Creating a record of your collection

Everyone should have some sort of record of their collection for insurance purposes. It can be a simple as scanning (or photocopying) certain items or pages in your album or as complex as having photos and information in a laptop computer.

Having such a record will also allow you to take your "collection" with you to club meetings or stamp shows. That way you'll be able to see what you have and what you need - without worrying damaging or losing anything.

You might also want to have some software to manage your collection. On the low 'do-it-yourself' end you can create a simple spread sheet in Word, Excel or Access. There's also some good commercial software available these days that's fairly inexpensive.

One of these is SCOTT™ licensed StampManage from Liberty Street Software. At $59.95 ($49.95 for the downloaded version) , it will manage, value and analyze your stamp collection.

William Sharpe wrote in Linn's , "StampManage is an elegant, full-feature Windows inventory program for United States and Canadian stamps............The program allows you to enter more information about your stamps than any other inventory program I've come across."

To learn more and for a free download free trial, click here.