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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.
There were 3 stages to my stamp collecting:
1. When I was a small child. I collected used stamps as a teenager and just used hinges
2. In my 20s. I moved in with my wife and rediscovered the hobby. I had a tad more disposable income since I didn't have my kids yet. I bought a White Ace album and a bunch of black mounts, because all the stamp stores near me only sold black mounts.
3. When my kids got older. I already had a pile of black mounts from the 90s, so I wasn't going to waste my investment and I just stuck to black.
To elaborate on #3.
In the beginning of 2001 my older son was born. I was a first time parent and was, to put it mildly, overwhelmed. I put the stamp stuff away on a shelf in my basement, and after a few years, I just forgot about it. When my other son was born in 2003, the stamp collection went even farther back in my mind.
Fast forward to 2009. My 2 kids were in cub scouts. I volunteered to be a Cub Scout leader for my younger son. Well, one of the Cub Scout rank requirements was for the kids to show something they collected. My wife suggested that I bring in my stamp collection. That afternoon I came down with something, and my wife ended up going to the meeting in my stead with my stamp collection in hand. She came home and said the kids had a great time. At that point, I pulled out the White Ace albums and began to flip through them. And I just stared at the collection and said to myself "I really miss stamp collecting."
Well, at this point it was 2009, and I hadn't bought a stamp album supplement since 1999. To buy all the White Ace supplements I needed for commemoratives, definitives, and booklet stamps would have cost me a FORTUNE. So, I decided it might be cheaper to just buy a whole album.
My first serious album was the Scott Minuteman and I was contemplating returning to that. But then discovered the Mystic Heirloom album. It was insanely cheap, compared to other albums. So, I ordered it.
Then I quickly discovered that Mystic had se-tenants set up in a way to maximize the number of se-tenants they can get per sheet. And some sheets, if you could only get one or two sets of se-tenants out of a sheet, would mount the stamps individually. The Heirloom was designed to match how Mystic was selling stamps.
Thus began my journey to "fix" the Mystic Heirloom stamp album and maker it more like an album a MNH collector would want to use.