A Different Ww Stamps Album

I agree completely with Hieronymus, floortrader and JkJblue. I modify the Steiner pages to suit my expanded interests - whether that be a section for revenue cancels on Iceland definitives, or a page devoted to US plate number coils.

There's no way I could have the time to build all of the basic pages from scratch. I could never complain about any errors or formatting, based on what we get for the money. It has been a HUGE undertaking for which I am very appreciative.

Having attempted to produce album pages myself I can tell you it is a massive amount of work. My hat comes off for the steiner pages they really helped when I started to house my collection and are a great start for anyone.

The problem is customising the pages to suit your collection or any other collectors collection.

A quote from an earlier post

"Honestly, the most perfect solution would be a customizable one, where you could go down a checklist of stamps and sets and tell it which ones you want and whether you want blocks or singles, how many you want on a page, etc. and presto! it makes the pages for you on the fly. It's certainly doable. The kicker is inputting data (including physical dimensions, denominations, catalog numbers, etc) on, oh about a million or so stamps."

I agreed with the above and wrote a program to do this located at worldcollector.eu. Still not perfect but it does produce album pages on the fly so to speak with the user selecting which stamps to appear on the page.

Even using the program producing hundreds of album sheets takes an immense amount of time and effort. I found it to be worth it for my whole world collection.

Well, this is the final version

This an album focus on canceled stamps, I have not yet found one available on the market, this is why I do it.

- All Singles Stamps
- Single line greyish border
- Date and title on the same line
- Special watermark and specials perforations will be added only if the front of the stamps show a different design or color, otherwise only 1 version of the same design will be show

Souvenirs and all other none single stamps can be add on blank pages.

Will be available for free to the persons who contribute to the album ( photo of stamps, information about specific country and others) That means it will not be for sale.

A dedicated Web Site will be online in the next days

Nice subject to discuss but it will not work for me , I think in terms of 100,000 pages in my collection and somewhere close to 600,000 stamps . I need pages fast and not 1 hour or 1/2 hour to design a page . My pages are full of notes and information that gets written in after I made the page a few years back .
Will I get to the 100,000 pages maybe yes and maybe no! But I already exceed everybody else and plan to put another 20 years to that effort . I like the Steiner pages so much that I have two CD's purchased and loaded on two seperate computers



.
Here is a sample of a page done today and the other with extra notes .

This is the Steiner's pages of the sames stamps , where are the mod and the fondation ? Oh I see; I use 8½ x 11 paper



Steiner




Mine

Since apparently I have to spell it out, Area66, by showing us a page you drastically modified from Steiner you make our point: you use Steiner as your reference point, your foundation. Some pages you modify beyond recognition, but Steiner has transformed the close to one million Scott numbers into pages. You are not starting from the Scott Catalogue but from Steiner's "pagifying" of the Scott catalogue. True, some pages you modify drastically but others you presumably modify only slightly.

Since you find Steiner's pages so deeply unsatisfactory, why didn't you post your page against the catalogue itself as it's reference point? Instead your point of departure is Steiner, not the catalogue itself.

Steiner is so ubiquitous, so massive, so comprehensive that even those, like you, who dislike his pages cannot help themselves but honor him even in bashing him.

I rest my case.

Lol, May be you need new eye glasses

Let's clear so facts, I own the Scott Int. Albums up to 90, I start to be very unsatisfied with Scott in the year 80, too much souvenirs and bloc, I then purchase Steiner because he was offering the Pagemaker version, so I was able to remove the souvenir sheet. Then when Windows 7 was release Pagemaker was not working on it. so I have to use an old Windows XP pc. Now even my new Adobe CC suit can't open Pagemaker so I'm now using InDesign to make my pages.

When I do a page I open my Scott album to make measure of the stamps, and then write them on a printed pages of steiner. After I use my master to make a new pages in InDesign, it's more easy to work from this master than mod a PDF, any one with Desktop Publishing software
will know it.

