Storing Stamp Collections: What you need to know! 

Your channel is one of the greatest things to happen to philately in years. I can not over express my appreciation for what you are doing.

I know I shouldn't, but I'm clicking the LIKE button even before I watch the video. That's how much I trust the quality of your work.

Collecting Protecting Preserving is a gift to future generations of what otherwise would be lost for all time.

My wife and I sat down one afternoon and watched every episode of yours on RU-vid. Great service to philataly.

Such a comprehensive look at stamp protection and storage. Great program, Graham. I shall nominate you for the Nobel Prize in Philately.

Geez I never realized how in depth stamp storage and presentation is

Your channel helped motivate me to start my own RU-vid channel all about stamps! I hope we can get the younger generations collecting stamps in the future!

Ok im 41 been collecting stamps on and off since i was 9 years old. Got into Pokemon cards and Lego collecting... Came across this channel the other day and i want to get back into stamp collecting. Awesome work man. Love it. You are doing wonders for the community!!!

These videos are very useful and fun. I've been a collector for 43 years and wish that all this information had been available when I started collecting way back in 1977.

being on lockdown during this pandemic and revisiting my old stamp collection has been extremely therapeutic.

Despite being an experienced collector, I have a lot of fun with your videos. A great way to attract new generations to this hobby. I also hit the like button before I see it. THANK YOU.

Cochin Anchal stamps at 17:57 👌 This is where I live right now, in the south-west of India. Used to be a princely state till 1948. Now known as the city of Kochi.

It is fascinating to have discovered this platform for the first time since my over 30 years in philatelic exploration. Thanks immensely for the encyclopedic journey you have taken me. God bless you.

I always eagerly wait for your next video to arrive as they are filled with valuable information for philatelists. For storing and preserving stamps I go with stock books as it's the easiest and fastest way to store your stamps but I agree that mounted stamps last more as they are less prone to damage. As far as hinges are concerned it has a certain old charm associated with it but is out of fashion nowadays due to the time and effort that it takes. Best of luck for the future videos and yes the special effects that you included at the start of the video is amazing! Keep up this wonderful work.

As someone who is sort of new at stamp collecting, 3 years in, I truly enjoy watching your videos. I don't know any other collectors other than my trusted stamp store dealer. Keep up the good work!

Excellent, as always. If collectors live in very humid climates, extra care needs to be taken in storing your stamps. I live in Thailand and keep my stamps a bookcase with a door to enclose the stamps and use silica gel to keep the humidity low. Farcent sells disposable dehumidifiers for a couple of dollars each that are handy to collect the excess moisture in the air and are replaced when full. If you are lucky enough to have central air\heat in your home that controls humidity, make certain that where you store your stamps is 50% humidity or less.

Thank you. I have been a philatelist since my childhood

Would you mind eventually doing a "tour" of your collection? I know it is probably quite vast, but it would be quite enjoyable to explore it together

Tons of great information!!!! I hate it when I see stamps in photo albums with the sticky pages. They will destroy the stamps of time or when you try to remove them. Keep up the great work cant wait till the next video!!!

Another well-researched and creatively presented episode. It amazes me that you don't have thousands of viewers. Please keep up the good work. You are making stamp collecting interesting and approachable.

I bought some beautiful stamps at the post office today and thought, "I ought to start collecting stamps." Did a RU-vid search and this was the first video that came up. After watching it, now I DEFINITELY want to start collecting stamps! Thank you for presenting this topic in such an engaging, well-researched, and fun way.

Thank you for another great video. I have collected since 1958 and have been a member of APS since 1968, but I always learn from and enjoy your videos. There is one more agent of deterioration that I could think of. That would be pressure from laying albums flat, and stacking on top of them, which might cause stamps to stick to album pages.

You should do a series on your collection! I'd love to see whats in those stockbooks

