Best For Stamp Storage?

In this Stamp Communities opinion, what is the best make: Vario or Hagner or others? I need to spend a couple of hundred £, so feedback would be welcome.

Thanks.

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Depends on which you feel more comfortable with. Hagner, which are foil on board, are open at the sides, and are easier to use, but the stamps may move a little more. The strips can also come away over time. Lighthouse, Prinz and other solid, moulded pages are more hard-wearing, but can be fiddly.

Personally, I prefer Vario. YMMV.

If I were spending a great deal of money on a stamp storage system, I'd buy a few of each type of product and try it out for awhile. Give each the test - mount stamps and see how easily that goes, then remove them (ditto), put some pages holding the stamps into binders, shake them up a bit to check on how much the stamps move (do any start to fall out?), and so on. See which works best for you. One test you can't do is longevity, of course. Any stock sheet which relies on glue holding the plastic is going to eventually break down as the glue dries out. I think for fairly static (not being moved around much) storage, the Hagner stock sheets are fine. But for hard wearing properties where the stamp sheets might get bumped around a little, Vario are probably better, and Vario does not rely on glue to hold the plastic retaining strips.

Why no one are mentioning regular stockbooks ? If it's for storage I don't see why spent more

@area66

Good point. While I like the ability to move pages and "build" my own stockbooks with Vario sheets, others a big fans of stockbooks, for simple storage as well as for albums. So if I were following DrewM's advice, I would add stockbooks to the initial testing mix.

For countries I only passively collect, and am not likely to add a whole lot of new stamps, I use Lighthouse stockbooks.

For countries I actively collect, I use binders full of Vario sheets. I can include covers and other odd-sized items. In contrast with albums I can arrange stamps according to my own criteria, which could combine chronology, themes, artists, etc. One drawback is that I must come up with my own annotations if I want to show year, or catalog number, or the like.

Thank you to all that responded. The consensus is that Vario is the way to go. Storage was the wrong word to use . Should have used display.

Drew is right. That's what I did until I settled on Vario. Love 'em. I am not too keen on cardboard stock books as I have found that stamps form a crease over time.

Jack Kelley

If you're in the UK, you may find that Grande, which have greater capacity, are no dearer than Vario

https://www.worldstamps.co.uk/light...es-LH_GRA_22

I use a mixture of Steiner, stockbooks and Vario pages. Steiner houses the countries I'm collecting more in depth, I use Vario pages for classic era (through 1940-1950-ish), and stockbooks for modern material. I like stockbooks better for modern material as it's easy to display, say, souvenir sheets, jumbo-sized stamps and smaller stamps all on the same page, without wasting space or looking odd. This is less of an issue with classic material and I find I can get by with either 8-row or 6-row Vario pages for almost everything.

I try to get my stamps mounted or hinged into my albums as quickly as possible; and duplicates disposed of. In the long run, it really doesn't seem to matter much if I use stockbooks, some type of pages, or just return envelopes saved from junk mail, the stamps get out of sight and out of mind very quickly.