Presentation Stamp Albums

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Presentati...AOSwkrZadGe7

This vendor is an APS member and today I got a catalog from him following seeing his ad in the AP.

Has anyone seen or used his albums? This brings me to a pet peeve re album sellers. Why doesn't he show what the pages look like? I get showing the table of contents and the title pages, etc. But nothing of the pages where the stamps go? I have no idea if this is a Steiner knockoff or what.

Any info welcome.

I tend to agree with you, need to see the pages.

From what I see, I think they are expensive, as they are standard pages.

I asked him to put some sample pages on the listing.

According to his catalog, the colony albums have a collective page total of thousands of pages. I would bet my last pair of tongs these are Steiner pages, adapted to his individual style. Probably he bought a license to use them, nothing at all wrong with that, still it'd be nice to know.

There is a reason he's not showcasing what the pages look like.

Agreed. Seems obvious to me that if a person was trying to sell custom pages they would not want to promote the fact that the pages were based upon Steiner.
If I had spent the hundreds of hours laying out my own pages, I would be touting them and want to show them to potential buyers.
Don

Given that the pages are in MS Word format it is seems likely that the pages are the seller's own creation. Included with the albums is a CD:


Also if they were licensed Steiner pages it would be unlikely that the licence would allow for redistribution in soft copy form.
Clive

I think the CD contains just a few templates, country intro, coat of arms, etc (he sells that separately). So you are not getting a digital copy of the album, that is only coming as a hard copy. He mentions that you can edit pages, but I am thinking that he means you can build new pages using one of his templates (not that you get all the existing printed pages in digital format).

Perhaps I am too cynical, but not showing one of the pages as an example seems intentional.
Don

Take a look at the French Polynesia album:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Presentati...22782549617?

A page is shown there... definitely not a Steiner!

The way I read the CD specifications, it does contain all of the album pages in MS Word format.

If the pages follow Scott, there will be some similarity with Steiner. And the pages could still be tarted up versions of Steiner, as with most Palo pages.

I am at an advantage here in that I have his sales catalog. After perusing it, I'm still in the dark on some issues. He doesn't mention the catalog used in formatting the pages. Nor does he illustrate the pages in any way you can really see them. He shows small images, after peering at them through a magnifier, I still can't tell if he uses connected boxes for spaces, for one thing. Each page looks to have something printed across the bottom, looks like his copyright and the assembled albums he sells come with colored index tabs. I don't care for either of those things.

I agree with Don; not showing what the pages look like seems intentional. If these are his own work, he may not want anyone copying them or his format. But why not show a prospective customer what they are buying? That alone makes me want to push the 'back' button.

On the positive side, it's an attractive presentation.

He says that the sequencing follows Scott and/or Stampworld - probably not what you'd want for a Commonwealth collection.

Whatever the reason is for not showing the pages, it is certainly not serving him well.

He has a feedback of only two as a seller. A Belgian Colonial Africa and a British Colonial Africa Album on CD at $25 each. The most recent in March this year.
This is not surprising as most people like to see what they are buying which makes his reluctance to display the pages even more puzzling.
Clive

Dutchman, did he ever respond to your query about showing one pages? I'd bet not.

The bio he has in the catalog says he started collecting at age 8, 68 years ago. That puts him at 76. I'm not that far behind, nothing wrong with that. But, this may be someone who wants to do things his own way and isn't open to suggestions. If I were interested in more than one of his productions I'd be wondering how long he is likely to be producing these? It doesn't look like he is selling much product.

I see nothing really suspicious. The pages have a clean look without an apparent border.

I looked at the image of the 1996 French Polynesia and the Steiner layout is different.


Steiner