Mystic Page Modifications

Mystic Page 739 Hack.

Read all about it here:

http://stamphacks.com/wp/?p=1318

Been rather busy this weekend and completed a bunch of pages:

1. Page 730 corrected.
2. Page 741 completed
3. Page 771 completed
4. Page 851 completed

Way too much to post here.

Head over to https://www.stamphacks.com and you can see all the work.

Page 459 hacked to keep the Letter Writing strip together





Files here: http://stamphacks.com/wp/?p=1348

The Page 415 "hack"

Mystic's pages 415-423 lets you mounts the 1976 full sheet se-tenant of US state flags as individual stamps. This is not the way I would do it, but it's really the ONLY way to do it, if you want to put the stamps in your album.

I chose to go a different. I have a Itoya Art Portfolio that I store all my full sheet se-tenants in. Since I am NOT planning on breaking them up in order to mount them in the album, and since I don't want to buy a whole other sheet to break it up into individual stamps, I did the following.

I took my flag sheet and I scanned it at 600dpi. I then made one page, with this picture on it. Underneath it is the caption "State Flags" and underneath that is a PDF text field you click in and enter the description of where you store this sheet. In my case, I typed "This stamp sheet can be found in Full Sheet Album on page 1."

I then print that, and place is my album and remove pages 414-423 from the album.

A WARNING: The file is HUGE. It's about 127 MB in size. That's because of the 600 dpi image of the stamp sheet. But it looks REALLY nice when it prints out.

A NOTE: I should also hack pages 413-414 in order to clean up the descriptions on page 414. Right now the description starts talking about the stamp sheet and then lists the stamps that were on page 415. That's "good enough" for me for now. I'll revisit this hack when it's not 10:00 PM at night on a Sunday.

Front:



Back:



http://stamphacks.com/wp/?p=1352

And a quick note about making your own Mystic pages...

I used to retype all the descriptions when I made these pages. That led to typos. Then I went the OCR route, which also led to typos. Earlier this year I realized that that the descriptions are RIGHT ON THE MYSTIC WEBSITE.

DOH!

Now I just cut and paste.

Andy,

I just can them and paste as an image.

I just had to update Page 519. I finally got the Express Mail stamp and the box was too small to fit it.

So, here's a new Page 519:

http://stamphacks.com/wp/?p=1379

Hacked Page 613 today. As I was mounting stamps today, I noticed that Mystic had omitted Scott 2524A, the 13 x 12 3/4 perf variety of the 29 cent rose stamp.

Since this a major Scott Catalog number, I decided to add it back in.



Download from my website:

https://www.stamphacks.com

And my last hack of the night: Page 561

Like the State Flags stamps, I don't want to break up the se-tenant sheet, so I made a page with a scan of the sheet. The page is a PDF form with one field to let you type in where you are storing you full sheet.

Here is the final product:



As usual, it's all on my blog:

https://www.stamphacks.com

By way of introduction, I am a relatively new member of the SCF and have a very few posts. In my first post , I indicated that I have been away from collecting for almost 40 years but had a pretty good collection in a Minkus All American album, although I concentrated mostly on US Commemoratives. When I started up again, I was able to secure volume III of a Schaubek hingeless album and became a fan of hingeless albums. My first forum question sought a comparison between Schaubek and Mystic hingeless albums, because the former were so expensive. Since almost all of the stamps in my old album are mounted, mint, and never hinged, I could not imagine taking my stamps and remounting them into new album(s). I discovered the forum thread comparing various hingeless albums and read and reread all 29 pages of entries. It was a fascinating educational experience and I greatly appreciate all the hard work of the contributors to that forum. However, in the course of that discussion, I became familiar with apastuszak's posts and, eventually moved to this thread concerning the Mystic Heirloom Album and his revision of pages to make that album more acceptable. Obviously he loves his Mystic Heirloom albums and has spent numerous hours making this album set more to his liking and has provided members of this forum with the benefit of his labors. This, notwithstanding comments I have read concerning the way the pages in the albums curl in the middle over time. This entry is primarily addressed to him but I would welcome any and everyone's comments. I have seen on eBay reasonably priced pages and binders for Mystic heirloom pages in virtually new condition. I am tempted to purchase those pages. I would also purchase Volume I of the Mystic Hingeless Album. There would obviously be duplication but the cost would not be significant. Maybe I would just buy the pages and use the binder(s) I purchased to house those pages. That would take me through 1934 in a hingeless album. I suspect that many of the pages would remain empty for a long time. I would buy mounts for and use the pages from the Heirloom album to cover years between 1935 and 1940. At least for the time being, I would keep the stamps in my old Minkus album through 1975 or 1976, where my Schaubek album begins. (of course, I could, and might eventually, spring for Volume II of the Mystic Hingeless but the problem is that this volume goes from 1935 to 1966 and I would still need a place for 1967 to 1976.) All the while, I would be looking for a Schaubek volumes, which I really like and learn how to use apastuszak's revisions.

I apologize in advance for this lengthy post but welcome any and all comments. Thank you for your interest. It has really helped me revive my interest in this wonderful hobby.

I am not using the Heirloom Hingeless, but the regular Heirloom. I believe the Hingeless uses thicker paper, so I can't really speak to the page curling problem I have seen. Hopefully others can comment on it.

I will say that my page modifications end with the year 2000. There are just way too many page modifications to do for the 21st century album for me to even consider it.

I started making my own 21st Century Pages and completed 2001 and 2002, but it was a lot of work without a ton of benefit for me, especially since I found that the Scott Minuteman is doing almost everything that I need. The only thing I don't like about the Minuteman is the paper thickness. But other than that, it does the two things I require: it has connected se-tenants, and it has stamp descriptions.

But the Minuteman is impossible to hack, since it's page size is bigger than US Letter/A4.

I have created well over 100 Mystic style pages for my regular Heirloom album but it has mostly been to add minor varieties that you would not find in any published album. This was helped by Andy's examples using Scribus. I do not use images in my stamp boxes so that saves some time.

When I print pages, I use a heavier stock. The key was the Mystic pages were a base to use rather than do it all from scratch using a standard printer (wide format not needed). I insist on a lay flat page.

Yes the paper could be in better in the regular album and curl a little less but not as high a priority than other collecting
goals.

I will note the style of page layout of hingeless is different that the regular. On regular pages, the catalog number is inside the stamp box but still visible when you mount. With hingeless, the catalog number is below the stamp box.

Thanks for your responses. I have decided that, for a number of reasons, I will not continue my collection beyond the mid or late 1990's and will concentrate on earlier issues. Not having seriously collected definitives or airmails previously, I have enough catching up to do, as well as acquiring the earliest commemoratives in mint condition. I recently saw an auction listing for a Davo album 1847-1959 with mint and used stamps. The price was reasonable, even though I really didn't need most of the stamps included. The album looked nice but I decided against it because of some of the negatives noted in the forum threads, pages don't lie flat, no descriptions or scott numbers. Pages looked quite plain. The auction ends soon so, if anyone thinks I'm making a mistake, let me know. Thanks

I can't see the stamp number when I mount stamps. The black hinge covers over the catalog number.

I found it interesting that Mystic use clear top open mounts in its hingeless album but doesn't sell those mounts. They told me that while they do sell some clear mounts, they primarily sell black backed mounts. Do you prefer top open mounts to the split back mounts.? Would using the split back mounts allow you to see the catalog number since there is only a small amount of glu on the top.