Hingeless Album Comparison/Review

Dear All,

Can someone do a quick review of all brands? I am saving money to get a Great Britain hingeless one.

What brand gives you the best value for money?
What about quality and reliability?

You can get an idea of the characteristics of many of the manufacturers' offerings from this thread:

https://www.stampcommunity.org/topi...17127#380825

Obviously, some of these albums won't be available for GB. Which period did you have in mind?

Bear in mind that you can pick up expensive albums at auction, usually with stamps, for a small fraction of the retail price.

Your question leads to a more complex answer than "a quick review of all the brands".

GeoffHa gave you great advice: 1) take time to review dozens of shared comments about albums within this Community, and 2) start checking out the online auction sites if you're not prepared to pay full retail for new albums.

Investing some time to better understand the many types of albums available will help you narrow down what you really want. Fact is your question has complicated considerations. There are many ways to collect Great Britain. And the fact that you have decided on hingeless will likely reduce your choices to Stanly Gibbons, Lindner, Palo, SAFE, Lighthouse, Davo, Schaubek, and others I haven't heard of.

Earlier this year I asked this Forum for insights regarding hingeless US albums which I knew nothing about. Several months later, after viewing and discussing many collector's experiences with albums, I had learned enough to make a decision to purchase a couple new Mystic hingeless albums. Of course once I used my new albums I found out their short coming. My pages would catch on the manufacturer's less costly 3-ring mechanism when turning pages. Armed with this knowledge I then purchased a used set of out-of-print Scott Platinum Series albums. These are even nicer, but hard to find used.

Many collectors build their collections using online auctions such as ebay, attending dealer auctions where you can bid on lots that include albums, or contacting stamp dealers directly. I don't collect Great Britain but I hope you enjoy your search.

The thing is that for someone mainly based in Pakistan, I have a pretty decent GB collection. And it is pretty good too.

The other problem is that ebay is inaccessible for us Pakistanis because of PayPal blues. That limits a lot many options. I would happily buy a standard GB album but I would need a separate estimate done for the number of mounts I need before I can proceed.

If someone can route me to some working done on the number of mounts needed per year size-wise, I shall be grateful. I do have the CD from stampalbums.com by the way. If I were to go ahead with that, what quality of paper should I use? Binders aren't readily available in Pakistan. Lots of limitations.

My collection is mostly stored in the small number of glassine envelopes that I have in shoe boxes. Need to move on from that.

If you have the Steiner pages CD then you can go through to find the mount sizes. He's pretty good about getting it right, at about 2mm clearance on each size (4mm larger than the stamp). If you decide to use his pages, print on an archival card stock or on a heavy text weight. I use a US 70# text weight for my pages and is doing it over would bump that up to 80-110#. You will have to covert to match what is available locally, of course. I find it easiest to buy paper from a printer because I can have it cut and drilled to the size I want.

I had a glance at a couple of current, real-life, non-ebay auctions to see what's around in terms of hingeless albums. Warwick & Warwick have two Lighthouse hingeless albums covering 1840-1986, with stamps, with an estimate of £100, and a further Lighthouse hingeless album for 1840-1970 with stamps - estimate of £70. Somerset Stamp Auctions has a hingeless Davo for 1840-1970 with stamps and an estimate of £30. Similar items pop up regularly, and may be worth the shipping if the alternative is an expensive new album.

God bless you for your advice, GeoffHa. Could you contact me in private?
My email is kamranwasti@gmail.com
I tried to message you but the forum rules would not let me

Hi kamranwasti, I'm sorry to hear that you face some big challenges to moving forward with your collection. It must be frustrating to be prohibited from ebay and Paypal. Can you access Delcampe.net? That's another stamp auction site. BidStart.com is another.

Sounds like GeoffHa is familiar with other resources that could be helpful. Best of luck!

My collection history is interesting - I started at 4. At the time, my father, had hung an A4 size envelope in one of the corners of his room where he would put every used stamp that would come. So I would follow suit and did so for six years. When it would get filled up, my dad would take it off and replace it with another. During that time, my uncle gave me his collection which I would treasure without knowing much about it until one day at school, I saw some boys showing off (I was ten at the time). It really hit my ego because I believed I had to be the best because of my father and my uncle's influence as well as my father's uncle who was one of the greatest collectors in Pakistan. So it clicked then (late 1988) and I became obsessed and did so for a number of years till I had to leave my town for my studies which prompted a break during which I kept my Pakistan mint updated somehow.

In parallel, Australia (because my uncle - dad's elder brother - lives there) was a natural interest and GB (because of more family links). However, in Pakistan stamp album = stockbook but I think my mind GB stamps deserve better.

I'll check the other sites too soon.

You guys have been very kind and helpful. God bless you all.

Since you have access limitations, also try bidstart.com, another stamp online buying/selling website. Maybe you can find used albums posted there. Best of luck!