Sorting a mixed lot: the first hour

Guides · 9 September 2026

A mixed box is worth whatever the sorting reveals, and most of what gets lost is lost in the first ten minutes – by someone separating a block, soaking a cover, or cleaning something because it looked dirty. Sorting is a sequence, and the sequence protects the material while it makes the contents visible.

Before touching anything

• Clear a large table and cover it with a soft cloth.
• Photograph the box as received. Provenance starts here, per the guide to provenance.
• Have envelopes, holders and a pencil ready. Sorting into nothing is not sorting.
• Decide now that nothing will be cleaned, soaked, cut or flattened today.

Six passes

1. Rescue pass. Take out anything intact and fragile first: covers with stamps still attached, blocks, sheets, booklets, items in original packaging. These are the things a careless second pass destroys – the formats explained in the guide to stamp formats.
2. Category pass. Stamps, covers, coins, banknotes, badges, postcards, paper. No judgement yet, just physical separation into groups that need different handling.
3. Format pass. Within each category, split singles from multiples and loose items from items on original backing. Anything still attached to something stays attached.
4. Country and period pass. Rough only – the aim is to make the pile searchable, not correct. Country identification when the script is unfamiliar is covered in the guide to which country is this stamp from.
5. Condition pass. Separate obviously damaged material from the rest so it does not contaminate the impression of the whole. Damaged is not worthless, but it is a different pile.
6. Duplicate pass. Anything you already have goes to the trading box, described in the guide to trading duplicates.

Pull these out immediately

• Anything on an envelope. Never separate it during sorting – the whole reasoning is in the guide to postal history.
• Anything with paperwork. Receipts, certificates, old dealer envelopes with notes.
• Anything in original packaging. Coin sets, cased items, booklets with their covers.
• Anything stuck to something else. Set it aside rather than pulling – separation is a specialist job, as in the guide to repair and restoration.
• Anything actively deteriorating. Green corrosion or damp paper is isolated first, per the guide to why coins turn green.

Mistakes that cost the most

1. Soaking stamps off covers before reading the postmarks.
2. Splitting blocks, sheets or sets to make the piles tidier.
3. Cleaning metal or pressing paper because it looks better afterwards. It does not, as the guides to cleaning coins and banknote condition explain.
4. Writing on items instead of on envelopes.
5. Trying to identify everything as you go. Identification is a separate session, and mixing it with sorting means neither gets finished.

Only then, identify

With the box sorted, identification becomes a series of small, closed questions rather than an open-ended chore, and it can be done against reference images. The open archive holds 80,472 stamp images from 271 countries and territories, 6,382 Soviet issues with catalogue numbers, 855 coins, 635 banknotes and 3,332 badges. Work country by country, record as you go using the fields in the guide to cataloguing a collection, and the lot stops being a box and becomes a collection.

Open the sections: stamps, coins and banknotes, badges.