Looking For Best Great Britain Album. Here's What I Found.

Here are the results of some depressing research into buying a complete Great Britain album. I looked mainly at albums with mounts from the major manufacturers I'm aware of. I already have a small number of extremely nice Borek hingeless pages (linen hinged!), so first I looked ffor Borek albums, but I couldn't find any. Perhaps they're no longer made? What about Stanley Gibbons or other UK albums? I'm just not very fond of the way their pages are laid out, the paper is often too thin, and I find the standard 4-ring and other binder options unappealing. I prefer the albums shown below.

The prices of these GB albums (rounded off) are from manufacturers' websites. Where pages end at different years, it's because later groups of pages are not listed yet as page groups. All pages include mounts -- except where it says "w/o mounts". All prices are in U.S. dollars. I've tried to list them from most expensive to least.

GREAT BRITAIN
Lighthouse 1840-1999 = $1165, 1840-2014 = $2065
KaBe 1840-1999 = $1250, 1840-2009 = $1845
Lindner 1952-2016 (only these years -- no earlier pages available) = $1400, 1952-2016 w/o mounts = $1350
Schaubek 1840-2014 = $1170, 1840-2015 w/o mounts = $625
Davo 1840-1999 = $500, 1840-2015 = $1250
Scott 1840-20009 w/o mounts (pages only) = $200
Scott 1840-2015 w/o mounts – supplied with 2-post binders = $390, supplied with 3-ring binders = $360

You can see why I'm depressed. The most affordable option is the quite good Scott album pages, although the Schaubek pages are appealing. All the others are extremely expensive. How can people who collect many countries afford most of these albums? Most of my single-country albums are already Scott albums, so that's the logical choice for me. But my Borek pages and a few nice Lighthouse, Lindner, and other high quality albums I own make me want to own more of them. Just not at these prices! I'd need an album mortgage to do that. The only other alternative I can think of is Bill Steiner's album pages, but the page size they print onto is too small, and their page layouts are sometimes too crowded. So, it looks like Scott pages will be my choice again—which means I'll need to add my own mounts (which does raise the price). Any thoughts or alternatives?

As far as I know, the Gibbons Windsor albums are not four-ring - springback for the Popular, 22-ring for the Sovereign. Neither uses "thin" paper. SG price for a set of slipcased Sovereigns to 2015 is £710 - I imagine you could find them cheaper from other stockists.

https://www.stanleygibbons.com/wind...5120-so.html

Lindener offers the pages for 1840-1951. Unless Palo is currently out of stock, I'm sure you can get those pages. I wouldn't try to collect the World in Lindner albums, but since I have date cut-offs I have them for 6 countries and love them. That said, I switched to SG Windsor's for Britain and find the pages to be sufficiently sturdy, and I appreciate the facing information on each page. Yes, you have to do the mounts yourself but they are nice albums and not overly expensive.

If there are good Stanley Gibbons UK albums, you sure couldn't tell from their astonishingly badly organized website. I don't think I've ever tried to maneuver around a more badly-designed website. It's truly awful. If you select albums, you're given an extremely long list of manufacturers instead of a list of countries. Or you have the option of "types" of albums, meaning "peg fitting," "springback," and so on. But you don't get a choice of countries. Strange. If you someone manage to find the country you'd like to buy an album for, you'll find a few random supplements listed or one album. You might think they'd let you choose from a list of world regions, then a list of countries in each, then show the albums they offer for that country. Nope. Scott's website still needs work, but it does this. Eventually, I just gave up.

And, like so many UK (or maybe it's European) websites, if you do find something that looks useful, the picture you're shown is completely inadequate -- a tiny photo of the cover of the album. No image of the interior, rings, posts or whatever, and certainly no images of page layouts. As if I cared about such silly things! The whole approach, much like the feeling I get when I've gone into the SG store in London, is that they can't really be bothered to make any effort to sell something, but if I already know exactly what I want maybe they'll let me buy it. Thank goodness for American websites and stamp dealers who generally go out of their way to help customers.

