Schaubek Album Issue

I have posted previously about this album line. I am in the process of remounting an extensive German collection in a number of these albums. I mostly avoided the hingeless versions because they use Showgard type split backs, which I do not care for. As an experiment some months ago I bought a set of hingeless pages for Berlin. I had the usual issues I sometimes get with these mounts not lying flat, etc but for the most part the problems were overcome.

I recently started remounting my Bundepost material and bought hingeless pages covering 1949-80. I immediately ran into an issue- the mounts supplied in the pages I bought are a mm or so too small. The 33 x 27 mm issues will not fit well in most of them. I can get them in but with a very tight fit. The horizontal perfs are jammed and I worry the stamps will be damaged if I keep them in these.

I have used Lighthouse and Davo albums and never run into something like this. It makes me sort of wonder about the overall quality of the product. Yes I can and will contact the company but wonder- is this a common problem with these?

I have a complete set of the German Schaubek hingeless albums and have not had any issues with them yet.

Maybe you just got a bad set of pages.

If the stamps fit too tight, you will definitely damage them.

I use showguard mounts. On my older us material I often find some stamps in the series which are larger and require a larger mount. See below:





So I would not be surprised if people using hingeless albums ran into this same problem.

I suspect Schaubek pays home workers to do the mount placement, it has to be tedious. In my case whoever was doing it ran out of the right sizer and tried to use one size down. You can get away with that often in top loading mounts. Two seam mounts are unforgiving.

I have some more material to transfer so will see if the problem continues or if it was just a few pages. Then will ask for replacement.

To answer your question about Davo albums having this problem, the Davo albums I have use open top mounts so there is no issue with spacing I have experienced yet.

I wasn't clear I guess. I was asking if any Schaubek album users had run across this thing. Lighthouse/Davo to knowledge are quality products.

I am a Schaubek user. I had a few mounts that were a bit too snug for my liking. but only a few.

I used my tongs (round tip, very flat) to slide along the top and bottom crease of the mount -- that opened them up just enough to take my stamps without damaging the perf or creasing the stamp.

Kirk

Just a little trim won't hurt ....lol

I have actually been guilty of that- trimming off a mm or so on the tab margin of an inexpensive plate block.

On a single stamp those pesky perfs get in the way..

I own no Schaubek albums, so I can't add any useful information about their (hingeless) mounts, but this is very interesting information to hear as I'm sort of debating adding some Schaubek albums to my existing mix of Scott Specialty and International albums plus many Davo albums. I like Davo albums and their (open top, if I remember correctly) mounts seem to work just fine. I find Davo a little "bare" in its page layout with only the single lines borders. I prefer the fancier scrolls on the Scott Specialty series (being an old-fashioned guy, I suppose, at least when it comes to stamp presentations).

The main reason for this post, however, is to note that after toting up blank page, binder, and dustcase costs for all the leading album sellers including Scott, Davo, Lighthouse, Schaubek, and a few others, if my math is correct Schaubek appears to be the best buy purely by price alone. I did not do this for country pages, but only for albums with blank pages -- important to note. Country album pages one set after another really do add up. Buying album manufacturers "non-hingeless" pages without mounts is much less expensive (though still not cheap) than with mounts and would, of course, solve the problem with these Schaubek mounts being too tight.

Consequently, as I'm now somewhat newly interested in Schaubek albums, I hope there's an update when you hear back from Schaubek about the "tight" mount problem. Maybe it's a problem on only a few pages, a few albums, or maybe it's consistent? It would be good to find out.