I use hinges for used stamps of very low value. My definition of low value is if the stamp's real value is less than four times the cost of the Scot mount then they get a hinge. I don't use albums with illustrations or "blank spots" or "empty spaces." I use 32# acid free paper and print my own design album pages with a faint grid to make it easy to keep the stamps mounted square to the page. I use pigment inks which are less volatile and I use them sparingly so my page is over 99% white. All my mint stamps go in Scot mount and all the nicer used stamps do as well. The rest are hinged and yes I keep hinged stamps on the same page as Scot mounted stamps. When I upgrade to a mint stamp I carefully remove the used one and replace it with the mint example in a Scot mount. This makes it more readily apparent which stamps are mint and which ones are used. Sometimes overprints and precancels will look like canceled stamps from a distance and some stamps with only one color ink of the same color of the cancelation are hard to distinguish from mint stamps if all mounted the same way but it is easy when I use my method. Each page gets at the top the name of the stamp issuing entity and the date range for the stamps on the page as well as the kind of stamps for example commemoratives, definitive, air mail, revenue, tax or duck stamps etc. I have a bunch of mamajuana stamps in my collection which I find interesting to include with the other non postal stamps. Since my father, grandfather, grandmother, several uncles and aunts, cousins and great grandparents all worked for the post office at one time or another I also have a lot of postal memorabilia in my collection. My grandfather designed over 100 post marks so i have examples of all those on covers as well as the original art work for most as well as many of the canceling rubber stamps used. My grandmother did some cachets for first day of issues when my grandfather was postmaster. I have my father's leather letter carrier bag and each style of uniform and patches he and my grandfather wore. I have the controversial Farley souvenir sheets as a complete mint sheet with his autograph in the selvage of each. Farley was the postmaster general who made my grandfather post master in 1932. I have a letter from him to my grandfather along with the envelope the letter came in hand addressed by him with the national parks souvenir stamps cut out of their souvenir sheets and applied to the envelope and carefully hand canceled. Farley was sensitive to the wants of philatelists. I have an album just for the postal uniform patches my father, grandfather, great grandfather and other relatives wore. Most people don't know that once upon a time postal workers had government issued brass badges so I have those as well. I also have some uncut sheets. Sheets of stamps have often been (perhaps all still are?) part of larger sheets. I have some of those from the 1940s-1970s. They have not been popular among collectors due to their size but some of us collect them. My grandfather was president of his own stamp club when he was postmaster so he had a keen interest in acquiring unusual postal items and that included uncut sheets which is how I got them. I have them in museum mounted UV proof picture frames though I do keep them shrouded in light proof drapes most of the time.

When you use for over 2000$ in stamps per year for snail mail (in fact, mailart) you do need stock bookS. Great video again, keep up your excellent work 👍🏻😃📬📬📬

Your pronunciation of the word "critters" is so satisfying to listen to! 😆

What an incredible presentation of all the ways for organising stamps!

Hi there my name is Jess Matthews i am new to Stamp Collecting! I have been watching your videos nearly all day now and i absolute love them! They really inspire me and give me ideas for things to look out for thank you so much for all the amazing content you create! -Jess

Ah! Just what I needed! I’m starting to think you’re clairvoyant.

Rare cool August morning, cup of coffee and a new Exploring stamps video.. life is good.

Thank you so much for creating this video! I have been collecting for just over 1 year and have been putting off deciding how I wanted to store and display my stamps. This video gave me the information I needed and the confidence to start my album! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with the community❤️

STAMPEX 2020, I think it’s great that you can turn an incredibly dry topic into an entertaining video that is really useful! It’s very rare that I will sit and watch through a whole video on RU-vid, but I do with all of yours! Great work :)

You are a breath of fresh air in the hobby. Keep doing what your doing.

Fascinating... as always

One terrible environmental destroyer of stamp collections are the collectors who smoke. Your collection and all the ways to store and display will be damaged by second-hand smoke. I have come across many collections reeking of tobacco and coated everything in the collection, yellowing all the stamps. If you are a serious philatelist, quit for the collection and the health and safety of everyone and everything around you and, of course, yourself!

Catching up with all of your videos. Great stuff!!!

Another Great Video! So many good points to think about. I just get the biggest kick out of getting an old stamp album from somewhere. The same goes for old stock books. I use a combination of my own customized pages and albums I download and print. Come to think about it, there really is a high degree of personalizing you can do with a collection. Also really like the comparison between a museum and my stamp collection. Kinda fires me up.

Great presentation! I appreciate the in depth explanation of the concerns and items.

I use nothing but Vario stock sheets for organizing and displaying my stamps. Part of the reason I moved away from mounting in album pages is to allow organizational fluidity in the collection. My desire for building a systematically sound, but still flexible system is partly inspired by watching your series. 🙂 One addition I am working on is to design a set of templates for making pages that would interleave between stock sheets to provide info and commentary about the stamps facing that page and to provide intros to specialized sections. Thank you - probably your best practical knowledge episode!!

Excellent episode. Have learnt so much from your page.

And a quick reminder/suggestion. I would be very interesting to see your collection. We know that you are collecting Cricket stamps but it would be nice to see all that you collect :)

Do a video on your stamp collection........ Waiting to see it!!! Notification Squad 👍🏻♥️

Stampex 2020. Love this video, it helps me to care stamps for preserving History. Hoping the future would love this hobby!