I did manage to locate one album which was some sort of SG "Windsor" this or that album, but it cost at least $1500. They're a bit coy about what sort of bindings these albums have (again, no photos), the quality of the pages, and so on. Let's just say that salesmanship is not exactly SG's strong suit. There's also their Davo-manufacturered "SG" album, but the entire 1840-2015 album is similarly very expensive. SG has struggled financially in recent years, and I can certainly see why. If it goes under, who will care? Maybe the way to do it is to buy from dealers only. But who?

Sorry for the rant, but it's exactly what I found. Maybe I'll locate a good UK dealer and see what they suggest.

As for Palo albums, they do a very good job, but . . . I like large pages, and there's are very small. I don't like three or four ring binders much. I do like two-post, springback, multi-ring (14, 18, 22 ring) binders, but Palo uses a rather odd 4-ring system. I do not like Palo's color pages since they make it difficult to even tell which stamps you don't have yet. What is the point of color pages, anyway? But I see they now offer a black and white page option which is nice to see. I'll look more at Palo, but I'm not inclined yet.

Thanks for the suggestions, though. Scott albums look better and better.

A couple of things I will say as I use Schaubek, Lighthouse, Palo, Davo, Mystic, and at one time Lindner, Scott, White Ace, Borek, and some Steiner.

If you have a country with a lot of MNH stamps to put away, it may be cheaper to buy hingeless, maybe 1 volume at a time.

The reason being, to add mounts to a standard album takes a lot of expense, work, and many different sized mounts. I only use my hingeless for MNH and early mint hinged or used, and it saves me a lot of trouble, time, and expense.

I stopped using Lindner as you get very few pages in an binder so they take a lot of space and expense.

Davo makes good standard albums and I find their binders and slip cases excellent. They are 2 peg and not ring binders.

I like lighthouse and Palo but both are very expensive with Lighthouse binders costing far more than Palo

I use Steiner and Scott for used and previously hinged

This is never an easy decision as they all have pro's and cons and none will be perfect in all respects.

I personally like Lighthouse because I can use ring binders and many times they can be found used in good shape. I like Davo and Palo because their binders are reasonable and the slip covers are stiff and stand very well without a tendency to lean.

I have Lindner for Europa and already about 50 albums. Most I have had to buy used as they have discontinued many of the pages.

The other issue is, many album and page makers have discontinued a lot of products so you may have to continue with a different maker part way through, You should be OK with Scott but I don't like the metal reinforced binders.

This could go on and on but each has to make their own decisions based on their wants, needs, and of course budgets.

Looking back at myself, if I had it to do all over again, I would do very few countries as my album expense to date had been huge and chances of ever recovering it are nil.

Enough rambling from me except if you do want to continue with any country, the supplements for hingeless albums are expensive.

There are used Borek albums on ebay, this seller has two lots of 5 binders with slipcases for a bit more than $20 ea.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Borek-5x-S...AOSwnLdWtdcB

I have bought lots of Lindner and Borek from Bernd but shipping can be very expensive which is understandable.

Has anyone ever tried Nordfrim as a source for discounted hingeless Lighthouse albums? I have been working on moving my GB stamps from Gibbons pages over to Lighthouse and thus far have a set 1840-1989 in three post binders. I'd have to go back and figure what I've paid thus far but I think it is well below full retail. Free shipping if over (I think) $175 an order.

Why not Steiner Pages? A CD with all world-wide pages is only 50 bucks.
If you have access to a stamp club, they may have a CD you can use for free.
You choose the binder. You choose the type of pages including color of page.
You can create additional pages for varieties.
You screw up a page for any reason (and we all have done that) you can simply print a new one.

Steiner pages are an amazing bargain, no doubt about it. But, unless you buy a large-format printer and figure out how to spread out the page borders a bit to print them on the larger paper, you're pretty much stuck with 8.5 x 11" pages. I don't like "notebook" sized pages for stamp albums. I prefer the classic look of Lighthouse, Scott and other albums printed on larger paper which allows the stamps to be spread out more. To me, it just looks much better. There is a fairly easy alternative which is to get the pages printed onto larger Scott album sized paper which I might try doing. There's a link to this service on Bill Steiner's webpage.

That would just leave me having to decide if I actually like Steiner's page layouts. They're perfectly fine, but compared to the look and layout of Scott, Lighthouse, and other album pages they don't exactly thrill me. I'm not sure what it is about them? Too many stamps on a page? Too crowded? Is the font he uses too plain? Steiner's borders are merely lines, but I like elegant borders. I'm not even that thrilled with Davo or Lighthouse borders which are also plain lines. If you put a Steiner page next to an ordinary Scott Specialty album page, the Scott page just looks better.

