Ideas For An Australia Pre-Decimal Specialized Album

Hi - my specialty is Australia Pre-Decimal Stamps. Like many, I started with the Scott issues then moved to Stanley Gibbons and now finally started working with the ACSC catalogs. I started with the Steiner pages, but I've been looking for a new home for my collection. I currently have them housed in stock books, but I only see that as temporary.

How have other's found a permanent home for their specialized collection? I've looked at a variety of albums with quadrille paper but thinking this would give me the freedom to mix individual stamps, with blocks and covers. However, I do want a professional looking collection and avoid my messy handwriting. I'm not sure if I want to invest the time into custom pages, but I'm now thinking that may be the best option.

What have others done? I know some of you have kept their collections in vario/stock pages, but I prefer the look of stamps mounted on album pages. Any examples would be appreciated.

Hi pk-short,

Making your own could be the way if you want to cover the Australian States. I have not seen any decent album page suppliers sets that cover these in their Australia albums. Steiner pages might be an option, together with matching custom pages made on your computer to accommodate the various items of interest other than single stamps. Personally I like a mix of items; single mint, used, used blocks, the odd cover, and a photo here and there. Take heart from the fact that many of the great collectors collected only what appealed to them and arranged their pages accordingly. To me this is more appealing than just filling spaces on pre-printed pages in a commercial album.

I went this route, making up my own page layouts and handwriting all the page headings and information. Like you I was concerned about my handwriting so set about improving it. It can be done with a little effort. Go to this site and download their free guides. Best to start with their "Handwriting Repair" PDF. (Everything on this site is free and downloadable as PDFs).

http://operina.com

Good luck
Terry

pk-short, Greetings:

I also have atrocious and, worse, inconsistent handwriting.

I have taken to creating spreadsheets with cells that match the grids of sheets of Avery labels.

The sheets have 'helpful' names; for example, 2x4x4 (two inch by four inch, four lines of text) and 1x3x6 (one inch by two-and-a-half inches, six lines of text).

I print the labels one-at-a time, thus: pick an empty label on the sheet, type into the corresponding box in the spreadsheet, feed the sheet of labels into my printer and, presto, I've got that one label ready to use.

Archival issues? I ain't gonna live long enough to care, and anything that really belongs in a museum would get a different treatment. (I have often wondered what people do with expertized stamps, as removing them from the expertizer's mounting would seem to defeat the purpose. I ought to start a thread ...)

Get yourself a 30-60-90 triangle from a hobby store so that you do not hate yourself after you put the label on the page and notice that it tilts this way or that.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Welcome pk-short,

I can sympathize with your plight, Depending on how detailed your collection is, you might consider "tweaking" Steiner pages with a PDF editor. I do that with some of my collection. Some simple PDF editors can be found online and others can get pricey.

I have a specialty collection of Soviet Occupied Germany. It is not a popular area and it is impossible to find an album that meets my needs. I bit the bullet there and printed my own pages with Microsoft Word.
I have some of my album on Photobucket:

http://s1164.photobucket.com/user/d...upied%20Zone

Maybe my example will give you some ideas.
Good luck and keep us posted!

Dan

I also needed extra pages to supplement the ones from Steiner. I bit the bullet and bought AlbumGen from Softpro. I believe they offer a free demo version.

Like any software it was frustrating at first but after a month I was quickly making pages pages for shades, postmarks and other varieties.

Once I got the header, footer, margins, boarder and text to almost match Steiner I quickly learned to make one perfect page with about 20 boxes all the same size and save it like 24mmx28mm 20.

Next time I need a page with that size box for maybe 5 stamps I can bring up the same page and delete the other boxes, can edit the text and save it as 24mmx28mm 5.

Before long I had about 100 templates and can now zip through the
process.

I like the look of having information about a particular stamp (shade, flyspeck error, postmark, ect) neatly centered under each box.

Try the demo and don't give up after an hour. It takes time.

I agree with the other posters. Make your own pages, and you can do what you like. There are a number of stamp album programs around. I think I've seen reviews of some of them, too. Once you get the hang of it, making pages doesn't take long.

A nice presentation is very rewarding.

I also collect pre-decimal Australian stamps including the Australian States. If you are looking for a stock product, I would highly recommend Seven Seas.

http://sevenseas.com.au/

They specialize strictly in Australia and New Zealand. Their hingeless album for pre-decimal Australia 1913-1965 lists for only $165.00. They also have published optional specialty pages for perf & watermark varieties, as well as a complete set for the Australian States.

You can find many mounted collections on these pages in ebay, just search for seven seas in the stamps category.

Hi pk-short,

If you have any image management, or draw/paint, software you can make your own pages. I happened to have 'Adobe Photoshop CS' and can edit and re-arrange Steiner (or any album) pages with this. No need to buy a PDF editor. I imagine even the basic 'Photoshop Elements' could be used for this too.

As rascal mentioned above the easy way to go is to organise and make up stock elements; page headers, borders, outline boxes ( print these grey if going to be hidden or black if not), Typeface - don't get too fancy, stick to one letter or script style. Or one of each. A nice option is a classic serif face like Baskerville or Times Roman for the page header and a neat script face for the Scott numbers and stamp information text blocks. Use caps and lower case on page headers preferably, though all caps for title pages adds punch. And why stop there, you can even make up title pages to print out. Do the whole thing and you will have an album that is truly yours. Go get it done.

Terry

PS. Here are a couple designs I put together for my Egypt album. I settled for the one with the outline border. This was placed on the page with a wide margin all round.

I have been using old travel posters as my title pages. They usually have nothing to do with stamps but more oftern than not a pretty girl brightens the page.

Gets my vote! I played with the idea of using this one after seeing your post,

Terry

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to try my hand at printing some custom pages. I thinking I need to make the investment in time to learn one or more methods to create pages. All my attempts to date have been simple pages.

I like the idea of printing a few pages at a time. I'm also putting off the KGV issues while I tackle some of the QEII or KGVI issues first while I get a handle on creating my own pages.

Hi - I did some searching around the house and found the CD I purchased from stampalbums.com that includes all the PageMaker files. I will see if I can get an old copy of Pagemaker so I can edit the files.

Paul

HI
I designed my own pages using excel. once you have set up one template, then it is easy to change them.

This is an early attempt, but it gets easier as you proceed, (Ignore the spelling mistakes)



Regards
Horamakhet

Hi - an update to my project - I ended up using Adobe Indesign with some of the older Steiner Pagemaker files I purchased more than 10 years ago. Adobe Indesign versions 1-6 will open Pagemaker files so I purchased an old version of Indesign on ebay for a fraction of the cost the latest version.

By using the older PageMaker files with a dated version of InDesign, I'm able to keep the same look and feel on the customized pages as found the PDF files I used for the decimal issues. Indesign may be overkill for creating pages, but I'm finding it quick to setup and align new pages.

Here are a few sample pages