Do You Use Vario Pages - And How Do You Organize Your Stamps On Them?

I'm coming into this thread very late, so perhaps this has already been debated, but as much as I use Vario pages (and I use them for a lot of things like FDC's or stamp storage), I really don't like all the plastic that is used nowadays to display stamps.

The older method of hinging the stamps to the pages looked elegant to me as all you had was a page and a stamp. You can see F.D. Roosevelt flipping through his stamp albums in some old photos. Those albums are stamps on paper pages, and they look gorgeous. The wealthiest and most successful collectors mounted their stamps in large luxurious albums of paper pages. I love the look of stamps on paper pages with nothing between me and the stamps. Maybe a glassine or clear plastic page between each paper page. I could live with that to protect the stamps better.

Then we got stamp mounts, and they also look good, but they add more expense (by far) than hinges ever did. And the stamp is now covered with a plastic layer. Under some light, you get a reflection off of it. I do like the look of stamps in mounts, personally, but they're not much better looking than hinged stamps on pages. I also couldn't care less (personally) whether a good-looking stamp is hinged or MNH. I know there's a price difference, so I prefer to buy hinged and save money. So why should I then put that hinged stamp into a mount? There's no point to that, is there?

And now we're moving toward even more plastic. In Europe, Germany in particular for some reason, album manufacturers sell not only hingeless albums with stamp mounts already mounted to the pages, but those awful albums which have an entirely plastic page (like a clear Vario page) for your mint stamps, behind which is another old-fashioned paper page for used copies of the same stamps. The weight of these albums is sometimes phenomenal. The amount of plastic in them is enough to choke the oceans for years. Unlike more basic albums, you can barely get 10 years of stamps into one entire album this way. My Scott National album without mounts of any kind, has the first 140 years of U.S. stamps in one volume and the next 25 or more in another. Talk about the unnecessary excess clutter of plastic pages. How many albums like this would you need for an entire U.S. collectIon? I'd guess as many as a dozen, if not 20.

Vario pages, to my way of thinking, are ike these German album pages. They're plastic, heavy, somewhat hard to see 'into' in the wrong lighting, and lack the appeal of album pages with stamps on them. It's also difficult to caption the stamps (yes, a small piece of paper may work). I love old stamp collections on blank paper pages where the collector has handwritten explanations on the page. You can't do that on Vario pages. Paper pages usually have headings,typically the country name. Can you add a heading to Vario pages? Well kind of, but not easily. Vario pages look like what they are -- stock book pages -- not elegant album pages. Maybe many collectors have never actually seen elegant old album pages? Is so, it may help explain their lack of interest in them. But to me, that's the way I want my albums to look, not encased in plastic.

I'll keep using Vario pages for my FDC's (three to a page in ring binders), some displays of larger sheets and souvenir sheets that are hard to mount on paper pages, and for storage of stamps not yet in albums. I won't use them for other types of albums. Oh, and contrary to what someone has said, I find that stamps on Vario pages do constantly shift around, tilt one way or the other, and have to be constantly readjusted. Of course, hinged stamps can move as well. And stamps in stamp mounts also move around and even fall out of mounts sometimes. None are ideal in that regard, but it's not true that Vario pages hold stamps in place without any problems. In fact, I don't even think you'd want that since that would mean the stamp was being held too tightly and might tear when you tried to remove it.

Shermae - there is some coverage for shades on certain issues (usually the typographed pictorial series) but I think one reason for the comparative lack vs mainland France is that there has been far less research into these questions of shades etc in the colonial issues when compared to, say, the British colonies in this period.

The joys of stamp collecting, always new research lines to follow for those with such interests..

I like to use vario pages, double sided ones when available. When I ave alot of tall stamps, I vet the ones with less stripps. When I have shorter stamps to deal with, I get the sheetts,with more sinsertion.

@Drew - I read your post with interest and respect that your opinion about the Vario is different from mine. We have a saying in Norway which translates to English into something like: 'Somebody prefer the mother - others prefer the daughter'
(That saying stipulates that there should be room for both the old and the young - they have different qualities - neither is better than the other - fortunately (for the women themselves) both of them get affection - and everybody is happy ever after)

As a general observation however, I think this statement is somewhat unexpected:

Our hobby is not that complex and bewildering. Old album pages can be seen anywhere - 99.9% of stamp collectors must have seen them - so I find the hypothesis rather unlikely. We are a lot of seasoned collectors that use Vario pages anyway, and the reason for our choice is not that we are not familiar with 'elegant old album pages'. Personally I absolutely agree with you that the old album pages are much more elegant, however I have other reasons for using the Vario regardless.

Finally, this thread was supposed to be about how the Vario pages are being used - not a discussion about which storage option is the preferred option or advocating for not to use them. There is already an excellent thread for that particular discussion 'Storing Large Used World Wide Collections' https://goscf.com/t/40901&whichpage=1 So I suggest any further viewpoints comparing different storage solutions is better suited in that thread.

Blaamand


.......and your 2016 Unitrade Canada is presently on its way to Norway

Love it!

Not a slight to Drew, however. I always love hearing your opinions on album systems

Blaamand don't forget that some may prefer the mother and others the daughter, a few will prefer the son to either...

- yeah you are correct DJCMHOH - the old saying is not 'politically correct' in the more liberal and inclusive society of today. The meaning of the saying tough is a totally inclusive one - not only used for situations where there is a choice between only two options. So one could just as well add 'or the father or son...'
Same goes for our hobby I suppose, lots of options, not only one route or the other.

@ Blaamand
In the 11th page of your thread, it is good to see some humour

Sorry Renden, I often get a bit too serious when talking about stamps - and indeed it is talking about SERIOUS stuff!

btw - did you miss the description of DJCHMHOH's home (page 3) ?

"Downstairs: Your partner - and a solarium.
Upstairs: A gigantic library of history books, a gigantic music collection, probably a superduper computer setup - and on top of that a gigantic stamp collection and a very ambitious stamp collector...."

I can easily visualize that home and find the 'image' quite funny

Blaamand - well the partner's solarium is filled with his library of books, DVDs and his comfy sofa for watching Netflix/Hulu/HBO Movies/TV series etc on his laptop (or in the main living room watching them on on the big screen TV using the Amazon Fire TV Stick to connect to his Netflix etc accounts).

That's the key to a long marriage/relationship (he and I have been together 23 1/2 years now ) - you are a couple but not conjoined twins, you need to have your own "space" to do things that interest you that your significant other may not be so much interested in (he finds stamps "quaint" and I am not really a cinema person).

...Blaamand

I went back to page 3 to re-read DJCHMHOH's home description.....very nice !

DJCMHOH - Thanks for your openness. "...you need to have your own "space" to do things that interest you" - amen

If I may:

Yes, you may! Very well organised Nells250