Steiner Album Pages

APASTUSZAK-----You don't want to download the whole site ,just pick a country or two and work on those and plan on takeing your time and as time goes on you will see new and better ways of builting your collection .I plan to spent the next 20 years transfering all my country collections on to Steiner pages and adding to those completed .I plan to purchase a better scanner so I will be putting up some of my pages also.

I downloaded the entire site using a FireFox plug-in called "DownloadThemAll". That was helpful because I could just set it up and didn't have to download every single file individually. My reasoning was that it was more efficient for me just to print them off my own computer. Also, it is a little bit of insurance should Stamp Albums Web go out of business - I truly hope that doesn't happen any time soon!

My only issue with the CD is that it's a fixed point in time. As he fixes errors and omissions, then I wouldn't get the updates.

If he made the directory with the pdfs in it accessible to browsing, I could just wget the whole site.

Here's one of my France pages.
Printed on SG simplex pages with hawid mounts for MNH stamps and mounts for the rest.

TONY-UK Nice page of France .

DownloadThemAll worked like a charm. I downloaded the whole site in under 5 minutes. Hopefully stampalbums.com will never go away, but if it does, it's good to have a backup.

apastuszak----that is neat you can download it that fast ,maybe I will try it when my daugther stops over tomorrow with a thumbdrive on her newer computer ..

AnthonyUK... Great page I love the French semi-postals

Here are a few of mine. I agree with some of the earlier comments that some of the pages could be fuller but this is by far for me the easiest way to have a worldwide collect.







Dianne

Nicely done Dianne.

I like a bit of extra space to add anything I find interesting.

Those are all excellent Steiner pages!

I am curious though, all the pages except for one show used hinged stamps. Are people only using Steiner pages for their used hinged stamps, and the mnh showguard mount stuff goes in another album, or is anyone using exclusively Steiner pages for their whole collection?

I emailed Bill Steiner and asked him when the 2011 supplement for US would be coming out and he replied "it will be a while."

I did peek around his pages, and it looks the font he is using is Helvetica. However, he does not embed the font in the PDFs. So, if you're on Windows computer, and don't have Helvetica installed, it will do a font substitution to Arial. I'm not sure what it will do on a Linux PC; probably substitute Liberation Sans.

So, when printing sheets, if you have Helvetica installed, or you print to a Postscript printer, you pages may look every so slightly different (at least to a font geek), because Arial and Helvetica are close, but they are not exactly the same font. In my opinion, Helvetica is far superior to Arial.

Just something to think about as you upgrade computers or printers, or print them out over a friend's house.

I, too, am a user of Steiner's pages, but have some reservations that might be germane to some before they get too involved in their use.
First off, we should be in awe of this guy's contribution to our hobby. I can only imagine the amount of effort required to try to offer current album pages for the whole world. And what he charges is more than fair compared to what others are currently charging for albums. We need to be mindful of the fact that we will probably never recoup the cost of albums we are asked to purchase, and that hole get deeper each year as we add overpriced supplements. If we collect several countries, each requiring yearly album upgrades, cost can become prohibitive unless one has exceedingly deep pockets. If you don't update, then the album is considered outdated and is even less attractive to a potential future buyer. Ask your favorite dealer: they want your stamps, not the thing you house them in. If, like most, we have to collect within a limited budget, I would rather spend my dough on stamps, not storage.
Steiner's pages solve most of these problems, as long as your collections are simplified and not too specialized. They house most of the major Scott listed stamps but almost no varieties in watermark, perf, shades, etc. Unless you are willing to make some alterations to his pages --- which he specifically discourages but apparently many do so anyway --- you will be mounting many items in the margins of pages or on blanks, which you may or may not like the appearance of.
My main complaint with his pages is that they seem to be oriented towards collectors of mint stamps, which I am not one of. Particularly with newer issues, he is constantly making space for complete panes of stamps or complete strips of se-tenant stamps, with no provision for the singles that the average collector of used stamps is most likely to run across. Particularly maddening are the self adhesive issues --- he want us to mount a complete set, on the backing paper, which is of course problematic in used condition. I only collect a few countries (Canada, New Zealand, GB and Newfoundland) so I can't say if this problem is universal to his page sets, but it is something one might want to be mindful of if you specialize in used material. If you primarily collect older material, from before the time the various stamp issuing entities produced all of these panes, strips, sheets, packs, etc., then Steiner's pages will probably work just fine for you.
If anyone is interested, I can offer some suggestions on paper to print album pages on. I own a print shop and have over 40 years experience working with paper, and I would definitely not subscribe to the recommendations I have read elsewhere in this thread.

Hello raincity, wecome!

Of course we are interested in varying opinions and alternate ways to do things. All of us are individuals and like to do things that fit in with how we think about things.

That's the wonderful thing about stamp collecting. You can do things the way you like.

May I suggest though, that you start a new topic on your own that talks about paper etc, as it will garner more attention out on it's own rather than in here amongst the Steiner stuff.

Also, when you type online, it is almost necessary to separate out your sentences into paragraphs to make them more readable. It might seem like wasted empty space at first (I know it did to me, and I type a lot at times) but then people can digest things a gulp at a time and it does actually flow more smoothly. Otherwise the reader is trying to find where he left off in the middle of a large paragraph at times and you lose the reader.

Fascinating to have you history and knowledge from the paper industry. I look forward to more from you.

raincity.
I read with interest your post than got to the end and saw you own a print shop... At that point, and looking at your post count and the subject you decided to start posting on. I can only see your posts as self serving and nothing more than a well designed advertisement.

To counter your biggest issue... Steiner pages always include several blank pages with varying designs for people to make their own custom pages. Printing on the right paper stock helps.