Question On Scott Specialty Albums

Hi All,

Is it still possible to buy the Specialty albums & pages for the combined country albums (Scandinavia for example, or the Benelux countries or France + colonies)?
I particularly like the idea of them over single country albums, and the ones I've seen on ebay seem to stop at about 1960, which is perfect for my collecting! They're all nearly full though, unfortunately - I've never seen empty ones on ebay...

If Scott don't still make them, is it easy to put them together from pages for individual countries without having loads of pages left over (like I said, I don't really want pages after about 1960)? I would imagine trying to get the pages for all the French colonies would be quite tricky...

Thanks for replying!

You can go directly to Amos http://www.amosadvantage.com//produ...uctgroup.asp or buy them through a dealer like this one https://www.ihobb.com/c/SCOTT_COUNTRY_ALBUMS.html
Don

Thanks Don. I've looked on both those sites, but I can't see the combined album pages on there. Like this link for example:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BENELUX-s...AOSwUdlWb4aB

Can't help on Scott, but for French Colonies, these are free, and arranged by Yvert number

http://www.album.france-timbres.net

And these are complete, but expensive

http://www.thematimbres.com/PBSCCat...atID=2169255

https://paloalbums.com/stamp-albums...nch-colonies

And, don't forget there's always Steiner pages (http://www.stampalbums.com/)

Chris

Did you settle on leaves for French Colonies? I'm thinking of dipping my toe in the MOC leaves via a sample range of countries. For me, they have the additional advantage of being designed to fit Grande binders, as well as MOC (which don't look as impressive). But they would be a serious investment (or waste, as known to normal people).

Geoff

"WHICH DON'T LOOK AS IMPRESSIVE" I seen and handled thousands of other peoples collections over the last 50 years .The only ones that impress me was the ones were people wrote up a explaination and drew helpful information on what I was looking at ,kind of like saying those collection that taught me something are the ones that impress me .
Row after row of common stuff mounted on album pages gets boring real fast . Besides put your money and time studying something unusal and make your collection different .

Geoff,
I'm still leaning towards Palo, but haven't made a final decision yet. I like the short descriptions of the stamps/sets they provide (similar to Steiner pages). And being in the U.S., I actually like that they follow Scott catalog. I also like the illustrations, but would go with B&W, not color. I was also thinking about having a specific cutoff date (like 1945 or 1950) instead of going to the date of independence, which I could do with Palo and would shave off a few pages and overall cost (i.e., there are a few that go into the 1970s and a few that start post-1945/50 that I could eliminate all together).

I hear what floortrader is saying, but aesthetics are important to me as well. I think you can have both, with Palo or any looseleaf album, you can have your main items nicely arranged on one page then add a blank quadrille page right after for any varieties with whatever annotations that you want to have. Best of both worlds

Chris

I think the problems with Palo for me are the album style, as well as the Scott base (which is likely to omit issues). The post-war French Colonies are among the most attractive - don't miss them! Many are common, but, despite what Floortrader says, I don't regard them as dull - these are my favourite stamps. Where I do agree is that hingeless albums can be dull beyond belief because all the work's been done for the collector. So it's important to add your own touch with varieties etc on additional pages.

Geoff

Especially if you are beginning to collect a new area or era of stamps, I think it makes more sense to start out with building a basic collection first, learning what you can from the general and specialized catalogs about those stamps, before moving on to areas that are more "esoteric" and unusual. I can understand your point, floortrader, as a dealer who has had plenty of experience with handling stamp collections, but from the perspective of a collector discovering a new area of interest, it's probably best to start out with the basics first, then move on to the more specialized, esoteric stuff.

I mean sure, something like say crash covers from postal flights between France and her colonies from the 1920s to the era of independence would make for a fascinating collection, but it does require a bit of understanding of the basic stamps that would be included on the covers, their periods in use and what rates they may have paid when contemporary. Just jumping into something specialized before mastering the basics of the philately of a region can be overwhelming and potentially open oneself to being cheated by fakes, contrived items and the like.

As they say, one has to learn to walk first before you can learn to run. Forming a solid base collection of the stamps themselves is a good starting point from which not only an appreciation of the issues themselves can be developed further as the collection progresses.