That's interesting about the PVC being a real potential problem for philately because it's well known by many coin collectors that PVC is also a terrible storage material for most coins as well due to the leaching of hazardous chemicals from the PVC.

This was a good and informative video Graham. i'm sure this will guide a lot of collectors in the right direction.

Me having a book of stamps brought from a good collector is a major inspiration for me to continue the legacy of curating those cute stamps including my beloved stamps I have from the Philippines

Thank you for this video. I usually keep my stamps in a stock book and I was planning to buy an Album. But after this video I think a stock book is a better option. And the glassene envolope can solve the duplicate stamp problem. Thank you very much. Great video as usual.

I'm obsessed with your videos and learning so much. You really are helpful to those of us who are clueless with our great finds. I inherited from my grandfather, great grandfather, and great-great grandfather. So I have many many beautiful and rare stamps from all over the world. I would love to see a video explaining different perforation and using gauges. Oh and a whole series on US presidents. While watching videos of valuable stamps, I'm amazed at how many I have.

An excellent comprehensive video. If you are storing your stamps in stockbooks, ensure you regularly 'air' them. This could be as simple as opening each page every few months. Don't over fill them - if your album is bulging, this can damage your material. Also, keep stamps with 'rust' (a type of fungus that stains stamps) in a completely separate album, away from any other albums. The spores can travel and contaminate a collection that is rust-free. :D

I recently inherited a stamp collection, and have been using 25 bin Stanley Tool Storage Kits to separate stamps based on country; eventually moving them slowly into albums. Not sure how practical it is, but after popping in a gel silica packet or two and storing in a dark location like a closet it seems to be a pretty effective storage method on a budget.

Storage in safes is a big unexplored topic and concern in philately. I've been researching this for years and only have recently made a decision on the safe that I think it is "safe" to store parts of my collection. All ten of the archival issues apply to the internal environment inside a closed safe and has to be addressed in a on going bases. Do not just buy a safe and throw you stamps inside, lock the door and expect everything to be fine. Do your research and consider how to maintain a good environment within a closed safe.

I ultimately put my stamps in albums on blank pages in Scott mounts. The stamps in albums are then organized according to Scott catalog number. I also have stockbooks that are holding places until I am ready to mount. I have both mnh and used collections that I keep separaely. For used stamps I look for cancellations with sock on nose in particular.

Thanks! What you do is awesome! Greetings from Argentina!

great to see people really share the experience !

Hey graham, I recommend making an episode on the postal history of Madeira and the Azores next season. Really interesting, I collect it.

Tks for bringing back the joy of collecting stamps!

I do like what you teach people about on paper collections .

Some subjects I’d love to see covered I the next season: Boer Philately Republic of China philately Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands Falklands Stamps depicted on stamps. Dunno if any of these have already been covered but they are of particular interest to me.

Thanks Graham for a thoroughly interesting and educational video on the storage of a collection. I've been wondering when you might discuss albums and stock books. I've been using stock books for items that I've been accumulating because I'm having a difficult time settling on the a particular subject. I really do love everything because, as you point out, each stamp is a small work of art! This video has prompted me to think about alternatives for storage that I have not considered before. Thanks, and take care.

Thanks for not completely poo-pooing the use of hinges. I don’t use them on mint stamps but will on already hinged and find it satisfying for like you said, nostalgia.

The bane of my stamp collecting career and the 2 post binders that don't allow pages to lie flat. A huge mounting PITA.

And, now I own a Leuchtturm stockbook. I'm not a collector, really, in the classic sense -- but I enjoy having lots of different stamps available (some current issues, some vintage) so I have a selection available for using theme-appropriate postage on postcards and letters. I used to have, well, piles of sheets in their glassine envelopes wherever it occurred to me to stack them -- until you demonstrated that whole sheets will fit in a stock book. So, I bought a stock book. =) Which is far more space-efficient, is easier to move, protects the sheets better, and allows me to find the stamp I'm looking for much more easily. Also, it's just fun to flip through.

Your channel taught me a lot. Thank-you very much for sharing & guiding for caring the stamps !

Excellent video as usual, even if I got the jitters at the thought of gluey fingerprints ending up on the fronts of stamps from moistening hinges that way. : ) Hagner stocksheets are the preferred go-to here (better stiffness, too) as well as stockcards for postage (the boxes that Lighthouse cards are supplied in, in 100s, are excellent to create your own "post office in a box"). Slipcases were slightly glossed over but are very useful for dust protection as well as other pollutants, of course. Keep up the good work! : )

Great video! Thank you Graham!

