Album (Or Something Similar) For FDC's?

I am planning to purchase, soon, 5-20 first day covers, possibly more over time, and I am soliciting suggestions for how to store and display them. Are there any particular items that you suggest? FDC albums? Brands? Stock sheets? Will FDC's fit in stock sheets? How do you store your FDC's?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank you!

I use a combination. I have, I think, four different first day cover albums from different vendors. They are OK. However the vast majority of my covers are kept in Vario pages - the pages with 2 sleeves - and those pages are kept in the Vario grande binders.

I use SuperSafe FDC cover albums, and am real happy with them. They used to be inexpensive ($15 each), but I was shocked at the prices last time I tried to find one. You can often fin used ones reasonably priced.

If budget is an issue, or if your son is the creative type you can use common materials found at any office supply store. I have a cover collection on simple pages I print out onto acid-free paper then I mount the covers onto the page with photo corners found also easily available. You need a heavy weight paper - 28lb or 65lb cover stock I would recommend - and a binder along with the photo corners and you have a stamp album!

Davo sells a nice larger FDC cover binder system with three cover slots on each side of the page. It comes with a nice dust cover. The pages are attached to the binding, so it's not loose-leaf which is appealing since it's more like a book. You have to order it from Davo's website, but it's in English and the whole process is painless. About $40 shipped from Europe.

The Vario Grande 3-ring binder described above takes a larger sized page which allows for the same three cover slots as the Davo album's pages. It's a very good system, but I decided not to use it because the overall weight of the heavy binder with its rings, with the heavy plastic pages, plus the covers is just too much to be comfortable. It's like lifting an encyclopedia or a brick. Binder, dust cover and pages is going to cost maybe $50 give or take.

Scott publishes a smaller 3-ring binder for FDC's as do a number of other companies.

Subway Stamp Shop has their own FDC binders which you may want to look at. Probably others, too.

The one I liked best is the Showgard. While not perfect, it's simple, lightweight, and works well. It has two posts which (unfortunately) go through the binding like on older two-post albums. These posts can get in the way and snag on the next album as you put binders on the shelf, and it's annoying to have to unscrew the posts (really screws) to add or remove pages.

But, once the pages are mounted in the album, these are great albums. They only take two covers on each side of the page, and I find easier to look at four covers than the six in some of the other albums which was a kind of overkill. The clear plastic slots or pouches are much lighter weight in the Showgard which makes the album much less heavy. It's easy to hold it in your hand and flip through it very comfortably -- unlike the other albums which are so heavy it's unpleasant (and, no, I'm not a weakling!).

The cost is about $30.

Note that, although they advertise that you get 25 two-sided pages which should hold 100 covers (25 x 2 sides on each page is 50 sides x 2 covers per side = 100), you cannot possibly get 100 covers in this album. The covers create a lot of thickness which makes closing the album harder and harder as you add more. By the time you've added about 70-80 covers, the album is bulging. So I remove about four pages from each album just to keep it thin enough to close comfortably. Still, 80 covers per binder is just fine with me. On balance, it's the best FDC album, in my opinion.