Are Cheap Album Manufacturers Days Numbered?

Understood that he is using Pagemaker but he could easily switch to Adobe LiveCycle designer. LiveCycle is a part of the Acrobat Pro suite, it runs around $120 (around $80 if he buys version 9 which would work fine).

He could simply bring in his existing work, he would not lose his previous efforts. In fact, it is pretty easy to bring in the outputted PDF files that he publishes into Livecycle, so I stand by my statement.

But my point is that even if he doesn't do this, others will. It is only a matter of time that this approach is used to work around the 'catalog number rights' issue. Self printed albums are here to stay and this glaring omission is too desirable, and too easily overcome, for this to go unresolved. Amos and other album manufacturers will no longer enjoy the exclusiveness that they once had, technology and the ability for users to insert a numbering system on their own will seal this fate.

And taking it to the next level, imagine a full blown application that allowed you to 'drop and drag' elements onto a blank page to layout your own pages. On one side of the screen would be a running list of all stamps for a specific country. Drag one over and it not only adds the rectangle box for the stamp but also options for adding images, descriptions, catalog numbers, page borders, etc. This isn't rocket science, this is more than 'doable' with existing development tools such as Visual Studio. It is simply a project waiting for someone to invest. In my opinion this will happen sooner rather than later, even if Amos and other current publishers don't run with this their are plenty of people who can pull this off to take advantage of the substantial $$$ opportunity it represents.
don

Edit - If I can find the time, I will upload a Steiner page with the ability to add catalog numbers in the next few days as a demonstration.

Hi 51studebaker,

What you say makes sense, but I hold out little hope for the big boys running with it. I made some suggestions to Stanley Gibbons last year for improvements that could be made to their albums and pages. They didn't even have the courtesy to reply to me. Not even an acknowledgement.

Terry

I don't know Mr. Steiner's age, but I don't get the impression he's a young man. He may not want to go through the expense or effort to learn something new.

I had emailed him a while ago asking if he would be interested in learning Scribus, or some other more modern DTP solution, or at least embedding the fonts he uses.

I have not heard back from him.




I would love to see that.

I would suspect it's the challenge of designing new pages every year on a timely basis. You want to sell a new album for a marketable price. Are buyers willing to pay a larger price for bigger and thicker albums? Yes, I do believe some companies cut corners in order to keep the album size the same. Current stamp album makers could remove those countries that no longer exist who only made a few stamps that are not common to today's collector. Beckett magazine for sports cards remove several card issues every year to offset the new sports card listings because they don't want to increase their selling price.

As I said a few times here ,everybody is looking at what Bill Steiner has done . It is a matter of time before someone makes him a offer he can't refuse . I buy Steiner's CD's every few years because if a major publishers takes it over, it is going to be much more expensive or they will buy it and trash it .
As far as making changes to suit yourself that's fine but I have to believe most collectors are like me , we want the basics of print and hinge our stamps not getting into a lot of fancy add-on's . Sure some want to customize their pages but when your talking thousands and thousands of self-print pages the rule is keep it simple and not use a lot of ink per page .

In the early 2000s bill Steiner offered the native pagemaker files. I have them all. Not with The last decades updates however. I only collect classic so it doesn't matter to me. Anyway I worked in indesign, adobes professional layout program, still do, and I have brought all the files into indesign, updating them with nicer fonts, borders etc. easy to do since Bill correctly utilized master pages, object, paragraph and character styles. In the mid 2000s I offered the files to him but he wasn't interested. I believe Palo licensed his pages as the basis for theirs.

Are all of Bill Steiner's pages 8.5" x 11", or can you print larger pages for the classical 2 ring punches?

It will be interesting what happens to Steiner's pages down the road. If he wants it to protected then he could transfer ownership to someone else to continue the work.

I modify and add Cat# to some of my Steiner pages...

The pages are meant for 8.5x11, but they can be printed on larger sizes if you have the appropriate paper and printer. Regardless of what size paper you print them on, the size of the border and the spacing of the stamp boxes within will not change.

I had looked at Scott pricing and looked like the Minuteman and National supplements were the same price. National and Minuteman - each had 18 pages for $16.99 (amos advantage). The paper quality (National much better than Minuteman) does not seem to warrant a premium so other price setting factors in play.

