Questions About Steiner/Palo Pages

I have a line on some new Palo hingeless albums at a decent price, I'd just like to ask some questions about the pages.

One of the largest disadvantages of Scott albums (whether International or Specialty) is the relegation of airmails and semipostals to the back of the book. I dislike this. Many countries issue sets of stamps where some values are airmails or semipostals, and having the sets separated in the albums, possibly by hundreds of pages, is ludicrous.

Since Steiner/Palo pages mostly follow Scott order, I assume this means that regulars/semis/airs are similarly separated by default. If they are, can the pages at least be reordered so that sets are (mostly) kept together, or is the layout such that would that be messy (lots of different airmail sets per page, say)? Worst case, I suppose, is I just reorder so all pages for a given year are together, and the sets are still broken up but only by a few pages. Has anybody done this with their Steiner/Palo pages?

Incidentally, what sort of coverage do these have? Is it Scott major numbers only? If not, how much non-major number listed material is in these albums? For example, different watermarks for post-1960 British Commonwealth -- Scott usually lists these, but only as minor numbers (they ought to be major numbers) -- would any of those have spaces? New printings that are distinguishable by date (again, often listed but only as a minor number or a footnote)? Major tagging varieties? Do they follow Scott even for places where it's a disaster, like the Indian feudatory states, or do something more sensible in those cases?

Yes they are.




Essentially. There are occasional exceptions.



I've reviewed (briefly) the Deep Blue (my name for the Steiner pages) coverage with my country reviews at my Big Blue 1940-1940 blog site.

Just snoop around.

Example: Bavaria "Coat of Arms" Issues 1867-1911
http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...67-1911.html

Palo makes both Scott-ordered pages and Gibbons-ordered pages. I don't know how much overlap there is between the two lines or whether you can get everything you need in the SG line.

For the Scott pages, everything is indeed in Scott order, so semipostals, airmails, postage due, special delivery, etc., are "back of the book" or in this case "album".

They do include some "lower-case letter" spots, but I wouldn't rely on it. Otherwise, the coverage is comprehensive.

I scanned an entire set of Palo hingeless Mexico pages that I purchased here:

https://goscf.com/t/33786

That should give you a rough idea of how comprehensive they are.

If you want to get creative for certain sets, Palo will sell individual pages ala-carte, but of course that's more expensive.

The great thing about Palo, is that if the country is listed in Scott, they make pages for them, except possibly some of the entities whose stamps didn't actually get used in the mail, like 1970s Equatorial Guinea, etc.

They are indeed expensive, but personally I loathe the amount of time it takes to measure, cut, wet, and adhere mounts... and the annoyance when you fark one up. Life is too short.

revenuecollector: Thanks for the scans, those are excellent.




I agree. The Palo albums look quite nice -- I don't expect any album to be perfect, and nobody can expect to meet everybody's wants/needs, but they seem quite good.

Jkjblue: Thank you for the link to your blog; I'll check out your "Deep Blue" postings.

Be aware that the Steiner page evaluations for a country are buried within many of the country posts - scroll down to the Deep Blue section.