Advice on displaying postmarks?

[mourningdoves]

I'm about ready to start organizing my town-and-date postmarks for certain areas, and I'd like to collect some tips on how to do this.

The situation is thus. I've noticed that, for instance, otherwise cheap mixtures from Poland are loaded with town/city postmarks. But I can't just go out and compile a list of every post office in Poland that might have had a named cancellation in its name; the research would be immense, and I'll probably never get most of them anyway. But I'd like to start arranging them in more or less alphabetical order (or alphabetical within voivodes or within some other subdivision; I haven't decided yet) and be able to move them relatively easily if my collection outgrows the allotted space. That pretty much rules out paper and hinges.

Varios are an obvious choice, but that would get expensive fairly quickly.

Cardboard stock pages aren't something I'd consider because the cardboard "pockets" (I know there's a better word but I don't know what it is) would cover up most of the postmark.

There are stock pages that have clear plastic "pockets" (there's that word again!) and black backing paper. Anybody who has bought a large lot at auction or on eBay or probably even at a stamp show knows what I'm talking about. But I worry that the black backing paper would eventually break down and/or damage the contents. Some of that material looks pretty sketchy if you ask me. Is this a valid concern? Are there "good" and "avoid" manufacturers/brand names for these types?

There are stock books. I have a couple from Leuchtthurm/Lighthouse, but they can be pricey, too. Ideally, I'd like more-or-less permanent individual pages that I can put into my own binders. But if there are good clear stock books around that maybe are less tightly bound, and less expensive, than Leuchtthurm's, I'd like to know about them.

Any and all suggestions will be gratefully received and considered.

[JanetC]

mourningdoves, For my US cut squares I use the clear pocket coin sheets. Most of them have 20 "pockets". Hobby Lobby sells packs of 8 pages.

[youpiao]

Oct 12, 2018 21:07:39 GMT -5 JanetC said:

mourningdoves, For my US cut squares I use the clear pocket coin sheets. Most of them have 20 "pockets". Hobby Lobby sells packs of 8 pages.

Good idea. And you could use black paper interleaving, if you like to have a black background.

[alyn]

Good morning mourningdoves, Customized pages you come up with would be OK, I have done this for my German postal centre collection. I used AlbumEasy to come up with pages.

[zepherusbane]

I used pages designed to hold baseball cards to hold postmarks. They hold 9 per sheet and I had bunches of them from when I used to collect cards. They are designed to protect the same way vario pages are, but are a little heavier/thicker than vario pages.

They work well for the typical rectangular shape of US postmarks, but might have a lot of extra space for smaller circular ones which might be better suited to the 20 pocket ones mentioned earlier in the thread.

[doubletransfer]

To better advise, perhaps a few clear scans would be helpful on how you are doing this.

[zepherusbane]

Here is an example of the 9 pocket card holders I mentioned.

[rolf]

Oct 15, 2018 7:38:16 GMT -5 zepherusbane said:

Here is an example of the 9 pocket card holders I mentioned.

I like what you did here. It looks good, and you have flexibility.

[youpiao]

There is also a page designed for smaller format tobacco cards that have 20 pockets.

[zepherusbane]

Oct 16, 2018 0:53:59 GMT -5 youpiao said:

There is also a page designed for smaller format tobacco cards that have 20 pockets.

I think it might be a great idea to get some of both the 20 pocket ones and the 9 pocket ones, that way you could have the larger pockets for postmarks that are too big for the smaller, but still optimize the number of sheets needed by using the 20 pocket ones for the smaller postmarks. 

I see this being similar to how you buy several sizes of Vario pages to hold the different sizes of stamps.  For Varios I find 7 to be the most versatile number of rows for me, I bought some 8 pocket ones a couple weeks back at Hobby Lobby and found the pockets too short several times already.  I decided it's not worthwhile having that extra pocket.  I don't know if card-holders have as many diverse choices in sizes, but I expect the 20 pocket card-holder would be less needed based on my own collection.  I have many that have pretty wide cuts that I wouldn't want to have to trim down to make it fit.

