Scott, Minkus, Steiner, Harris Album Comparisons

I am still trying to decide which album for my WW collection. If we could post images of page one of Austria for comparison. I am specifically interested in the new amos offerings of the minkus surpreme and scott internationals.

I guess an alternate title could be 'Show us your Austria Page 1'

I believe this is a Minkus specialized Austria.

Harris Citation from approximately 1962.

The first one is a minkus global master , the competitor of Scott international. Or another minkus work album but it's not a minkus country album

I recently became a WW collector and settled on stockbooks, after much debate. If it weren't for the flexibility and affordability of stockbooks, I don't think I'd be collecting WW today. And you never have to worry about an empty space, since you can arrange the stamps however you'd like. Plus you save the cost of mounts or hinges as well as the time involved cutting mounts and mounting them, etc.

Here's 'stockbook method' page 1 for Austria, LOL
The layout and contents is subject for change whenever I manage to cram few more items, LOL.
(seriously speaking, this page is long overdue, and could use at least 2-3 additional rows to spread the stamps 'nicely').




@TheArtfulHinger... So delighted to hear you've become a stockbook / stockpage convert :)

-k-

Laying aside the pre-printed album vs stockbook argument for WW collecting, as both are valid choices with different strengths, I will focus on the commonly available pre-printed albums for WW collectors, at least in the U.S.

In order of comprehensiveness, they are....

* Steiner pages and albums
http://www.stampalbums.com/

(Note: Palo Albums are a more expensive and elegant alternative. The layout for many pages- especially the classical era- was contributed by Steiner.)

(Note: Scott Specialty Country Albums and Minkus Specialty Country Albums- they are certainly complete for the major numbers for a country, but for the WW collector they are expensive to acquire new (although used ones can be had for much less), and, more importantly, a number of the albums are out of print or not available, except on the secondary market. Still, WW collectors with deep pockets use the Scott Specialty Country albums, and to a lesser extent, the Minkus Country Specialty albums. I will say no more about them here.)

* The Browns (Vintage Scott International 1840-1940)
http://www.subwaystamp.com/Internat...roducts/720/

All of the albums/pages listed above are comprehensive- they essentially have a space for every major number stamp of a country.

The following selections are "representational"- that is, they will have less than 100% of coverage- often, more like 50%, or even less. But for the WW collector, that already feels like they might have bit off more than they can chew, a "representational" album is welcome.

* Minkus Global Supreme Album
https://www.amosadvantage.com/scott...0CB46VR3CLHA br /

* Big Blue (Scott International WW Albums- BB refers to the Part I 1840-1940 Album)
https://www.amosadvantage.com/scott...o=&Tab=stamp br /

* Minkus Global Master Albums

* Harris Citation

O.K. how do they compare with- your question,- Austria? I will review all the first pages of Austria, and give a measure of comprehensiveness. It is up to the WW collector to decide for themselves at what level they wish to collect WW- does one want to swim in an ocean (one can drown!), or does one prefer a lake?

Steiner

Steiner covers 1850-1864 and 26 Scott number with, you guessed it, 26 spaces, as it provides a space for every major number. If you want to swim in the Deep Blue with your collection, Steiner is the one. It almost always follows the modern Scott catalogue numbering system, and therefore easy to pencil in Scott numbers in the spaces if one wishes to do so. Be aware that a 1840-1940 WW collection (Also covers 1840-1952 for British Commonwealth countries) will need some 6,500 one sided pages in some 44 1 1/2" binders. Compact it is not.
And stamp spaces can be expensive. The two spaces empty on this page require CV $100+ stamps.

For the rest of the Albums below, I will measure them in how many Steiner pages it would take for their page 1. Obviously, the more (Steiner) pages covered by their page one, the less comprehensive the album is.

The Browns

The Five volume Browns are also comprehensive, but frozen in time circa 1920-1940 Scott catalogue. Little harder to use as does not follow chronologically the modern numbering system. And some stamps have dropped out, others have dropped in since they were published. Nevertheless, an elegant choice for many.

The Browns first page covers 1850-1877, and 30 spaces. You will note the 1863 issue in the Browns is not separated out by watermark and perforation as it is in the Steiner. Steiner provides 10 spaces, while the Browns provide 5 spaces.

The 1867-77 issue in the Browns is not parsed into coarse print and fine print, as it is in the Steiner. Steiner has 14 spaces for this issue, while the Browns have 7 spaces.

The Steiner has 2 pages of coverage for the Browns one page.

Minkus Global Supreme Album
locobot- you uploaded an image of the first page of Austria for the Minkus Global Supreme. (Please refer to it.) A good choice in my opinion for a fine "representative" album. The Minkus Global Supreme 1840-1952 comes in two very fat albums.

Is it the "Goldilocks" album for WW collectors- not too hot, not too cold, just right?

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...bum-for.html br /
My blog tries to answer the question.

The first page of the Minkus Global Supreme covers 1850-1883. That is about 2 1/4 pages of Steiner. Note that the Minkus Supreme does parse the 1860 issue into different perforations, and the Emperor Franz Josef issue into coarse print and fine print. Bravo Supreme!

Big Blue

My Big Blue blog is all about Big Blue, so much to read there.

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/

Here is the first half of the Austria page with stamps in it.



And here is the second section of the first page....



Big Blue covers 1850-1890 for the first page. For those that prefer to not worry about watermarks or perforations, or fine/course print, BB is the one!

The Steiner has almost 3 pages for BB's first page.

Minkus Global Master

Do not confuse the Minkus Master with the Minkus Supreme! The Master covers less than the Supreme.

Here, for Austria page one, the Master covers 1850-1902 (Recall that the Supreme covers 1850-1883). Four pages of the Steiner is covered by one page of the Minkus Global Master. I recommend, if one is going with a Minkus, to go with the Supreme, rather than the Master.

