What's Your Opinion Of Steiner Stamp Album Pages?

I had a set of PageMaker diskettes but tossed them thinking I would never need them.

I like Steiner pages because I can easily make rearrangements or corrections. And create additional pages for varieties, etc.

My biggest pet peeve is the lack of editorial consistency. How many ways can you write Watermarked Crown and "C A"?
Watermarked Crown and "CA"
Watermarked Crown and 'CA'
Watermarked Crown and C.A.
Watermarked Crown and CA
Watermarked Crown & CA
etc., etc.
Rant over.

Robert

I don't collect all the countries of the world, I also don't collect all varieties of papers, perforations or watermarks; so I mod Steiner's pages with LibreOffice Draw to fit my need. More simple and faster than start from scratch.

If you are an experienced collector and you want to start a new country, I highly recommend Steiner pages. You *must* have a Scott catalog for whatever you are collecting; Steiner follows Scott like Wil E Coyote follows Roadrunner (no Acme products required).

Steiner's PageMaker pages will load into Scribus and LibreOffice Draw. But you lose the border. It's easy enough to make a master page with a border and apply it. Some of the fonts may be "off" also. Unless you have the exact font he has on his computer, you may notice some text boxes looks not quite on-center or they look empty, because the point size of the font you have is slightly larger than the box.

Steiner uses Helvetica on his pages, and that font is not very consistent between installs. The version of Helvetica that comes with the Mac, may not line up exactly with the version on a Windows computer that came with PageMaker. And if you have Helvetica Ltd Std from Adobe, that may not be perfect either.

I have noticed a lot of collections on Steiner pages are showing up in public auction. Generally they are large collections and often sparse. I think a lot of people get a little over zealous printing pages before they have the stamps. I find reselling collections where the pages have only a few stamps is difficult.

I'm new to the hobby, and following this thread made me want to know more about the pages. I tried searching the internet for Steiners pages and couldn't
find any info. Does anyone have a link to any web site that would give me access to Steiner's (not looking for freebees)?

Tom

https://www.stampalbums.com/

John

That's the ones I buy.
The bargain hunter's secret.

LibreOffice Draw preserves the borders and creates an easier to work with result than Scribus. Steiner had two used two fonts: Arial MT in early pages then later used Helvetica. The metrics should be the same but obviously look is slightly different.

I have seen some recent Steiner pages with another font and asked him about it. He replied he could not control it. My guess it is a default font in InDesign.

I suspect many print an entire set of a country's pages rather than print as needed. I have pages with just one or two stamps. This is not unique to Steiner users.

Starting collectors have two challenges: cost of pre-printed albums and cost of world wide catalogs. This is if one collects as the prototypical collector.

Yes, many Steiner page collections end up being very sparse indeed, a result of the collector biting off more than he can chew. If pages are nearly free, you're more likely to have collectors printing out an entire country's worth of pages before they realize how difficult they are to fill. Later, they sell their "collection" on mostly empty pages.

I wrote a long screed a few years ago in this same thread, but now that I'm much older and much more mature (ha!), I'll try not to repeat myself (too much). I credited Bill Steiner, as I think we all should, with making collecting stamps so easy anyone could do it. His fairly inexpensive pages encourage collectors who could never afford large expensive albums to go ahead and collect. That's a very good thing. But the related issue of how good Steiner's pages are is a very different thing.

I'd never collect on Steiner pages without modifying them. I do not like his bare-bones pages with their single line border. His layouts are utilitarian and often clunky with different sizes of stamps together. Aesthetically, his pages work best when all stamps are the same size. No surprise there, but accommodating stamps of different sizes is kind of important in album design. And the small size of Steiner's pages doesn't help, either, since it means all his pages look cramped. A display of stamps should "breathe" in order to look good. I do use his pages, though.

I've printed many of his pages onto Scott Specialty blanks (after saving his files as Word documents and deleting his border). That way his layouts can be printed on blank Scott pages and end up looking a lot more elegant. You could print them on any other pages you like. Larger pages look better, and pages with elegant borders look less bleak.

I've mostly done this to fill in missing pages in my Scott Specialty albums. I've also done it when no other pages exist for a country or those pages are wildly too expensive. Malawi for example which I have an entire album for. It's all Steiner page layouts printed on Scott blank pages.

It's also useful in making up your own album for a country that has issued many pointless and silly stamps you don't want to collect. I just delete them from Steiner's pages (again, in Word). I have an album for the Belgian Congo and its various iterations afterward from which I deleted many unnecessary and pointless stamps. That way my collection contains only stamps about the Congo and not about movie stars, rock stars, or other topics unrelated to Congo.

So Steiner's pages serve a very good purpose when modified or used in moderation. But I'd never use them unmodified for an entire album and certainly not on small printer-size pages. In fact, I think that can be a big mistake since for most collectors that means having small, sometimes cramped album pages with mostly empty spaces, plus whatever pages of stamps you do have aren't going to look exactly "elegant". Of course, if you like the look and enjoy it, then you're all set -- for not much money. Nothing wrong with that.

One of my main collections right now ( or since about 1990! ) is one Transportation Coil stamp, 2128a, or rather strips. I do collect all sizes, from Plate Strip of 1 ( PS1 ) all the way up. The longest any of my albums can accommodate are strips of 18, but I have them even much longer.
There are no albums that can help me with these strange lengths, so I make my own. I have done so since around 2000, and the first albums do not exist any longer. I started using Album Easy way back then, and I am still using the very first version !



Peter

Steiner Pages.
I have 300 stamp albums, every one with Steiner pages.

Whomever gets them when I pass, will find conformity.

I doubt very much collectors print out whole pages before starting
that defies common sense.

I merely print the page necessary, and numbers it top left.

I may print (just doing Sweden) out Page 1 to the end of 1950
in one hit, as I know I have the stock to fill.

When I get to say the year 2000 onwards , I print 1 page with say
the year 2000 in the heading, and place the loose stamps in that
protective cover, until I have enough to fill a page.

Bill Steiner is a huge part of my collecting enjoyment.
(Along with Scott, Postmaster GS "Stampfix", and the very generous fellow,
that alters my scanned Catalogue pages to OCR, and XYPlorer for file management)

I print Steiner pages by year as I need them.