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 Properly Storing Philatelic Covers

by D J McAdam

Having written recently about the wisdom of developing a philatelic collection plan, I decided to write one out for my own collecting interests.  Things went fairly easily - I was, after all, following my own advice - until I reached the section that read, "Decide how you are going to house your stamps."  The problem is that I don't normally need to house stamps.

Although I have a lot of stamps - boxes full, albums and stockbooks with stamps in them, and so on - my interest at the moment lies in collecting philatelic covers, or entires, i.e., a complete envelope with stamp attached.  And covers are nowhere near as easy to store as are stamps.

Stamps, generally speaking, fit into stamp albums, and the ones that don't fit into stamp albums for one reason or another usually fit quite well into stockbooks.  There's occasionally a bit of an issue when one has a large multiple, like a block of twenty, but this issue is easily resolved.

Philatelic covers are different, which is probably why relatively few nice 19th century examples have come down to us.  They're big.  They come in all sorts of sizes.  They bend easily, crease easily, often tear easily.  In short, most people avoided collecting covers because covers are hard to store.  Nevertheless, I like collecting covers, so I'd just have to face the problem and deal with it as best I could.

Basically, there are two components to properly storing philatelic covers:

1. The cover itself should be stored in an appropriate sleeve, which is usually plastic;
2. The plastic sleeves with covers in them should be appropriately stored. 

If you are about to ask me at this point whether plastic sleeves (or polysleeves, or whatever marketers of philatelic supplies want to call them) are safe for valuable covers, do not; I simply don't know the answer.  Thus, if you choose to store your covers in plastic sleeves, you do so at your own risk.  I store mine that way, and that's all I can honestly tell you. 

I would like to point out here that if you're one of those folks who sells philatelic covers via eBay, it would be nice of you to ship said cover in a properly fitting polyester sleeve placed in a bend-proof (or nearly bend-proof) container.  Most of the time, if I purchase a cover on eBay, it comes to me either simply tossed unprotected in a plain envelope, or wrapped in a bit of Saran Wrap, or some such nonsense. 

Since I cannot say whether polyester cover sleeves are truly safe, it follows that I am unable to make any personal recommendations as to brand or seller.  You can at least get an idea of what I'm talking about by visiting Potomac Supplies, or Subway Stamp Shop, or Lindner.  There are also cover albums (usually called First Day Cover or FDC albums), which sort of combine the sleeves with an album, but I've never found these to be completely satisfactory.  On the other hand, I'm willing to reconsider; Safe manufactures some which are at least attractive, though pricey.

The problem of how best to store the covers in their sleeves remains more or less unsolved at this time.  One does not want to store the items standing up without proper support, as they will bend.  I usually  - and this is not a recommendation - end up keeping my covers in their sleeves lying flat in shoeboxes, but there's also a danger of bending with this method, and the covers themselves are hard to sort and find this way. 

The search for a better method continues - if one is discovered, this page will be updated with the good news. 

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