Digital Album - Presenting Stamps On Digital Album Pages

I'm a little late to this party, but I guess I'll toss in my $0.02.

I'm a big fan of digitally presenting a collection (obviously...). About 9 years ago, I began posting my stamps on digital "pages" in addition to my hard-copy pages. Over the years, I've actually quit putting my stamps on actual pages -- I move every 1-2 years, and it's far easier to transport my collection in a handful of stockbooks instead of 10-15 albums, especially since I refuse to entrust my collection to the movers.

Plus, it gives me the ability to add content and rearrange pages without having to rebuild hard-copy pages.

The downside is that the building the initial website was a chore (100+ hours), and uploading my existing collection took the better part of 6 months. Now that it's up and running though, it's far easier to create a digital page than it was to create the hardcopy ones.

PostmasterGS - - Thanks for valuable inputs, more so than 2c. Your rebuilt website is amazing - you have taken the concept of digital collection - or maybe even a digital 'stamp library'? - to the very top.

Several of you good people have established amazing websites - with digital presentation. I find this really inspiring, so doing something similar will probably be one of my goals for the future. For now I have too much stamps to organize so I stay pleased by visiting your websites - great work, keep it up!

Thought I'd wake up this thread...
what other approach may be used for your self-designed digital album pages?
Some like to make write-ups with information about the stamps themselves, like number of copies printed, issue date etc - or text describing the commemorative/person/event or whatever.

In my last 'album' I have ventured a bit away from this 'pure' philatelic aspect. For me the stamps represent small pieces of history, having served a specific purpose of carrying a letter from someone living in another time and place. How was life at that time and place? I have been working on Transvaal - and what a bumpy ride it's been for that former Boer nation. So I figured - why not let the album pages tell that tale?

Sample pages:









Complete album http://Blaamand.opendrive.com/files...ransvaal.pdf

Anybody else including non-philatelic content in their albums?

Jon, I really like the historical aspect of the album. Since I am a "student of history" when it comes to my stamps, some day I would like to go through and redo my albums more in a way where it uses the stamps to help tell the history.

I also like the little "reprint/forgery" bar on #210.

Really nice art work and beautiful laid out design . I could not tell you, or you would not believe how many hundreds and hundreds of those pages end up in my trash can after I remove the stamps . I purchased dozens if not hundreds of albums over the years at public auction and the results are always the same ,bid for the stamps and nothing for the binders or the album pages .

Floortrader - thanks for the compliment. Yeah, surely other peoples own designed papers are made to fit their own purpose and will not fit others, so they will end up in the bin. Like I do with the pages for any collections I aquire. That's the way of nature, everything goes to dust at some point anyway. Still I always consider all the time, effort and care that the original collector once used to make and maintain those pages, and beg a silent prayer that this person, somewhere in stamp-heaven, will forgive me for ditching it So when I make these pages for my own use I perfectly well understand it is completely waste of time in respect of money/value, but that's just fine with me, I do not collect for the investment / value anyway - only for the joy of it. And the concept and benefit with my digital pages - they will never exist in real life, only in digital format - so anyone that at some point take over my stamps will not worry about ditching anything but (hopefully by then) really worn-out stockbooks



Michael - Thanks! Your web site already sets all your dead-countries in a very fine and interesting historical context. If you are intending to include more of this on your album pages as well, I am sure it will even surpass the premium class your pages already are at - I will be thrilled to have a look!
btw - I had planned to put a similar 'reprint' bar on no.209 as well, but I forgot.

btw - I would like to share with you another benefit that comforts me with the digital pages presented above:

Basically my Transvaal collection sucks, it contains mostly very basic stuff, and what is a little more than that is in crap condition. On the 21 pages I made for Transvaal, there are simply so many empty spaces to fill - and so little eyecandy - that the collection itself is very dull and uninspiring to look at.
Probably most of us agree that looking at mostly empty-spaces is boring and disappointing waste of time. And it might be even more frustrating when realizing that many empty spaces are beyond reach to fill, like the rare local 'besiege' handstamp on last page above. Probably that page will never see anything near completion. So, where am I getting with this - what is the benefit with going digital?
Well, now that I have filled that mentioned page with some historical aspect, it gives me real pleasure to look at it and wonder how life must have been for the ones that once used these stamps - and the page is no longer only an 'empty space' - and it gives me no frustration it will never be filled, more a feeling of gratitude my family will most probably never need to use 'besieged' stamps...
Then it is up to each if they wish to add to their pages something that 'lifts' their collection from the level of 'pure philately' - or 'lower'them down from the highest level of pure philately (or investment), whichever way one sees it, that's for anyone's preference off course.

Jon, I looked at your link to your full pages.

From a design standpoint, you might try making your stamp boxes slightly transparent, not much, just enough to barely make out the image behind them. This might be nice for those blank boxes which fully obliterate the picture.

Try it and let us know what you think

Michael

Michael - Thanks - that's an excellent idea! I will try, and post when I have time for it - back to work right now...

And *that's* the cool thing about digital pages. Jon can try it out without re-hinging anything! And if he doesn't like it, Ctrl-Z and it's gone.

Mark

madmaker madbaker - exactly to the point!

edit: My appologies Mark - It was a typo, I did not intend to refer to you as 'madmaker'!
Tough I found it a bit funny when I realised my typo

So, on Michaels considerate suggestion

Before:





After 10 seconds of powerpoint magic :



What do you think - which do you prefer?

Nice Job, I like the second one. To me, it seems less "blank" without the stamps.

My opinion.

Thanks Michael
J

I prefer the second one too.

P.s. I love the history too. I am always fascinated by what was going on at the time stamps were designed and issued.