Mystic's Heirloom supplement is $5.75 so clearly they want to sell supplements but then they make it up by stamps like buying a $6.45 La Cueva del Indio for $24.95 or any 49c commemorative for $2.50.

Original poster wrote; way back when; that Scott products were declining in quality. I use the Scott Big Blue International pages exclusively; no Steiner as they're the wrong size for my binders.

I use a lot of blank quadrille pages since I have largely retired the Part I (1840-1940) pages due to not being comprehensive enough for my specialty areas.. Noticed a few years ago that the Scott "blankies" were getting thinner. So, I switched to the G & K brand of international quadrille pages sold by Subway Stamp Shop in Altoona, PA. Been real happy with the G & K products. They also have glassine interleaving sized to fit the two hole, Big Blue, binders.

I also have trimmed-to-size various Scott specialty pages that have come with purchased collections. Those generally have good thickness and I trim away the edges that often are toned due to handling.

Hi...I've recently picked up my U.S. collection after 40 years on hiatus and I'm considering how deeply I want to get back in. My toe is in the water, testing the temperature.

Please forgive me if this seems to be a rambling entry...there is some reminiscing going on. I'm not really asking any questions, just providing a couple of observations from someone who has been out of the hobby for quite a while.

I started out when I was in 7th grade (1971) with a jumbled mess of stuff from some great aunt or other that my parents gave to me. I was fascinated. I scraped together some money and bought a Minkus All-American album and spent endless hours figuring everything out, listening to the radio. (I distinctly remember that Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" was getting a lot of airplay during this time. To this day, that song reminds me of stamp collecting.) I would get copies of Field and Stream magazine from the school library, which always had adds in the back from Mystic or Jamestown, or other companies...for a few cents I could get a bag of 100 or so random old stamps delivered to me. It was great fun (for me, at least) and held my interest until I began college, career, family, etc.

After a few years of this, late in high school, I decided to up my game and bought a Scott National album. Quite frankly, I lusted after it. I loved the advertised quality and comprehensiveness of it. In those days, per-internet, I was collecting in somewhat of a vacuum--I didn't get any real mentoring at all--and to my mind the Scott National was THE U.S. album to have. I don't recall the idea of creating my own album never occurring to me.

There are so many options out there now. I keep hearing that Scott quality has diminished. I have ordered the 2016 supplement just to see how the quality of a modern Scott page compares with a pre-1980 page. I've been thinking I should stick with the Scott National and continue with mounts rather than hinges (many of the stamps I bought in the late 1970s are in clear mounts that were being sold back then...they have held up very well). I will let you know what my judgement is when I receive the new pages. The old binder and pages have held up over the years and many moves very well.

What flummoxes me most about the environment today is the overly inflated cost of albums (which, when combined with the observation that quality has diminished, seems to me unsupportable). I paid in the neighborhood of $20 for my Scott National album around 1977. If you factor for inflation since then (it becomes $80 in 2017), and triple that to account for the increased number of pages and binders since then, I would expect to pay under $250 for the same product today. If there has been a noticeable decrease in quality, I will consider printing my own pages...which, according to this topic thread, introduces all kinds of variables.

While I was rifling through my stuff, If found a pristine copy of the 1979 Jamestown Catalog. For your entertainment, I have provided a couple of pics of pages from the catalog here...






Gene

Gene Graham,

Before you make any major investment in albums, try Mystic. I had an All American too. Still have it. You can buy a complete Mystic for about $40- although the three binders suck. If you like the pages, and I'm guessing you will, then you can upgrade to the Premium binders (and slipcovers). I have sixteen binders - some empty but most full. You can find Mystic online.

Jack Kelley

The album I think I like the best in terms of layout is the Scott Minuteman. I like the stamp descriptions. I like the fact that coils are not coil pairs. But I don't like the paper. It's really thin.

I emailed Amos about 2 years ago and asked, since they do print on demand a lot. can they print on demand the Minuteman album onto Scott National paper. If they did that, I would retire the Heirloom. No need to hack pages, and I would get the nicer thicker paper. The rep thought it was a great idea. When she presented it to management, they immediately shot it down.

In 2017, not only do we have Steiner out there. But there are all sorts of ebay options available for album pages on CD.

Why spend $14.99 on Scott pages that you need to put in a Scott binder (since they're not US Letter of A4), wnen you can print them yourself and put them in a $5.00 Staples binder?