Japan Hingeless Album- Who Produces These?

http://www.japanphilatelic.com/prod...2-1946-1959/

The above link is to a page from the site of the Japan Philatelic group of the UK. They sell these albums, I have some of them and am very happy with them. does anyone know anything about them, such as who publishes them? Most text is in Japanese including the publisher name. I tried asking the dealer about them and didn't get an answer, perhaps he was worried I would try t buy them from the publisher.

I think I might be the Japan Philatelic Corporation. I still cannot find much on the net about them. anyone use them who can shed light on this, thanks.

I can't believe nobody knows anything about these albums. Hopefully someone will respond.

Hi, I am replying to this 2018 post. Yes, the person or persons that run that link in Britain seem to not want to reply. I had the same problem recently. The owner of the website which is coming down soon is a member of the British Society of Japanese Philately. Anyway, somehow the albums posted on that site were bought (I believe) from Japan somehow. I tried to contact them about getting one of their albums, but no success.

The Japanese website that offers these albums online in Japan is (https://www.yushu.co.jp/shop/). You cannot purchase anything overseas from this site. The albums are located at this URL https://www.yushu.co.jp/shop/c/c400201/. If you use an English translator setting (available on the Chrome browser, e.g.), you can see what the albums are and the pages that can be inserted in them.

I have several of these which I was able to purchase through a friend when I visited Japan a while back. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a way to buy them from their website. They do not have the capability to do that.

If you have a friend in Japan he can buy them and mail them to you. I did so with a few dozen books I ordered within the USA.

I'd forgotten about this post, thanks for the reply. Here's a link to the only other online mention of these, two volumes to list. I gave up trying to expand and bought a set of White Ace albums up to the early 90s;

https://japanphilatelic.com/japan-stamp-albums


That collection is inactive now but I can always take it up again.

Japan just issues way too many stamps to keep it up.

<<<<Japan just issues way too many stamps to keep it up.>>>>

Not just Japan, everybody!


Peter

That's why the smart money finds a cut-off date and sticks with it.

Agree!


Peter

Yes, I agree. Right now the only way I know of how to get these albums is to ask a friend from Japan or visit Japan and get them on your own.

Japan Hingeless Albums are very nice. I have ten including the Ryukyus album. Trying to get more. I have been collecting Japan mint and related since the 60s. I understand that the website http://www.japanphilatelic.com is folding. The owner is retiring (I believe).

Yes, I also agree that Japan does produces a lot of stamps from commemorative, definitive, and prefectures. Good luck trying to find the albums.

There are a couple of do-it-yourself albums listed on www.thestampweb.com but those involve a lot of work I am afraid


Peter

Lindner currently produces hingeless pages for 1953-2010, and if you're a little resourceful, you can find remaindered hingeless Lighthouse pages 1871-2017(?). And, SAFE has 1981-1998.

Thank you for the info re. Ace, Lighthouse, and Lindner.

Harold

Unlike a lot of other countries who are prolific issuers of new issues, nearly all of Japan's issues see regular postal use. It's still possible to form a nearly complete collection of used Japan from kiloware alone. You might have to go through quite a lot of it, but the only issues you won't find at all in kiloware are a small handful of souvenir sheets that are sold for more than face value (an average of maybe 1 per year, or less).

Not be too mundane and obvious about it, but I collect Japan and I chose to use a Scott Specialty album for a number of reasons which include availability, ease of buying, and ease of getting supplements. I also collect other countries in Scott Specialty albums, so that works in favor of choosing Scott's Japan album, as well. Plus there really aren't a lot of Japan albums to choose from.

None of the Scott Specialty albums or pages come with mounts as they do with other brands like Lighthouse and Lindner, but you can "easily" (meaning weeks of time) add your own mounts. The end result, I think, is a beautiful-looking collection in a very handsome album.