[kacyds]

I use Vario style pages with different amount of rows per page, depends on the size of the postmark. Here is a couple of examples...

[kacyds]

Here is a seller on eBay that I buy my Vario knockoff style of pages. Have bought from numerous times and havent had any problems.

Check it out here...

[zepherusbane]

Oct 16, 2018 14:04:28 GMT -5 kacyds said:

Here is a seller on eBay that I buy my Vario knockoff style of pages. Have bought from numerous times and havent had any problems.

Check it out here...

Prices are great, that's for sure. 


At Hobby Lobby, it's $5 for 5 Showgard Vario pages and the one near me only carries 3 sizes, 8 pocket, 3 pocket, and 2 pocket.  

[mourningdoves]

Some good ideas here; some excellent ones, in fact. As the eminent philatelist King George V might have said, “I knew I could count on youse Bears.”

The mixture of the clear-pocket coin sheets and baseball card sheets sounds like a good idea. It reminded me that I have some business card sheets too. I don’t remember where I got them, and I doubt I could buy them in quantity; I buy most of my Varios 100 per size at a time. I mean, does anybody collect business cards? (Probably, but I don't know anything about that.) And if you don’t, how many sheets would you need? (I dunno, but probably not 100 sheets at a time’s worth.) I’d imagine that I could get JanetC 's coin sheets and zepherusbane 's baseball card sheets in bulk, and maybe youpiao 's tobacco cards, but I don’t know about that. How many tobacco cards are there, anyway? I know the rarest one is Honus Wagner because he didn’t like tobacco and had his card pulled off the market almost as soon as it was released. (My favorite birthday ever involved baseball cards, but it's a long story that also involved beer and some friends of a vaguely reprehensible nature, so I'll let it go for now.)

zepherusbane , I agree about the 8-row Varios. They’re good for a few definitives and Italian parcel post, and that’s about it. I couldn't even use them for the pacchi because once in a while they threw one in that wouldn't fit on an S8, blast it all. I ran into a guy at a stamp show a couple of months ago who was looking for some, and the supplies dealer in residence didn’t even carry that size. I wished I’d had my S8’s in the trunk.

kacyds , I’ll have to take a shot on those ersatz Varios. You got a great look on those pages and pretty much what I'm looking for, but I could take a ride on Space-X (at least one way) for what it would cost to do that with Varios.

doubletransfer , I’d be glad to post a few scans except I don’t have any! I’ve been accumulating postmarks for several years but haven’t ever come up with a clue about how to organize them, so they’re all in boxes or oversized glassines. And alyn , I’ve been trying to stay away from anything having to do with traditional album pages or fixed locations for a similar reason. I could probably get away with doing that for Bulgaria or Albania, or some of the African nations like Botswana from which it's relatively to get nice postmarks. There aren’t that many towns (or people) there, but Germany and Poland have, like, thousands of cities, towns, and postal stations (stationary or mobile), and I don’t want to commit to anything even semi-permanent until I have an idea what a reasonable collection might look like.

One other question; this was in my opening post, but that post was long and some people might have missed it. (Well, this post is long. I talk too much. Or I write too much; I'm not like this in person, I promise.) There are stock pages with a sort of rough black cardboardy face and clear plastic strips going across. Some dealers use these for displays at shows, and I’ve gotten many through eBay purchases and auction wins. I assume that these would transfer the cardboard color to the back of the envelope or card paper if I tried to use them for a permanent collection. Am I right, or am I wrong? Or, to phrase it in another way, should I stay or should I go?

[zepherusbane]

Oct 16, 2018 19:12:46 GMT -5 mourningdoves said:

I’ve been accumulating postmarks for several years ...... There aren’t that many towns (or people) there, but Germany and Poland have, like, thousands of cities, towns, and postal stations (stationary or mobile), and I don’t want to commit to anything even semi-permanent until I have an idea what a reasonable collection might look like.

