Old-Stamps-In-Album Blues

I've been thinking about making my own hingeless pages, and I like how clean your page looks. Very nice.

Kamranwasti

Welcome to SCF. I've been using the Steiner pages exclusively for my worldwide collection over the last few months and I love them. Can't get enough and I'm now collecting countries I never gave a second thought to just because of the pages. It's been a blast piecing together my collection from all the lots, old albums and mixtures I've accumulated while growing my US collection. So glad I didn't just box that stuff up and sell it.

If you want to see some of the Steiner pages with stamps on them, I do scan everything into my website. All stamps on my WW section are on Steiner pages. http://www.mystupidhobbies.com/Stam...W/index.html

I do crop each page just inside the border so you won't see the borders but these are a pretty decent look at a collection in progress using the Steiner pages. It's like having a Specialized album for any country you chose with only having to purchase the subscription or the CD.

The link below goes to my US collection but that is on Scott National pages

Very. very excited with the replies. Stamp accessories are a bit rare here in Pakistan but I think I'll take the plunge with this one.

There are album pages on the internet that you can download for free for any country. If you think you can get these printed on nice paper then that's one option.

Often large collectors and dealers have a number of extra albums (nice ones) that they accumulate from buying collections and large stocks of stamps. You may be able to find some good Lighthouse hingeless albums for your better stamps from dealers. I had at one time about 10 Canada albums, four of which were hingeless. I still have two hingeless Canada albums and I don't even use albums for my collection.

It does not work like this in Pakistan. People predominantly use stockbooks and even they are becoming rare. It is effectively a dying hobby here.

I am starting to print some of my own pages, but wanted to ask if anyone uses hinges vs. mounts (for used stamps).

I don't know if I want to go to the cost and time of buying, cutting, gluing mounts when I can just hinge a stamp to the page.

The other advantage is that the stamp is there without anything over it. "au naturel" so to speak (which I personally prefer).

Is this no longer in vogue?

It tends to turn on cost or value. For my collections of US, GB and Commonwealth classics, the 19th century used issues tend to be costly so I use mounts for them all. I like the museum-like appearance and I collect slowly and for value, so the time and cost are not critical to me.

I wouldn't use a mount for a used stamp, unless it had a CV of £20 +. And I often hinge mint stamps, unless they're UMM or valuable. If you use a traditional, fastbound album, mounts don't work, practically or aesthetically.

I use mounts for everything

My US collection is 99.9% in mounts while my WW collection is 99.9% hinged. For the countries I collect now, in many cases, the used stamps have a higher catalog value than the mint stamps. If the mint stamp has the value of the minimum amount in the Scott Catalog which was 20 cents in the 2009 catalog I have, it gets hinged. Most of them had already been hinged at one time or another anyway and with those, I soak the hinges and gum right off them any way.

Everyone seems to have different preferences so do whatever you like :) But hinging a valuable mint stamp that had never been hinged before is probably not the best thing to do

I go through 1-2 packs of 1000 hinges every month, sometimes more, although some of those are to mount an upgrade to a stamp I already had. That many mounts would kill me, particularly since 95% of the stamps I hinge are basically worthless. I do use mounts for more expensive stamps for some areas I collect on a more serious basis. In those cases I use the mount for the added protection as much as to guard against damage from a hinge. Hinged stamps can and sometimes do get damaged by an errant hand or careless page turning.