Question On Downloading Steiner's Pages Vs Cd

I'm going to get myself a Steiner subscription soon. Id like everything that would be available on the CD, but prefer to just get a web subscription. My question is if there is a way to easily download everything at once, or are downloads only organized by country and year? That would create a lot of work to download everything and perhaps makes the CD more attractive. Can anyone give insight to how the downloads are organized?

Thanks!
~fimpster

There is!

Each page is simply a URL link. If you use Firefox and the plugin DownloadThemAll! you can get them.

There is one page he has with the URLs of all the pages. You just go there and run DownloadThemAll and it will suck down everything.

I'd give you some screen shots, but I chose not to renew my membership, since I was using it for Ireland only. I may renew, just because I think it's a good price and I want to support him.

Although you can download everything, the CD is really nice to have.

Just my opinion.

You can always take the pages and make a CD. I find it more convenient to store them on all on Dropbox and have access to them everywhere.

When I had a subscription I downloaded each of the 1840-1940 country pages individually and it was very quick. Obviously, a bulk download would be optimal but it is still easy-peasy even if you have to download one at a time.

The files are really really small. They have no images and no embedded fonts. The US 2012 supplement is 38 KILOBYTES. Even on a dial up modem, the file would download in no time at all.

The files have no images? Andy what do you have to do. Download your own images? Do the files use Scott numbers?

Not to trample on the thread, but in a related vein...I have looked at the Steiner sample pages and thought, "These seem pretty simple, perhaps with a modicum of Power Point work I could work out something that would suffice". I'd be interested in a download of just a few pages for some scattered 'dead countries', as in why buy the Scott pages for all of Finland for $61 when I want 2 or 3 pages of North Ingermanland and Karelia? Anyone know of a specialized service like that out there, or is stampalbums.com it? If so, is there some freeware for available for making album pages? John

Each space has a description but no catalog number (Scott copyright issues). When I reviewed a couple of countries, I could match the Scott catalog with the Steiner page with no problem. Now whether the Steiner pages are user-friendly enough if you don't have the Scott catalog I'll have to leave to others to assess.

As an aside, there are a very few images in the Steiner pages; Early Afghanistan, for example.

Thanks

The friendly Search feature also answered my question on free or low priced page templates.....

I got the cd; downloaded it and now have it on my desktop for easy access anytime I want.

I have no knowledge of stamp page making software, so I'll let others reply to that inquiry. But the nice thing about using the Steiner site is the subscription really is a bargain- even if you just want a few scattered dead countries, IMHO.

BTW, from my Karelia blog post (http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...of-1922.html), here is a pic of the Steiner page for Karelia...

The pages have boxes for stamps and stamp titles that match what's in the Scott catalogue. The pages really should be used in conjunction with a Scott catalogue, especially for countries that don't use Latin letters in their alphabet.

Steiner doesn't use Scott numbers, because Amos won't let him. I tried to get Scott numbers on my free pages and Amos legal told me that they make a line of albums and they consider all other albums to be their competition. The only album they let use their numbers is Mystic, because Mystic spends a lot of money on advertising with them.

There are people on ebay selling Steiner pages in CD with images in them. In my correspondence with them, they claim that they have licensed the pages from Bill and add the images and resell. I have not actually contacted Steiner to confirm this. if you want to go that route, I would contact Steiner. If he gives the seller a thumbs up, then you can buy those pages.

I'll just chime in to say that I don't know if I'd be collecting today if it weren't for Steiner's pages. I collected worldwide stamps as a kid and wanted to get back into the hobby (I'm 44 now). I'd kicked around at it a few times in my 20's and 30's, but it always fell by the wayside. Anyway, A year or so ago, my worldwide collection consisted of my childhood Harris Traveler album, probably 3/4 full, and a 2-volume Mystic Lotta (blank quad pages) with a few stamps, and a bunch of miscellaneous stamps in glassines. I decided to get a new worldwide album, and the albums I really wanted, like the Scott International, were waaaaay out of reach for me. I bought a Phoenix WW album from CWS but was immediately disappointed. I quickly found out what any serious collector knows, that there is no such thing as a pre-printed, illustrated album that is both inexpensive and comprehensive. I didn't know if I wanted to keep collecting or not, since I didn't know what to do with all the stamps I was acquiring from various mixtures and lots.

Anyway, flash forward a year. I bought a subscription to Steiner's site and have been printing like crazy ever since. I now have country albums for about 30 or so countries in about 40 binders). I recently began housing my favorite countries in new Lighthouse binders, which look absolutely gorgeous. I'm acquiring thousands of stamps a month and never worry about having album space. When I think about whether to start collecting a country, I don't even consider the cost of album pages, I just think about whether it's worth taking up shelf space or whether I really like the country's stamps, etc. Sam's club online has the best prices I've found on acid-free cover stock and I get ink cartridges off ebay for $5 with free shipping. Add a cheap binder for temporary storage and I have a whole new album for ten or fifteen bucks. Pretty soon instead of running out of space to put my stamps, I'm going to run out of space to put my albums!

Not that I have any intent in doing so at this point, but what is the protocol for putting together a nice country collection on Steiner pages and selling it on ebay? Is there any type of copyright issue with doing that?