I admit that I first I just redo the pages I need with same border so I can mix them with the steiner one who don't need mod. But now I redo all them to have the series group together

I admit Steiner make a huge work, but unlike many of you I can see the positive and negative.

I do understand than not every body as the same budget as me and for $ 30 it's a dam good deal.

But Steiner, Scott, Lighthouse, Minkus, Linder and co don't fit my WW needs, I want to place cheap canceled stamps for the one I doN,t like and Mint one for the beautifull engraved one.

I do have a Lighthouse for US and Canada, that cost me a fortune evry month, US stamps are very expensive, so I don't want use too much of my budget on the World Album. I spent about $ 5000 in Scott that I will not use aside of reference.


here what I'm doing tonight with the printed Steiner pages I have, I take note ... why I will need notes if I just mod them. I know it's a huge waste of paper. the last photo is the Steiner pages I printed and take notes on them, all those pages are now ready. I have not count them but I have finished, US, Canada, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Philippines, Sweden ( 90%) France, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Romania and many country at different degree

I wish you well area66. I see you have gone through a progression like most of us. I started pre 1940 with a Big Blue, and quickly realized that it wasn't right for me. I later bought a Vintage Reproductions album. I sold that one on ebay when I discovered Steiner and his Pagemaker files. Several years later and I'm building a style all of my own, heavily inspired by Steiner, but not really recognizable.

Btw, I have Pagemaker 7.0 running perfectly well on a Windows 7 pro machine.

I'm done collecting albums...I'm collecting stamps.

Don

Or....save paper altogether and use Vario or Hagner stock pages.

*flees for cover as used album binders flung in my direction* :)

Donhearl, if you look few post before, I use Pagemaker 6.5 on XP in a virtual machine. With Vmware Workstation and a multi monotors WS I can even copy and paste from a Windows apps to an XP apps

that's bring me here are the 2 printers I use for my albums , yes it's an unitrade catalog on them ..

Here a pic showing a stock book , Unitrade Catalog and Steiner's pages.

1- I look in the catalog to id the stamps
2- I pull out the stamp from the stock book
3- I measure it
4- I note it on the steiner pages

when I have around 30 pages, I fire InDesign and then I do the pages.

If someone just need to mod the pages, they are no need to take notes, just use Libre office Draw, open the PDF and mod it. This is very usefull to remove an expensive stamps.

nice printers!

I did look a few posts before, hence my reason for pointing out that Pagemaker 7.0 works under Windows 7 Professional. I'm not sure why or how, but it does. I'm not so sure about 6.5.

I will check if I can put my hand on PM 7.0 but sine Steiner stop to give the PM files, someone is better to us Libre office Draw, it's free and more easy to use than PM, the only problem it will not keep the master pages. So if you want to mod the borders or center it, you have to do page by page.

Steiner's pages are a real good investment but peoples have to realize they will need to learn something like Libre Office Draw to correct mistakes or adapt it to their needs. This is where I have problem with some; no product in the world is perfect. Good thing is with Steiner it's easy to mod and he already did the huge part of the work. But to say that without Steiner I will not collect stamps, now way, I will still collect them, I start 30 years before Steiner release his first pages. I even have my 8 Minkus Global of the start of 80's, actually I enjoy collecting stamps albums , I also have a nice collection of the First Scott catalogs. At the time they have an add for all the Colombian MNH for few few hundreds of $ ... I will post it when I will be home

So honestly how it look? I think I print 100 versions of it with different borders, I was close to not use borders, but something was missing, so I use a very simple one grey ( actually 80% transparency for the one use to Desktop Publishing ) , inspire from Minkus grey one, I do Oil and Acrylic painting and learn that you have to focus the eyes of the observers to the center not on the sides. If I have special info like watermark of perf, I will put them under in a smaller fonts. Since I left my Sweden album in the office vault I will add the stamps on it Monday and take a new photo