Alternately, you could use Bill Steiner's page layouts which are available online or on a CD if you subscribe (cheaply). Most people print them out on 8.5 x 11" card stock and put them into 3-ring binders, but that's not a look that appeals to me. So I use a PDF to World convertor, available online for a cheap subscription fee (I use "SmallPDF") to change each group of pages to a Word document. I then remove the borders on each page -- click-click one by one -- and change the fonts to more appealing fonts. I print them out on standard printer paper and take those pages to a local Fedex and print those borderless page layouts onto blank (but with a border) Scott Specialty pages. That gives me a somewhat less expensive album on decently-large pages that fit Scott binders. I could also print them into other brands and sizes of pages if I wanted to. The result is a very good-looking album fairly inexpensively.

Getting Japanese sellers to sell and ship things overseas is always a struggle. The language problem combined with a certain Japanese reserve about dealing with foreigners makes it doubly difficult. I once subscribed for awhile to a Japanese seller of woodblock cachet FDC's but after awhile he kind of petered out with no explanation. Or maybe he did explain, and I didn't understand. I've enquired about Japanese albums with no luck. But basically the albums I've seen that are made in Japan really aren't special enough for me to worry about. Pages in three-ring binders don't seem all that special to me, and that's what most of them are.

I also liked the old White Ace three-ring binders albums, and they also had a Japan album worth considering -- but it's a bit expensive.
Though White Ace is now out of business, there are makers of White Ace pages still around you can buy from. Just browse the internet to find them. White Ace binders I never much liked b/c they are too heavy and were way too expensive, so I put any WA pages I have in a very nice 3-ring binder for 8.5 x 11" pages that Scott sells that comes with a slipcase for only $20. I add a label to the spine, and they look very professional. If you're okay with smaller pages, you could put your own printed 8.5 x 11" Steiner pages in these without having to do any more copying at Fedex.

Have fun!

Just took a look at the latest Palo catalog.

Palo sells a hingeless Japanese album.

Their "part #s" are JAPA10 thru JAPA 20. This includes 1871 thru 2021, but it is spendy!

Lindner also has a Japanese album, but theirs uses the clear sheet in front of the printed page to hold the stamps. I have zero experience with this system and can't speak to it.

A lot of European albums like Lindner only cover recent stamps and don't go all the way back to the beginning of a country's stamps, so be sure to check that. Lindner's Japan pages begin in 1953 which was, I think, the end of American occupation of Japan after the war. So you can't collect from the beginning or prewar with Lindner.

As for Palo, they use Steiner page layouts which they've contracted with Bill Steiner to use. Palo changes the page border and the font but leaves the rest alone and then prints them for you -- instead of you having to do that yourself -- onto larger-sized pages (larger than 8.5 x11"). It's a very nice result, but they are very expensive -- as Lindner albums are, as well.

For a Palo Japan album from the beginning to fairly recently, you'd spend maybe $600 (plus the binders!). From the beginning to the present would cost over $1000 for a Palo album. And that's for pages without mounts on them. For pages with mounts, it's far more expensive, $1600 for pages up to about 2000 -- and over $2000 from the beginning of Japan to the present. Plus binders -- which are proprietary for Palo's unique hole punches. And they aren't cheap, either.

Album makers love to use pages punched in different numbers of holes so you must buy their binders and can't substitute someone else's. I don't much like this as it seems a bit mean-spirited, but I suppose it's "good business".

Lindner pages and binders are equally expensive. I just don't think most collectors want to mortgage the farm to buy stamp albums. So I guess these album makers must sell mainly to people who have a lot of extra money to spend. I don't, so I'd rather use a far less expensive album like those I've mentioned above, and spend my money on stamps. Hence my use of Scott albums or Steiner's home-made albums printed on larger paper in Scott (or other) binders. Those pages and a binder will cost you a few hundred dollars tops, not a few thousand dollars. I could see using a Palo album for stamps covering a limited time period, though. The only "fancy" albums I've really warmed up to are by Lighthouse, but they're also really expensive. Buy them used if you can.

As for Lindner, I don't much like Lindner's use of so many plastic pages which makes them very very heavy to pick up and kind of strange to flip through. It's just not a "look" I enjoy for stamp collections, but you might not mind it.