There aren't any rules that say you have to collect every city, although I think that would make one very cool collection.

Anytime I get an envelope I first plan to keep it whole. If I get one that's all torn up, or that someone saved the corner for me or was pulled from kiloware, then I keep anything that looks like an interesting or very clear postmark for any stamps I already have. For a stamp I needed in my collection, I will sometimes tear it off and soak/orange it off the paper for my collection (depends on my mood at the moment).

Most of my postmark collection is pretty commonplace stamps, but with special or clear postmarks from as many cities as I can get. I used to get a lot of kiloware so came across a lot more, I haven't bought any kiloware for a few years now though, so just get them from my mail mostly now.

I have lots of postmarks with liberty bell stamps **looks at kacyds ** as one example of a stamp I wasn't worried about getting more of them off paper.

Oct 16, 2018 19:12:46 GMT -5 mourningdoves said:

There are stock pages with a sort of rough black cardboardy face and clear plastic strips going across. I assume that these would transfer the cardboard color to the back of the envelope or card paper if I tried to use them for a permanent collection. Am I right, or am I wrong?

I have some of those too, but I guess I had just assumed they wouldn't be good for long-term storage. However, they might make them with acid-free paper just because of what they are used for. However, it doesn't have to make sense. For example, I read somewhere that the clear plastic packaging used by the US post office isn't acid-free and that you should take any purchases from their packages right away.

[youpiao]

Oct 16, 2018 14:43:03 GMT -5 zepherusbane said:

Oct 16, 2018 14:04:28 GMT -5 kacyds said:

At Hobby Lobby, it's $5 for 5 Showgard Vario pages and the one near me only carries 3 sizes, 8 pocket, 3 pocket, and 2 pocket.  

Just don't forget to use their coupon for 40% off one item. It is perpetually available on their website. You don't even have to print it out. Just pull it up on your phone and show it to the cashier.

[Phil]

Oct 17, 2018 0:00:10 GMT -5 youpiao said:

Oct 16, 2018 14:43:03 GMT -5 zepherusbane said:

At Hobby Lobby, it's $5 for 5 Showgard Vario pages and the one near me only carries 3 sizes, 8 pocket, 3 pocket, and 2 pocket.  

Just don't forget to use their coupon for 40% off one item. It is perpetually available on their website. You don't even have to print it out. Just pull it up on your phone and show it to the cashier.

Use it all the time. I just wish the Hobby Lobby in our area carried a little more in the way of supplies. 

[stampie78]

Oct 16, 2018 13:55:42 GMT -5 kacyds said:

I use Vario style pages with different amount of rows per page, depends on the size of the postmark. Here is a couple of examples...

Looks like someone wasn't paying attention to his job with that Baton Rouge, LA postmark (third from the bottom left side) They put the PM plug in upside down. (as most of you already know, I am a nitpicker) Happy stamping.

[mourningdoves]

Oct 16, 2018 20:08:09 GMT -5 zepherusbane said:

There aren't any rules that say you have to collect every city

Rules in a rulebook, no. Rules in my cerebellum, yes.

Oct 16, 2018 20:08:09 GMT -5 zepherusbane said:

I have lots of postmarks with liberty bell stamps **looks at kacyds ** as one example of a stamp I wasn't worried about getting more of them off paper.

I have some of those too, but I guess I had just assumed they wouldn't be good for long-term storage. However, they might make them with acid-free paper just because of what they are used for. However, it doesn't have to make sense. For example, I read somewhere that the clear plastic packaging used by the US post office isn't acid-free and that you should take any purchases from their packages right away.

I think the Liberty Bell stamps are most excellent and I never understood why some people don't like them . I'll have to research the stock pages. It's not always easy to get information about the composition of philatelic supplies, but most companies that make acid-free products usually brag about them. I wonder if "acid-free" actually has a legal definition, or if it's one of those terms like "documented" or "natural" that can mean a lot of things. Aww, something else to research...