Album Pages

I am starting to collect various Revenue stamps but have came across a problem. I do not have album pages for most of them. I have been debating on what to do. I bought a subscription to Stamp Album Web and he has nice pages but my problem is the size of the box is just enough for the stamp. I use mounts for my stamps and I think it will make it look a little to cluttered.

What would be a good choice for Revenue album pages. I have been working on making my own but I hate to commit to it if there is something better out there.

Thanks for your help.

U.S. or worldwide? (Or something else?)

I am sorry. I am starting to collect US revenue stamps.

Hi Eopie,

Welcome to the FABULOUS world of Revenue's!! I am a collector of Revenues and Tax Paid Stamps. I personally use Scott's National for my Scott listed Revenues. I also have Springer pages for Telegraph, as well as Aldrich for my M&M. The biggest problem is the Tax Paids as NO album exists. So I use Stock books and Blank Pages and design my own. If you do a search under my name you will see a small part of my collection.

Revstampman

Thanks revstampman. I have been looking at different auctions trying to decide where to start. I have some wine stamps but want to start buying some of the other revenue stamps. There are so many out there. I love the look of old stamps and a lot of the revenues are pretty reasonable compared to the early us regular issues. I have been working on my own pages to see if I can come up with something that I like and will suit my needs.

eopie,
Don't run to buy a bunch of revenues! When you reach the required number of posts I'll send you a bunch. I have quite literally 1000's! At present I am dealing with some serious family medical issues so I haven't had much spare time. But, buy the time you reach the required # I hope to be on the other side of these issues. And would be more than happy to help you to get started.

That would be great to get a start. Thanks for the offer. I hope all goes well with your family medial issues. Thanks again for your help. I am sure I will be picking your brain some soon :)

Pick away! What good is knowledge if it is not shared.

I print Album pages with my printer,

SCF has remved a pertinent question regarding
printers and ink? surely this is stamp related?

I have come to the crossroads for my ink jet printer,
I have bought a new Canon printer,
I have refilled the ink tanks 3 times with cheap ink.
they are getting gummed up.

Do I pay $58 for new inkjet tanks?
Do I pay $50 for a new printer and donate a perfectly good
printer to landfill?

It's an outrage this printer thing, what do you guys/girls do?

Anyone used CISS ? (continuous Ink Supply system)
around $128 IIRC for my canon, on the face of it looks good.

Thanks

PS: It is a Canon iP1900 and generic tanks are more expensive
than the Canon originals I have gone down that route.

I don't use album pages, as I have far too many examples of various types, not to mention multiples and documents. Vario stockpages are a good alternative.

In my case, it's a bit toughter, since I have thousands of cancels, I want to be able to access them quickly based on inventory numbers on my website.

I tried dealer sales binders, but that gets cumbersome too quickly. Also, how do I organize them? By Scott catalog number? By company name or industry (too many that are unknown)? By cancel type (circle vs. oval vs. boxed vs. single-line, etc.)? It's a daunting task, both to be able to browse through things and find a stamp without too much difficulty.

My latest iteration, which may actually work, is to use blank 101 sales cards, with labels printed out from my web site. I wrote a script that creates a PDF file from a selected record. I then print that label on a Brother QL-500 printer (thermal, no ink to mess with, and the labels are relatively cheap: $8 for a roll of 400 from http://www.superwarehouse.com).

See the picture at the bottom of this post.

The top section is one of the PDFs; you can see that I've set it up so that one of the lines prints upside down, so when the label is folded over the edge of the card, you get printed information on both sides of a card from a single label.

The second section is the front and back of a card showing the label applied.

The last image shows these cards in G&K Centurion sheets from Subway. This is the 4VC size, which is intended for phone card collectors, but the size fits the 101 cards perfectly.

Subway sells these sheets for $3.96 per package of 5, buy 5 packages get 1 free. Each package will display 40 cards. After shipping that ends up being about 8 cents per stamp/card.

Binders can be a bit expensive, but I would keep an eye on ebay. I found someone selling off a lot of 20 1.5-inch spine width white binders (they used them for a meeting/conference and then sold them). I ended up getting them for $35 shipped for the 20 binders, considerably cheaper than buying new.

I have them stored by inventory number (when I add a stamp to my web site, it assigns a new incremental inventory number). Yes, it makes the collection a bit haphazard as far as the display order, but I can find any stamp within moments just by getting the inventory number from the web site. And you can still browse through them relatively easily.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on. Thought I'd share my solution (for the moment any way...)

ROD...

Please trust me on this -- I've seen it a thousand times. An "INEXPENSIVE" printer will eat you alive on ink cartridges. Spend a little more for a good printer and your ink costs will decrease because the printers are more efficient with consumables.

When you compare prices, think "total cost of ownership" -- not just cost of the printer.

For those of us in the USA, some of the big computer-magazine websites have comparison charts for printers which include a cost-per-page figure. I'm not sure about Australian sites, but explore

http://www.zdnet.com/

http://www.cnet.com/

http://www.pcworld.com

KirkS

Rod, There are 2 thing I have found on inkjet printers, first the ink orifices are subject to wear normally after 2-3 refills. As they wear the quality of the print deteriorates and the ink seems to gum and the cartridge surface between use. Second I clean the orifices with a cotton swab and alcohol before printing my pages and clean again after 10-20 pages on long print runs. These are not foolproof but they seem to improve the quality.

I have an old HP and I have replaced it a couple times but keep coming back to it for my pages. I use a local cartridge refurbisher who runs specials every month for $5-$6 per black cartridge. So far it has done pretty well with this system.

Edit: This is one of the big problems with doing your own pages but I still feel that the presentation of the page to your collection is well worth the problems. I don't even want to think about the time and money I have in printing my pages.

Thanks guys,
I'll keep that for information,

I have spent $66 for a colour cartridge and a black cartridge duo.
(That really hurt...Am I a cheapskate?)

I felt I didn't want to jump into something else without research.

I can buy a colour laser printer HP for $138
but the toner cartridges are $110 but they do 2000 pages
against an ink jet of 250 pages for a catridge.

I'll work some sums and follow Kirk's links

Thanks a bunch.

Rod, go aftermarket for toner cartridges. I worked for a aftermarket imaging products company for many years and there are some outstanding cost effective options to OEM.

Russ, sorry not aufait with the phrase "aftermarket"

I have tried generic, I can get the bubble squeeze ink refills for $19
but as you say that only lasts 2-3 refills
A generic plastic tank for my iP1900
is more expensive than the genuine article.

Ooops I see you are talking about laser toner,
that's an unknown for me.

Looks like everyone here has an "old" printer
no recomendations forthcoming :)

Rod, aftermarket products are simply non-OEM replacement parts normally produced through reverse engineering (doesn't reverse engineering sound so much better than copying). For laser printers check out Katun as I know they are well represented in Australia and they are probably the best aftermarket supplier.