Another Beginner's Question - Albums

As a beginner in topical collecting, I assume just by the nature of the activity that there are no standardized albums for given topics. What approaches do folks use to display their stamps for a given subject? On that note, are there good blank albums/pages/design elements and techniques that you would recommend that I could tailor to a specific collection for style as well as organization of presentation?

Thank you again for your assistance.

Hi OldFaithful! I collect the US Transportation Series, a series of some 50+ coil stamps issued between 1981 and 1995. There are no albums available for a specialized collection, so I make my own. There are several ways to do this, I am using a free program called "Album Easy" and I am very happy with it.
As for the first part of your question, yes, there are topical albums available. It all depends on what you collect. You did not give us a clue as to what your interest is, but you could Google it? I tried "topical stamp album" and all
sorts of pages came up!

Peter

Welcome aboard, OldFaithful,

Good album binders and pages can be expensive. It is best to use stock books until you have done enough research on albums, pages, paper types and weights to make an informed choice from what is available.

The small Scott 3 ring Speciality binders (100 sheet capacity) are a good place to start. They are well made, reasonably priced, and allow the pages to lie flat. An important consideration for some. If you go for these try for the older, conventional bindings if you can get them. These are currently being replaced with metal hinged binders. The binders have untitled spines and various matching labels are available. Not sure about "Theme" titles though. Scott blank pages can easily be printed up with page titles. With the 3 ring binder it is also easy to make your own pages, print them up, and use a suitable 3 hole punch to finish the job.

A word about paper. It is best to go for archival quality paper in the heavier weights for durability. GSM (grammes per square meter) is a more consistent guide to paper weight than poundage as every paper type is weighed by the square meter and not by 500 sheets of whatever size is made. Matt smooth surfaces paper is probably the nicest finish, especially if you want to write up your pages in pen and ink. For that reason I find it best to avoid paper with polished or shiny surfaces.

If you decide to print your own pages, keep the layout design simple. Over elaborate and colourful designs will only overpower the stamps

This is a costly business so don't rush into these choices.

Terry

I am at the point of deciding to branch out from a general U.S. collection into a few more specialized topics, but am still trying to figure out a manageable approach. Some areas that I have a particular interest in are astronomy, art & artists, maps and national parks. Don't want to bite off more than I can chew, however, so I am evaluating which of these areas to focus on first.

In the meantime, I greatly appreciate your taking the time to offer some great advice - I will continue to search online to help refine my topics as well as do more research on ways to display the stamps.

Until you've been collecting a topic for awhile, have accumulated a good start to the collection, and have a relatively firm idea/concept of how you want to develop/present the topic, I suggest using stock pages. This gives you total flexibility in organizing the collection until you know the approach you want to take. You can try different approaches without having to worry about "starting over" if/when you change your mind on how to proceed.

As others have mentioned stockbooks and stock pages are a good approach, at least to start. The stamps can be arranged and rearranged in any way you'd like. Here's a good place to buy Vario pages, one of the most popular stock pages:

http://stores.ebay.com/Designer-Sta...ub=238640619

The American Philatelic Society has some mini-albums available for printing, all by topic, which may be a good way to get your philatelic pheet wet. Beyond that, Vario and stock pages are a nice way to go as already mentioned, and there is always the alternative of creating your own pages from blank albums. Stanley Gibbons has/had a bunch of these available (such as their 'Senator' album, amongst others) although many of these are of the spring-back variety (so the pages don't lie flat when the album is opened).
The APS mini's can be found here: http://stamps.org/Free-Album-Pages

Hello all I have started making my own album pages with a free program called albumeasy. bit of a learning curve but worth it.

Like many other collectors here, I too make my own topical pages as well as albums using AlbumEasy. Highly recommend it.

The AE software and several sets of album pages made by myself and others can be downloaded for FREE at thestampweb.com

Here are some examples of my topical pages from my own collection. The ones available from the AE website won't have the Scott numbers.

Nice album pages uboatnut, looking for a South African album easy txt file so I can make it fit my stamps gutter pairs etc. Still learning the program, easy for me to adapt than start from scratch at this stage

Uboatnut how do you make your examples

These examples are just single pages from a few of my multi-page albums, most of which you can find for free downloading on http://thestampweb.com under ALBUMS.

They are made using the also free AlbumEasy software. The latest version has a wizard that makes the process even easier.

If you want more explicit details, please email me and we'll take it off the forum.

You could email Clivel, a forum member and the author of the AE software regarding the availability of South African pages. That's one of his special areas of interest.

Bob

Hello Perfin_RK,
Are you looking for a Union or Republic of South Africa AlbumEasy text file or both?
I currently have a partial Union album that I have been meaning to complete for years now. If you are not in a terrible rush I should have it ready in a week or two. I can post here once it is complete as I don't think that I have enough posts yet on this forum to send a private message.
What part of SA are you in?
I am from Pretoria but moved to Cape Town in my twenties and now live in Canada.
Regards,
Clive

Hello Uboutnut, thanks I am using albumeasy but still a novice at it, but what I meant was how did you make the pages into JPG files for uploading here.

Hello Clive, thanks for the great software, I'm in Joburg, original from Bulawayo Rhodesia. I have downloaded all the Rhodesia's from the site and the south african ones too, busy adapting the R&N file to fit my stamps. I started using your software in 2006 or 7 but with work pressures I didn't have time for my stamping, I did chat to you way back when but now have started up again. I have the Union file that you have on the site, but looking for a Republic one. if you can help with the updated Union one that would be great. I made up some front of album pages Info, coat of arms etc in PDF files for some of the albums I was working on R&N and a couple of others. Am going through my stuuf and some need updating but thats a work in progress.I am willing to share those with anyone if they want. when I work out how to post examples I will post them.

I scanned the pages from my album into my computer and saved them as jpg files. My scanner will save files as either jpg or pdf files.

If I want to post them to the forum, I use jpg; if I want them downloadable/printable, I use pdf.