizing your Stamp Collection - Part 1

The idea for this topic came to my mind recently and while thinking about it, I thought I might as well discuss the organizing of stamps as a basis before documenting begins. It is highly important to organize your collection so that you certainly enjoy and is easier for documenting when the time comes. Having stamps just in a stockbook at random will be extremely hard if you have more than 3 stockbooks worth of stamps. A well organized stamp collection not only makes your life much easier but looks better as well. Of course I’m going to discuss collections within stockbooks not albums as that is what I have. 

My method of organization, I feel, is much easier for the new beginners than for veterans although they can certainly still use this method. Feel free to tell me about how you organize your own collection!

For the first aspect I divide stamps by Continents. For those not in the know, there are 7 continents, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, Europe and yes Antarctica as well. This makes sorting countries easier if you know the countries well enough or have a general idea of where they might be located. One of the biggest help, if your old school, is an atlas or if you prefer new technology Google “world map” and you should get a version of a map which would help you locate those mysterious countries that you are not familiar with.

Once you have sorted them into this larger structure, it is time to subdivide them into regions. This is a hard part, especially if you’re not familiar with the divisions within each continent. As an example, all of Asia is too large as a whole collection titled “ASIA” and finding a specific country will not be easy in this sort of collection. To make it easier for documentation and finding, subdivisions are necessary.  The question certainly arises on how this subdivision should take place. Below is my recommendation of how I do it and it is of course open to changes if they do not suit your needs or you find them weird.

Asia is a subdivided it into 5 divisions:

East Asia – Includes China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea.                                                      

Southeast Asia – Includes Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Timor Leste and the Philippines.

The Subcontinent – Includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.

Middle East – Includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine Territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Central Asia – Includes Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan.

By subdividing like I’ve shown it is easier to add into the collection when you get a kiloware lot as well as making it easier to document as you can go region by region which puts less pressure on you and makes it seem less of a monumental task. These subdivisions also help you in figuring out where historical regions go; especially ones which do not exist anymore like the Indian states or French Indochina, into their proper places.

Using this organizational structure it is easier not only for documentation but will save you space and time when you get new stamps or when you want to show off your collection. It is a handy way to do it but I have to remind everyone that this is just my version of it, yours might be totally different or the same! I’ll continue this same topic this week, focusing on another area which is confusing, Africa! I’ll see you real soon!