Palo Hingeless Pages For Classic Mexico (Many Pics)

I asked a while back, both here and on another site, about hingeless pages for early Mexico. The only two companies that I found that made hingeless pages were:

1. Etiangui Philately. While the gold standard for someone REALLY wanting to specialize in Mexico, they are insanely expensive (almost US$10 per page once shipping was factored into the equation).

2. Palo Albums.

I decided to order a set of the Palo pages. I specifically did *NOT* want color pages, which is their default. Telling at a glance which spots have stamps is a pain in the [CENSORED] with color album pages.

They claim a 2-week turnaround on hingeless pages, as Palo says they are made to order. I ordered on August 1, and they arrived today, well UNDER the promised 2 weeks.

As promised, the pages were black & white, not color. Palo claims that it covers major Scott number listings, and they are more than true to their word. Not only are the pages complete on major Scott numbers from front of book to back of book, but all spots are in Scott order (although the Scott numbers are not printed on the pages, presumably to avoid licensing fees), and they include some extra spaces.

For example, on the very early issues, they include pages for both with and without district overprints. For the numeral issues, they include the minor-letter perf varieties.

All officials and back-of-book provisional and revolutionary issues are also included.

The 1856-1940 Mexico set comes to 103 pages. Costwise, it worked out to almost $3.50 per page when all was said and done, since I have to pay usury sales tax of almost 10% because Palo is located in Illinois.

The mounts are open at the top, and I could find no manufacturing flaws.

Are they cheap? No. But for many countries out there, no company except Palo produces hingeless pages. They will also sell single pages or specific years on a pro-rata basis, as well as do custom hingeless pages upon request.

Here are images of all of the pages in the first Mexico set. I also got the second set, covering 1941-1980, which is not pictured.

Hi revenuecollector,

I just stumbled upon your post while searching for Palo album related posts. I'm surprised your post didn't get ANY replies, so I thought I'd reply given all the work you went through posting all your scanned pages!

Do you still like your Palo Mexican album? Have you purchase any other Palo albums for other collections?

Happy Holidays

I also did not see the post, but not sure I was a member here when the original post was made. It is a really nice set of pages.

Those Palo pages are at once a boon to collectors of classic Mexico and a big downer. The boon is obvious. The downer is that due to all the district overprints, having just one place for a given stamp when there may be dozens and even hundreds of potential varieties of one stamp means Palo pages ultimately are of no help. I'll stick to my mix of trimmed down Scott Specialized; Scott International and blank International quadrilled pages.

Great looking pages. Wonder what the price would be for a world-wide 1840-1940 set of their pages?

If you collect to that degree of specialization, then no, these are not the album pages for you. If you collect all the various district names, then either you would need multiple sets of various pages (and Palo WILL sell individual pages ala-carte), or you want the Etiangui Philately pages.

It's an apples-to-oranges comparison though: if you are collecting everything by district name, you are talking many THOUSANDS of stamps, so any album page solution that covers that will be at a completely different price level.

For example, a complete set of Etiangui Philately pages through 2011 (the most current supplement when I checked into pricing) comprises over 2,300 pages, and the hingeless version costs over $14,000 NOT including binders, dust cases, or shipping. If you are willing to forgo hingeless, you could get away for the bargain price of just over $8,000.

All things, considered, the Palo pages are a viable option for the vast majority of Mexico collectors. You could get several thousand pages of needed duplicate Palo pages for districts before you approach the cost of Etiangui Philately pages.

I think their regular (nonhingless) pages are about $1 per page x ~6500 pages for classic era pages (based on Steiner pages) = $6500.

Maybe more like 6000 pages if you stop British Commonwealth at 1940 instead of 1952.

However, don't forget about binders! At 100 pages per binder, it would cost an additional ~ $3300 for the binders!

I'm pretty sure Palo makes matching blank quadrille pages that can easily be added for all the various varieties.

I start to really dislike my Palo album, the pages are hard to turn; they stuck in the joints of the rings. I know it may be a problem before I ordered it, but I want to really give it a try.

