Album Review: United States Albums

The term is falzlos (two "l" -- Falz means fold, -los means "less" or minus -- foldless, minus folds (hinge in English actually carries the idea of folding or fold).

as an adjective falzlos would be lowercased; as a noun Falz would be uppercased in German.

Great write up Dan,

I have Davo and Scott albums, and also Schaubek binders with quadrille (50 dot) pages for personalizing my VN collections.

One correction about Davo albums...




The US albums layout stamps in more or less chronological order, not Scott numbering order. For example, the Scott album vol. III has a page for the Great American series (Sc. #1844 - 1869). In the Davo album those issues are dispersed across several pages in album IV based on the release date.

You also might want to include something about "rolling your own" album. I have personally found this journey more rewarding, but it takes a lot of time and planning.

Also, IMHO multi-ring binders and 2-post binders tend hold pages better. If someone chooses a 3 ring binder (esp. those large 3" binders) the rings add bulk, and also pages in 3 ring binders should be reinforced because they are more likely to tear over time in my experience.

Thanks for all your effort and compiling this info.

Neeskens13, I'll upload some scans of fuller pages, but not having a decent camera limits my ability to show the Premium album which is quite handsome especially in this price range.

Hieronymous, thank you for clarification of the meaning of "falzlos", your grasp of German says a lot.

owsi15797, I'll use your observations to correct the Davos mention since I had little to go by. Thanks!

Excellent summation, Dan!

You have as much passion about these as I do. It was my search for hingeless album information that led me to SCF more than 4 years ago and I am pleased to see others take up the torch and continue to share their experiences. I realize the scope of your article is limited to available albums (not discontinued), but I still think there's value in including information on popular albums that come up for sale on ebay, et al (IE: Scott Platinum Hingless albums - there's good reason these albums sell for so much!).

Keep up the good work!

Brian

Brian, thanks. I was so glad to see your great shared album details from your original comparison. Your effort shares an amazing amount of detailed info from your experience. Seems like the album manufacturers and dealers have remained unaware of the customer frustration felt be many collectors.

Here are a few pages from my new Mystic Stamp American Heirloom Collection Hingeless. I'm having a ball moving all my collection into its new home.

I'm including scans to illustrate the historic notes on the left hand pages, but not having a decent camera, I can't show the handsome Premium album which is very nice in this price range.

Enough with researching US hingeless albums!
Now I'm having fun moving my collection into its new home. Images of Mystic Stamp's American Heirloom Collection, Hingeless US Volume 1.

dcaraz1949 Congratulations. I'm thinking of asking for Vol. 1 for my birthday next month.

ecmorgan, thanks. While I am very happy to have a nice quality hingeless album with top loading mounts, I do see a drawback with the Mystic. More experienced collectors who have experience with many albums warned me that the 3-ring mechanism will catch the pages when turning and eventually tear the pages unless page drill holes are reinforced. I see what they mean. The Mystic is a great value, but you have to be careful to not turn pages too quickly as they sometimes catch the ring joint. The albums produced by Lindner, Lighthouse, SAFE and others employ many more rings that seem to smooth out this problem.

Good luck with your purchase!

Thank you for posting these great reviews. However, I am looking for a different aspect for my next album. I already have a Lighthouse album for a mint US collection. I am now looking to get an album for used US. I don't mind that there are spaces for both blocks and singles of the water activated stamps. However, most of the albums I have seen convert to only mint sheets or blocks for self adhesives and no longer even offer spaces for singles from those. Can anyone recommend an album that would be good for used stamps? Perhaps a book that has the blocks or sheets on one page and the singles on another? In that case, I would just discard the pages for the sheets and blocks.

Hi nywelton, are you concerned about the more recent modern stamps?
I have no experience with the self adhesive stamps (I am collecting older US 1847 to pre-1940's).
But I have recently received sample album pages from several manufacturers...
Sample hingeless page from Mystic Stamp for US 2011 has spaces for individual stamps (top load mounts).
Sample hingeless Palo Italy page for 2010 also individual stamps (top load mounts).
Sample hingeless Lighthouse US page for 2004 also individual stamps (split back mounts).
Sample hingeless SAFE dual US page for 1999-2007 also individual stamps (full-page clear plastic overlay sleeve for stamps).

Hope this helps.

dcaraz this is not what he ask for; he want single space for the stamps, that Lighthouse, Steiner, Palo and other albums provide only space for the full souvenir sheet or block.....


Nywelton, welcome to the forum this is exactly my problem and why I print my own pages , the more easy for you will be to get the Steiner 's pages and remove the block or souvenir sheet and replace them with singles, you can do it with the free software Draw include in LibreOffice. I personally redo all the US after 1965 with AlbumGen, but usually I just mod the Steiner's pages with Draw.

This discussion is super helpful to a newbie like me! :) I recently bought a Mystic Heirloom (the regular one, not the hingeless). I'm pretty happy with it. I paid $40 and they threw in 200 stamps with virtually no repeats, quite a few full sets of se-tenents (separated as they were all used, but still, it's nice to be able to fill in whole sets whether attached or not) and series, and a thousand hinges. The pages are heavy enough that they don't feel like they'll damage easily, I love the historic information, and I've found the Scott numbers helpful. That's about all I can say about it. I think for a newbie who is also not blessed with a great deal of money (I can only dream of owning a $100 album, much less some of the Scott albums), it's an excellent buy. Someday I may upgrade. Right now, none of my stamps are valuable enough to need a hingeless mount. Most are very common, but I love them. And the big advantage an album has given me is collecting goals (rather than "collect everything") and a clearer picture of what I have and don't have.

All in all, I'm happy. I think that the important thing is that, whatever album you have, it meets your collecting goals and is satisfactory to you, and of course is within your financial means. The perfect album that you can't afford and don't have does less good than the adequate album that you can afford and is sitting on your desk. :)

Welcome CaffeinatedSquirrel, I think your sentiments are mirrored across most of the members actively posting in this Forum. Every collector has different needs, wants, tastes and budgets. Many of the very experienced folks in SCF have purchased various albums when they purchased a collection say in an ebay auction. When buying a stamp lot many times the album (even premium albums) may come at little or no additional cost. Happy collecting!

area66, I'm glad you clarified what nywelton was asking. I haven't begun collecting the modern stamps and am not aware of this popularity of albums making space for souvenir sheets.

nywelton

Regarding your question about an album that has space for both singles and sheets: Try the Harris Liberty album. I use it for my used collection. You can remove the sheet-only pages and just keep the singles pages. Since the album is relatively inexpensive, I don't regard this as a waste of money. I do not think there is any other album on the market that has this versatility in format options.

I just made another purchase of US albums.
After deciding to extend my collection beyond my new Mystic American Heirloom's 1934,
I won an auction for set of 3 Scott US Platinum Hingeless Albums, Part III covering 1934 to 1983.

My thanks to Rileysan for starting this US Album Comparison back in 2011. Without his great description I would not have recognized the value of this used set of albums -- they even have my preferred top-loading mounts! And also thanks for the many shared insights and experiences by all the other contributors to this discussion. Now that I've been using the Mystic American Heirloom Hingeless set through 1934 I tend to agree with area66 -- 3-ring mechanism tends to catch the pages when turning. I hope the Scott Platinum's 13-ring design is smoother.