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!