Thanks to Rev Collector and Chris for further feedback on the Mexico Palo pages. It wasn't my intent to speak overly critical. The Palos are nice, as I said. But I'm pretty married to the Big Blue Scott International pages, with all their shortcomings. Like country A being on the front side of a page and country B on the back side, especially with my Part I. That's always been a minor pain. But is much more so now that I've started to break up my 1840-1965 world wide collection, planning to sell parts and then re-organizing the rest into formats that make more sense for me (like a binder or two devoted just to my British Commonwealth).

I don't expect to get real hyper about specializing in the Mexico District overprints. One reason is rarity and another is just the sheer amount, as noted by rev collector. As an example, the Stamp Finder catalog for the 1879-1883 Mexico foreign mail stamps, published by long time MEPSI member Richard Lehmann, identifies 25 individual Scott numbered stamps in the series. However, these 25 basic stamps yield over 1,900 district/year combinations; almost 400 errors and varieties; and 200 re-issued varieties (the Habilitados). I think my point is that if I get 8-10 varieties of one classic Mexico stamp, as an example, I'll need either blank pages or the back sides of my trimmed-to-fit Scott Specialty pages for Mexico.

One of the high attractants of collecting over the years, for me, is the sheer variety of ways to collect and what to collect. Mexico is a more recent discovery for me, but have been doing the Portuguese colonies, with all their varieties of the classic issues, now for several decades and have yet to be bored.

" Like country A being on the front side of a page and country B on the back side, especially with my Part I. "

That's because you have an old edition probably purchase on ebay. New Edition of Scott Int. start new country on new page, the paper is more thick and the holes are more far from the edge of the paper, make it less prone top tear, and not compatible with old edition pages

I previously had a couple of Palo albums that I recently sold, and I remember this being an issue with them as well.

I'm currently using a 2-volume Scott International Vol 1 with thick pages copyrighted 1985 for my WW collection. For now, I'm just enjoying the challenge of filling the ~35,000 spaces and using blank quadrille pages for stamps I have that don't have a dedicated space.

Chris, the more I think, the more I will focus only on the Scott Int with added pages for the interesting engraved one missing. I think to split my set of album in 2, in the first pages I will have the classics one , and in the set 2, more recent pages ( I have up to 1980 ) But for me classic don't end in 1940 as example Canada will be up to 50's and Philippines after the Japanese occupation, US will go up to 1960 ( I like the purples and green, and other mono colour engraved stamps) . But many countries will not even reach 1940. The real problem is the US in Scott Int, I have a US Lighthouse album and was planing to put duplicates in the Scott, but Scott as over $ 3000 in US stamps value in the first 3 pages, I do also have the Canadian Lighthouse album but this was not a problem to fill the Scott with duplicates as it represents less than $ 1000

area66: thanks for your additional thoughts. I actually bought my set of Blue International pages; Parts One through Five; direct from the publisher in the early 1980s, long before ebay was in existence. Part 1 pages are pretty sturdy, as are 4 and 5. Parts 2 & 3 pages less.

An unmentioned reason for not wanting to switch is that I probably have 50,000 stamps mounted on these pages and way too much effort; plus hinges and mounts; to try to move to a different system now at age 66. I already have my Portugal & Colonies in separate binders. Also what I am calling as "North America" (US & possessions, Canada & provinces, Mexico, St. Pierre, Cuba, Greenland, UN-NY) is in one jumbo binder, likely to be expanded later. I really like having such related countries separated out and will follow the same method with the material I retain, as already noted.

For all the different methods I have tried over the years for housing my classic WW collection, this is the method that I always seem to come back to...

The Palo albums are very nice with all the stamp images in the spaces, and the hingeless page option. No argument from me.

But a reminder for those that would like to spend less- the Steiner pages for 1856-1940 Mexico- all 103 pages of them- are exactly the same layout and provide exactly the same coverage as the Palo pages. One will need to settle for a stamp space description rather than an image, and provide one's own mounts.

But as I collect the world, those 6,500 Steiner pages for 1840-1940 ( -1952 British Commonwealth) are considerably cheaper than the equivalent era Palo pages.

After adding the cost of the mounts, the time spent cutting and affixing mounts, and the cost of real archival paper of the same weight, how much are you REALLY saving?

Personally, I don't want to spend all that time measuting and cutting mounts, not to mention the possibility of effing things up in the process.