I like the thriftiness of Steiner's pages. It's hard not to. And the actual page layouts are pretty good. But I'm just not in love with them. They're utilitarian pages with no aesthetic quality whatsoever. This is an aesthetic hobby -- stamps are small engravings or at least small art works, stamps have historical usage, they get mounted in attractive albums, and so on. Compared to the elegant older album pages designed by Yvert & Tellier, Lighthouse, Schaubek, and others, Steiner albums are pretty utilitarian. Other major album makers are doing this. Look at Stanley Gibbons less expensive albums. Except for the four rings instead of three, they look to me like Plain Jane Steiner pages. Modern more basic French Yvert & Tellier albums are the same. Here are some boxes. Here's a line for a border. We'll put the pages in a cheap ring binder. That's a stamp album. Minkus was always the less expensive, more discount brand of stamp albums, but even Minkus made some pretense of looking a little fancy with their perforated "stamp" border and stamp layouts. Steiner is just boxes on a plain page -- to me, anyway.

Just my own opinion, of course. My less than ecstatic view of Steiner's pages is certainly not going to be everyone's. I understand a lot of collectors prefer to spend most of their money on stamps and very little money on albums. I get that. I'm willing to spend a little more money to try to make my collections look somewhat more elegant. I might use Steiner pages for my "other" stamp collections for countries I don't collect as much. Why not? They are, after all, very very inexpensive. That's Steiner's main appeal, it seems. If Steiner offered an alternate way to print his pages on larger paper, using a larger border, and if he changed his plain font and plain border to something with elegance, I'd like them more.

Thanks for the analysis.

I am in the Steiner camp for my worldwide stamps but what he and his helpers accomplished could be done again on larger format pages using even something like Album Easy.

I have Palo and Davo. I like the Palo better despite the ring issue. I only bought the Davo because they were 40% off. In some ways, I regret the purchase.

Jack Kelley

Steiner pages can either be very cheap or very costly. It depends solely upon how much a collector spends on paper, ink, mounting solution, equipment, and time.

Approach #1
I spend hours tweaking the page layouts and designs, use top quality true archival paper, print the page using a quality laser printer, invest in good mounts, and a high quality binder. The result is a superior album that will last for generations as a family heirloom.

Approach #2
I run out to the local big box store, buy a ream of some cheap paper that is marketed as "acid-free", print it out on my cheap ink jet, mount the stamp using cheaper modern hinges, and then put it all into a inexpensive Walmart three ring binder. Result is an inferior album that may or may not damage my stamps and few others would ever want.

Of course the approaches outlined above are the two extremes; there are many other solutions in between them. But 'printing your own' pages can easily be turned into a disaster by overly frugal stamp collectors. In my opinion this needs to be remembered as opinions are offered in public forums like this.
Don

I suppose the other thing to bear in mind when spending a fortune on presentation etc is that, if you or anyone else sells your luxurious album, buyers at auction will look through your Frank Godden, Kabe or Lighthouse binder and pages with x-ray vision and focus directly on the stamps, just as they would with your cheap binder from a stationer's shop. This may or may not matter to you, of course.

When I started collecting again back at the turn of the century, I purchased the Mystic Heirloom US (2 volumes then) and use that for my collection. Otherwise, I use Steiner. It took a bit to find the right paper, and laser printing is better than inkjet IMHO.

My newer collections, like GB, Germany, and Hungary are all Steiner pages. Since I collect used, only my more valuable stamps are in mounts.

One thing I do is try to add some written context to the collection. It's easy to take a Wikipedia file, say a history of Hungary or a article about the inflation in Germany in the '20's and download it to PDF or Word file (to edit) and add it as an introduction to the country or part of the collection. I print nice title pages, country maps, and occasionally a glossary (esp. for Hungarian!).

I've looked at printed albums, and except for Mystic, I just can't justify the cost - I could add a significantly to my collection for the price of one album!

Geoff

For Great Britain, there is this site:

http://www.gbstampalbums.co.uk/

Geoff