Another great vidéo, thanks a lot really! For my part, i do use almost all support depending on which part of collect i m dealing with (doubles, to be classified, for trading, classified...) Merci encore pour votre superbe travail de communication...vu depuis le monde entier 😀

Very nice video.

Very informative, thanks Graham...

What a fine video. I wish I had this great advise when I was starting as a collector in my teens. I have a big problem with humidity which is around 85% all year round. I cannot store my collection in an air-conditioned room because of the expense and I have lost many mint stamps because of this. I have decided to keep collecting but this time used stamps. I decided on a new approach against humidity by storing each album in a Ziplock 2-gallon bag from which I suck the extra air. It would seem like the best alternative to the A/C’d room but I wonder if the ZLs might pose a danger be cause of some chemical in the plastic.

My cousin husband gave me her stamp collection after she died. He had it stored in a shed outside and the goats came in and ate some of the stamps. Also some were moldy, so I removed them quickly out of the albums because they was molded. Most of them I got to save. Then I took a shower.

The best channel i've ever met!

Excellent overview.

Lots of info. Very educational. Much appreciated. 👏☺

Thank you! Bill, Ottawa Canada

Extremely helpful video especially for beginners.

Absolutely right I personally collect Afghanistan and Iran and their gum is very poor it rust and stick over time and I have to cover each and every stamp in mounts ect and have to pack their albums in air sealed bags to save them from humidity I generally keep classic stamps in cooler environment it’s a life saver for them It’s my observation these days many countries issue self adhesive stamps many times due to harsh weather they are disastrously effected and we need special care to protect them from environmental changes Thanks 😊

Aah, hunt and hinge albums. I had the Voyager album. As usual, there was good and bad. The good was that even with only a few stamps when starting your collection, you could see (due to the pictures) what other stamps and countries there were, thus greatly increasing your curiosity and geographic knowledge. The HUGE drawback was that they were very inflexible - one quickly had more stamps than empty spaces for some countries (especially the one you lived in or when you inherited stamps from an exotic land) and so you started putting the stamps over pictures for other stamps just to have a place for them (my brother and I called this "faking"). Nevertheless, the whole country could be filled and then what? I remember receiving a huge package of Spanish stamps and quickly filling my 2-3 pages and then being very frustrated. Also hinges - sticky, little demonic nasties that almost turned me off collecting. Now I use black stock books, and just love that I can rearrange them at will to include more and more stamps as my collection grows.

Thank you for the very interesting and informative video.

This is very helpful, thank you.

New to the hobby. This was VERY helpful. Thanks!

I chuckled when you said, "to address" early in the video. Thank you for an informative video!

Just happened upon your video, clever old algorithms! Been 'collecting' stamps for over 30 years hoping my son would become interested, he didn't 🫤 but I've now decided to sort them and put into albums myself and am rather enjoying the process! Everyone seems to sort by country and I feel I want to sort by groups.... (Edited) just found your video on topical collections which has answered the question I was about to ask. So glad I found your videos 🙏🌟 thank you 📯🇬🇧

Great video! really enjoyed it and gave me a lot of information to apply to my collection.

Start of the video is amazing!!!!

Great Video .. Like the Art in the beginning

A really helpful, informative video. Clearly organized and nicely presented, covering a lot of ground. You certainly know your stuff so thank you for sharing. Will check out your others. P.S. The framed picture of the inverted Jenny on your shelf is a nice touch!

VERY INFORMATIVE! I'm in Miami and humidity is a big issue.

Awesome. 👍🏾 Love the background music too.

Very useful information, Thanks a ton

was very eager for another vid :D

Yes its long, but really interesting. Learnt many new things.

All that is very true! Very good video.

Outstanding video!

So it's not a good idea to be smoking a Honduran cigar while sipping on some rum and looking through my collection of Honduran stamps? What about cats -- will they try to attack my mice and goldfish stamps?? Well done on the engaging video. The museum intro was a great hook for leading into the storage discussion. And the jazz guitar background worked well as the musical accompaniment. 10/10. Now to read through the other appreciative comments....

Very true and interesting!

A Soft Spot for hinged albums? You betcha!! 🤓

Absolutely excellent presentation.

Very informative and useful. I use Vario stockbooks (both white as well as black colour pages) for storing the stamps. Bit expensive but with double glassine sheets between two pages, it really protects the stamps.

Thanks for this! Very useful!

My favourite way to store stamps are big stockbooks.