Steiner Vs Philosateleian Pages For Used US Collectors?

Hi all,

Collecting used US is a casual "side-hobby" of mine (not my main philatelic interest, but something I still enjoy!). I've been amassing a nice little hoard over the years, currently housed in stockbooks and envelopes, and have recently decided to 'take the plunge' into the world of self-printed albums as a way of finally organizing them.

At the moment, I'm torn between the Steiner pages and the free Philosateleian pages. While I'm not a huge fan of Helvetica on stamp album pages, I prefer the double border of Steiner's pages to the single border used in the Philosateleian, and I've also found that Steiner uses a slightly more compact layout (US up through 1940, not counting BOB, is 72 pages in Steiner and 88 in the other).

But Steiner is also geared towards mint collectors; this is particularly apparent in recent years, where there are spaces for a sheet or pane of new issues, but none for the individual stamps themselves. Philosateleian generally breaks them all up individually.

Has anyone else had this problem? I know Steiner has blank pages to make your own, but I find the prospect of having to do those myself rather daunting.

Thoughts and comments would be most appreciated!

You can't get a better buy than the Mystic pages and binders if you collect used.

https://www.mysticstamp.com/Product...s/DS111/USA/

Reports of the regular (not hingeless) Mystic pages sagging in their binders make me hesitant about that album. Pages need to be heavier weight, about 65# or more, to hold stamps and mounts.

You could, however, photocopy the Mystic pages onto heavier paper and end up with a very nice album.

Putting those pages in a sturdier and more elegant binder (I suggest the Lighthouse Vario F) would make it even better. Mystic's binders are standard office supply store quality, meaning okay but not impressive.

Both the other print-yourself pages are nicely done with Steiner's pages being the more popular. Printing those on sturdy paper and putting them into a good binder makes for a pretty decent, though perhaps not very elegant, album.

For more elegant, uncluttered, and sophisticated you need to step up to something like a Scott National album. That's more money, though, naturally.

I don't consider it a problem to make custom pages for singles (or other varieties for that matter).





In this example, the custom page took perhaps 5 minutes to create.

What is daunting is when I decide to redo a whole series of stamps based on another stamp catalog. I've been creating custom pages for Scandinavian definitives based on the Facit catalog. Now that's daunting.

Regards, Robert

If anyone is worried about Mystic pages sagging, just use Vario F 4 ring binders (you will need more anyway) and repunch the the pages.

The following is not a good idea for any album.

To each his own, but

to me, including both the singles AND the strip of five as shown above is a no-go.
Why not just place the individual stamps in the space for the strip, and if you get the strip later on, just replace the singles.
That's how I do it anyway :-)

If you're a used US Collector, the Philosateleian has once nice advantage. All stamps. including se-tenants are singles, which is how you would find them used.

I have not had an issue with sagging pages in my Mystic binders. I've expanded mine to 5 binders now, and I'll likely get a 6th when I order the 2017 supplement next year. I don't want any of them to get too thick. I kind of wish they offered an elegant way to label each binder so I know which year each one holds, but I make do. What I'm doing currently, because it's the most exasperating thing about the U.S. stamps at the moment, is making a list of what pages the various definitive issues are on. It's become a hassle to find those, so I thought a one page reference to them would be helpful. Any thoughts or better suggestions?

Thanks for the replies, all - some good things to think about.

At this point, I think I'm leaning towards the Philosateleian, as redesigning Steiner pages just sounds like too much work right now (creating ones from scratch might be simple enough, but taking out the plate blocks, for example, and moving things around again is a bit too much).

Both are a great service to the collector community, and it's hard to beat the price of the Philosateleian. I do have some reservations with it still - have noticed at least one spelling error, so I'll have to check each page carefully before printing - but as apastuszak pointed out, each stamp is given its own space, and as a used US collector, that's important to me.