Abstract: A collating machine has plural infeed bins and a single outfeed bin. M stacks of copies, each stack consisting of N identical copies, the copies being different from one stack to the other, are laid into infeed bins. In a cyclical sequence, individual copies are transferred from the successive infeed bins to the common outfeed bin. To be able to do this, when the number M of stacks even considerably exceeds the number of infeed bins, the M X N copies are subjected to plural successive collating operations. During each collating operation, the number of infeed bins utilized is less than the number M. During each collating operation, all the M X N copies pass from infeed bins to the common outfeed bin. For the second and any subsequent collating operation, the stacked copies in the outfeed bin are removed and reintroduced into infeed bins, for another collating operation.