Album Review: United States Albums

I'm surprised to hear about the Mystic albums with curling pages. There must be something wrong with the way they attach their mounts. I use Mystic Heritage albums, the "supply your own mounts" kind, and have no curling. I also have an old Scott album I got when I was a kid, sixty years ago. Never a hint of curling.

Don

AS for curling, I attribute this to thin paper stock and the fact that the Mystic has concentrated the stamps in the center of the page rather than spread out. When I print on blank pages using a laser printer, I do see a slight rippling effect.

For 2016, I am included to abandon a direct clone of Mystic but move to pages without three hole punching and use protective sleeves. I will still use the Mystic border but obviously expand it to be closer to the edges especially on binding side. I see too many situations where I need a wee bit more room.

I contacted Mystic about the curling problem with my hingeless album pages and they took the initiative to send me a complete set of new pages for all of my albums. A few months after loading the new pages into the albums and mounting the stamps, one album looks like this. Not sure if I just don't have the magic touch, I'm being too critical or there is a fundamental problem with the Mystic pages, but IMHO it's not much of an improvement over the old pages. Although I greatly appreciate Mystic's customer service, I thin it's time to move on to a new type of album.

I suspect that isn't Mystic, but just the combination of mounts and arrangement on the page. Lots of my albums look like this, Given that most pages of most albums concentrate the stamps towards the centre, it's probably hard to avoid in a well-filled album. Even hinges produce this effect, although to a less marked degree.

My Schaubek albums looked exactly the same way. GeoffHa is quite correct.

Fewer pages and more albums helps. Maybe some spacers too.

When you say spacers, would there be any in particular that you would recommend and, if so, what would be a good source? Thanks.

They're basically thickish, firm pieces of cardboard, as in this Lighthouse album

https://www.leuchtturm.com/lighthou...-4eaa50.html

If Mystic don't provide them, you can cut and punch them yourself.

I found that using fewer pages per album helps. I have no curling
issues whatsoever.

Jack Kelley

This is a Palo hingeless album with roughly the same number of pages and stamps. There is a difference that goes beyond number of pages and spacers. However, trying to spread my Mystic pages over more albums and using spacers should be a bit cheaper than replacing all with Palo albums, so I'll give that a try. Whatever makes one happy.

I converted from Liberty to White Ace in the mid 80's. Liberty drove me off by their reissuing supplement pages with one new stamp crammed in from the next year, so one would have to remount every stamp. They did this more than once and I got fed up. My local dealer at the time recommended White Ace; even then he warned me about the cost. I've stuck with them but now they're starting to anger me.

Their layout designers have gotten fickle, deciding arbitrarily what issues should be saved with selvage and which ones shouldn't. Others have remarked about their dislike of having se-tenants represented intact and separated. I personally like that, but White Ace has taken it to a new level with the current trend of "commemorative booklets". Take the latest Halloween issue. I think it should have been issued in sheet format, but the USPS is in love with the 20 stamp booklets. I'm yelling into the wind on this. Still, one could save a set of four and four individuals from one booklet. But no, White Ace wants you to have a complete booklet and the individual stamps as well. That just doubled my costs on all booklets issued (of which there are too many).

They've also selectively skipped an issue when they deem a change insignificant. The recent Poinsettia issue comes to mind. It was reissued by the same printer, and the date was changed on the stamp. That's a different stamp to me but not to them, so my only options are to jam the orphaned stamp on an uncrowded page, or print my own page of orphans.

From what I've read here, there is no best solution for me, as long as I want minimalist se-tenants and their component stamps on heavy paper, with stamp info and my own mounts.

I find myself smiling just a little at every poster's frustration level with this album or that. Me, too. Finding the "perfect" album is a chore, but I find it fun to look at different binders, brands, and page options. I like the Scott albums very much. Their pages are nicely laid out, their binders are generally good, and they have slipcases which I prefer. I haven't warmed up to the three-ring style of binder. To me, it's too clunky and lacks elegance like the two-post binders have.

As for bulging albums and curling pages, a lot of this is due to the stamps mounted on the pages which prevent the pages from laying flat. You "have" to use cardboard spacers along the posts. I'm not sure this is needed with ring binders. The spacers "thicken" the mounting side of the pages a bit to compensate for the greater thickness of pages plus stamps away from the margins of the pages. This is basic physics, and you have to do it (or not, as you wish) if you want the pages to lie fairly flat. Cutting cardboard spacers with a paper cutter and hole-punching them is not difficult. Even for square-post page binders, two round holes per post will work.

Consider also looking at other album manufacters like Schaubeck and Lighthouse. The latter is pretty expensive, but Schaubeck sells very high quality pages and binders less expensively. And if you can't afford their country page sets which can run into hundreds of dollars (so can Palo, Davo, Lighthouse and others -- only Scott sells sets of country pages fairly inexpensively), then you might consider using their blank or quadrilled pages instead. To me, though, Scott really hits the sweet spot. Their pages are very sophisticated looking, generally uncrowded (compared to Harris, Minkus and many general albums which overcrowd their pages), printed on high quality paper, and they're not as expensive as most other publishers.

Next to Scott, I like Davo albums, but they only come in two-post designs. No ring binders. Not cheap, though, that's for sure. But as a lifetime hobby, I tend to spend more to get more and expect to keep the albums I do purchase for many, many years. When your estate is sold off, by the way, your albums will raise the value somewhat as dealers find selling nicer collections in high quality albums easier. So your spouse or children will be able to sell collections mounted in Lighthouse, Davo, Schaubeck, or Scott albums a lot easier than if they're mounted in less attractive albums. Not a major concern to the living (!) I suppose, but still worth considering since the price of the better albums isn't entirely lost!

On that depressing note, I'll stop.

I used to use the White Ace album. But I hated how they wanted you to mount each se-tenant connected and as individual stamps. And the White Ace simplified that didn't do that, did not have all the Scott numbers in it. I thought the Scott albums were great, but they didn't have any descriptions.

My perfect album would have been the Minuteman album on Scott National paper. I emailed Amos and asked them if they could offer the Minuteman on Scott National paper as a print on demand option. I got an email a few days later from a customer service rep that the idea had made it to upper management, and they rejected it.

For me, the perfect US album does not exist.

I forgot if anyone said this - but what if one bought Minuteman supplements, scanned them into images and the printed them on sturdier paper stock? A pain in the butt for sure but you would have your ideal.

Does Minuteman only show se-tenants as joined? What is their policy regarding Legends of Hollywood? Do they consider them souvenir sheets and have a space for that, or do they only have space for a single?

I'm not sure how they deal with Legends of Hollywood.

Se-tenants are always connected in the Minuteman, and stamps are always in Scott order on Se-tenats. Coils are also individual stamps, instead of coil pairs, like they do in the Scott National.




Minuteman pages a bigger than US Letter. That would require finding some custom paper size and a printer which can do larger page sizes.

I guess I'm doomed. I want a hybrid of what many of you described as your perfect album:
1) coils as singles
2) se-tenants as both connected and loose
3) booklet commemoratives: if one design, 1 single space; multi design- block of whatever that number is, plus singles - NEVER a booklet pane if designs less than 10.
4) info on each issue
5) ideally scott # but not within square of mount area
6) a sane consistent policy with regards to issues with elaborate selvage. Legends of Hollywood would be singles, not whole sheet. Same for things like Georgia O'Keefe. Only multidesign issues would be considered for whole sheet, like Endangered Species, or Legends of the West