Mounting Plate Blocks In Album

Hi there. I am getting back into my stamp collecting and have a question about mounting plate blocks. I have a few of them that I picked up at a garage sale years ago. I have a Scott US stamp album and at the time thought it was a good idea to mount them on the opposite page of where the individual stamps are shown. Well now I'm realizing it's a pain to turn the pages of my album with them mounted there. I'd like to display them but not sure how. Any suggestions? Thanks!

It really is up to you as to how you want to set up your albums. If you want a pre-made plate block album, they are available. If you want to assimilate them into your existing album, you can mix the pre-made pages in with the album pages.

Another method is to create your own pages. This is the option many use when they want to keep the same issue all together.

Whatever way you decide to do it is entirely up to you!

So many options. White Ace makes a PB album. You could arrange them in a stock book (Lighthouse is my favorite). You could keep them on your album and try adding velum pages to prevent stamps from touching each other. I haven't decide which way I'm going to go. One company makes a hingeless PB album but it was $700-$1000 when I priced it out!!!

StampsInNJ: welcome to the Forum. I agree with Pascoe regarding a hingeless plate block album. Considering that my 1940s to 1990s US plate blocks are mostly pretty cheap; under $2 per block; makes no sense to spend that kind of money to house them.

I bought two H.E. Harris used, in nice condition, empty plate block albums in an auction last year at the Rocky Mountain Philatelic Library. I also picked up some reasonable quality unused Harco block mounts. Even if a plate block just catalogs a few cents, I'm reluctant to hinge those, although may change my mind when I get to that particular stamp project.

Thanks so much for the info. I'm reluctant to spend money on a plate block album because that isn't what I primarily collect. I probably have under 60 of them. Maybe I should put blank pages in the National albums and mount them there?

StampsinNJ: blank pages could be a winner for you, considering that you don't have a ton of blocks. I have a complete set of 1938 Prexie plate blocks. As of now, they're on blank quadrille pages in the US part of my collection. I may move them later to the Harris plate block albums. But will be a while; year or more; as it's not high in my philatelic project queue.

StampsinNJ:

A word of warning. Plate blocks are addictive (and can be expensive to collect). Before you even start mounting them, decide whether or not you want to go down that path. Note that during the 1970s and 80s, the USPS went bat- crazy and plate blocks of 10, 12, and 20 became commonplace. Bottom line - you can wind up collecting a lot of stamps that realistically are really only good as postage and sell in bulk for 70% of face. Try to fit 50 cents worth of 3 cent stamps on an envelope.

I speak from experience. I re-discovered my stamp collection several years ago. My US singles were in a nice National album and I knew I wanted to continue filling in the blanks. I also had two old HE Harris plate block albums with maybe 100 plate blocks. I unwisely decided I'd continue those as well.

That morphed from adding two more Harris albums, supplements, and the mounts for several hundred NEW plate blocks that I added "to bring it up to date", into a decision to totally replace them with the much nicer, sturdier, and expensive Scott Plate Block Albums with their slipcases, which meant all new albums, mounts, ($$) and the time to make the change-overs. Bottom line - I spent a BOATLOAD of cash on plate blocks that would have been better spent filling in the expensive holes in my US singles collection.

Both collections are now quite expansive. I now have 11 Scott plate block albums & slipcases as well as 6 National Albums & slipcases.

If I had it to do over again, I would certainly have sold all my plate blocks at the get-go and invested those funds in my singles collection.

Beware the dark side!

I'm with you, Uboat. I don't believe I have any plate blocks outside the Farley issues.

Jack Kelley

Jack:

If one absolutely MUST collect plate blocks, I'd suggest they collect only the older, high-value ones (like #573 and C3 and C6) or specific sets that particularly interest them (i.e. the Prexies, the Farleys, the Kansas and Nebraska overprints, and/or of course C13-C15).

Many of the pre-1930 plate blocks can get expensive fast, and you'd better know what you're doing or have very reliable sources before you dip your toe in those waters. There are sharks swimming in those seas, and not all of them are on ebay.