Harris Citation
The scan image for Austria page one was uploaded above. (Refer to it.) It covers 1850-1913 for the first page, clearly the least comprehensive of all the albums listed here. The Steiner uses eight pages for this coverage. I do not recommend this album if one is interested in the classical era.

Locobot- hope this helps, and good luck- WW collecting is fun!

I recently became a WW collector and settled on stockbooks, after much debate. If it weren't for the flexibility and affordability of stockbooks, I don't think I'd be collecting WW today. And you never have to worry about an empty space, since you can arrange the stamps however you'd like. Plus you save the cost of mounts or hinges as well as the time involved cutting mounts and mounting them, etc.

Yay another converted to the stockbook/stock sheet clan

But to the OP, if you do decide you need to have a preprinted paper album, I think Steiner would be the best. You never know what you might acquire in your collection so better to have a place for the stamp (and Steiner is the most complete) than have to either put a stamp on the edge of a page or relegate it to a separate blank page because there is no pre-printed space for it.

But that is just my preferences, hence why I use Vario stock pages and create page layouts with excel before actually putting stamps to pages.

Cool pages! Thanks!
I thought the minkus page I uploaded was from a country collection due to having more coverage than I would expect from a WW album.

I am having to add way to many blank pages to my Harris albums so I am trying to decide between the new Scott Int. and Minkus supreme to cover the classics.

I have several countries on Steiner albums, which are my favorite, but do not have room for many more.

I like the stock page versatility just not sure if I am organized enough to make it work.

My money is on Steiner pages. Scott quality is rapidly declining while prices are soaring,
Minkus too hard to follow if your using Scott Catalogues and also not cheap.
Harris is for beginners.
Other foreign albums; again to hard to follow if using Scott catalogues; also cam be very pricy.

Steiner is easy to follow if using Scott catalogues and mostly complete worldwide.
It is very easy to add custom pages to any album and the price is what ever you want to pay.
The worldwide pages come on a CD for $40.00 and you simply print whatever and whenever you want.

I only wish Steiner pages were availably 60 years ago when I started to collect stamps.

Steiner pages win as far as price, comprehensiveness, but looses as far as square footage of my house. I think jkblue stated that just the classic pages require 9ft of shelf space. At the max I might have 9ft of shelf space available. I think the entire volume to date is over 80,000 pages. Maybe if I printed on two sides it might be possible...

I've long had Steiner pages for 3 dozen or so countries, but once I decided HOW I wanted to collect the world (a decision I reached just a couple months or so ago), stockbooks were a no-brainer. When I say I'm a worldwide collector, I don't mean that I'm actually trying for anything resembling completion, only that I'll save at least one copy of any face-different stamp I come across, regardless of country, date of issue, or whether it's used or mint. Having an album with its thousands of empty spaces would ultimately drive me to work toward completing the album, and I don't intend to be concerned with completion for its own sake.

Also, I actually want this newer part of my collection to be mostly mint, and I've been having a blast buying lots of miscellaneous old dealer stock on eBay. It just wouldn't be practical to keep printing more and more Steiner pages or to buy the entire 1840-2015 Scott or Minkus pages. And forget about buying and cutting that many mounts. I can stick 100 mint stamps in a stockbook in a small fraction of the time it would take me to cut 100 mounts and stick them on a page. And I can get a 64 page Lighthouse stockbook on Amazon for less than the price of one Scott binder. The only downside is that the page layout requires some advance planning and/or you have to be willing to spend some time moving stamps around as you acquire new additions.

So bad the lighthouse lb pages a re so expensive. Like the vario they have different size row to accommodate different situation. But contrary to vario it's plastic insert sheet glue on an album page so it's easy to turn in a lighthouse album binders

For a long time I used the Scott International Vol 1 for my 1840-1940 collection. It is nice if you can force yourself to only "collect to the album" but the problem is that along the way, you purchase other collections, country lots, complete sets, etc. then you end up with a lot of nice stamps that don't have a place in your album or the album only has the lower values of a set. After a while this can get quite frustrating.

So, a year or so ago I started purchasing the Vintage Reproduction Brown albums starting with the first volume covering the 19th century. These are nice on good paper, with lots of illustrations, nice layout with just right spacing in my opinion, more compact than Steiner pages (they also don't bother with perf varieties), and I don't have to worry with finding the "right" paper, cost of ink, printing the pages myself, etc, etc as you do with Steiner pages.

I recently took the plunge and ordered the other 5 volumes and am currently waiting for them to arrive! Like Steiner pages, a complete set of these will take up a lot of shelf space. So, what I am thinking about doing is instead of just filling up 10-12 Jumbo binders with the pages, the majority of which will still be empty pages, based on the recommendations of a couple of people, I will 3-hole punch the pages and use Vario G binders (half the price of Scott binders) and only put in the pages for which I have stamps and/or only specific county pages that I'm focusing on at the time. This way, the collection (and # of binders and shelf space) will grow over time only as I add stamps...a similar benefit that many people do with Steiner pages.

That sounds like a great plan Chris. Let us know how it is working out for you.

I like the Vario G's, and I am very gradually replacing the Avery binders with them for my Steiner WW classical era collection. They look very classy.

Chris

Lighthouse Grande will give you better capacity than Vario. They're also four-hole, so stronger (I think).

Geoff

Geoff,

Thanks for the tip. However, some time ago, I had purchased a set of 5 Vario G binders. Plus, here in the States, 4-hole punched pages and binders and almost unheard of. I already have a nice heavy 3-hole punch, and not sure if I could even find a similar 4-hole punch.

So far I tried one binder and 250 pages fit nicely in one Vario G binder (not too heavy either).

I just got some of these gold letters that I will used to label the binders somehow