Yes, Scott album pages come only without mounts. Lighthouse, Schaubek, Davo, etc. come either way you want them. You can buy them with mounts or without. I'm comparing brands of albums, not hingeless or non-hingeless versions of albums, just albums. If you want an album with mounts, clearly you aren't going to buy Scott pages. If you don't mind adding your own mounts, though, you can include Scott. But if you must have mounts, then you're not going to buy Scott albums. Simple.
After a few years of going back and forth about which brand of album I should commit to using, I finally settled on Scott album pages because, first of all, they look very good, as good as the other brands, in my opinion, and better than some. My favorite of the other brands is Lighthouse. But LH's page layouts are also pretty empty and uninformative. What's the problem with giving some information about each stamp or set of stamps? Scott does. Schaubek's layouts are nice, too. Davo pages are also pretty empty. I own dozens of Davo albums for different countries, purchased a while back when I was enthusiastic about Davo. They are very good albums, but my enthusiasm has cooled somewhat (replaced by Scott) due to the emptiness of their pages, the high cost of their annual supplements, and the many, many volumes needed just to complete each country. I'll probably sell them off on
ebay.
Scott albums are much less expensive, by a wide margin, compared to all the other brands.
Scott's annual supplements aren't extremely expensive. For most countries, Scott supplements are about $10-15 yearly. Supplements for the other brands are many times as expensive. I did not want to lock myself into expensive annual purchases of dozens of supplements for my dozens of albums.
As for binders, I've never liked springback binders much so they're not a concern. I'm ambivalent about multiple-ring binders sold by Schaubek, Lighthouse, and others. I can take them or leave them. I have a few Schaubek ring binders and a lot of Marini (Italian) ring binders which are very nice, all 22-ring binders which look much better to me than standard schoolboy 3-ring binders. On the whole, I prefer 2-post albums. Maybe I'm just an old-fashioned guy, but that's what I like albums to look like. Since all of these brands sell 2-post binders, I didn't see any reason to purchase the other brands just on the basic of their binders. Scott does punch their pages for 3-rings for which they sell two sizes of 3-ring binders. But I don't use them. Their pages are also punched for their 2-post binders which I prefer. I do like Scott's smaller 3-ring binder which isn't as "schoolboy" as normal 3-ring binders. I've thought of putting a few countries into them. But they only hold 100 pages each, so that would get expensive fast. The 2-post binders are larger and hold 200+ pages each which is much more economical. The other larger 3-ring binder Scott sells holds maybe 250 pages -- but it's a beast, too big for me to deal with. And those enormous rings! Not for me, thank you.
For me, Scott pages fit the bill on all counts -- except not having mounts. But I use a mixture of hinges for used stamps and mounts for mint stamps, so I don't really need an album filled with mounts. Most of those mounts would end up filled with used stamps which seems a bit silly to me. I like hinges.
As for Mystic's album with mounts, it's certainly much better than their other album without mounts. I'm still not a fan of 3-ring binder albums, though. My preference and your preference may differ. That's been my main issue with Steiner print-yourself pages which generally end up in regular 3-ring binders. It's very economical do do that, but the resulting album just does not appeal to me. However, printing Steiner's layouts on the larger-sized Scott blank album pages makes them much more appealing to me. They look like "real" album pages. Now, if Steiner's page borders were just a bit more elegant, I'd really like them. But they're good enough. I use some Steiner pages (printed on Scott-size paper) to supplement my Scott album pages in some albums. They're perfectly fine.
I've never used and don't own any Palo albums. They're basically a somewhat fancier version of Steiner pages printed on larger paper with a different hole punch (so you have to use their binders). Nothing wrong with that, but they're so much more expensive than Steiner pages, I just can't justify using them. For me, a lot of the decision comes down to what I can afford.
As for Mystic, everything Mystic sells is overpriced from stamps to supplies. To me, Mystic's U.S. album with mounts seems awfully expensive for what it is. I couldn't justify paying that much for a U.S. album. I'll stick with my Scott National album, thank you very much. Even without mounts -- which I add whenever I need them. Easy enough to do.
Posted 11/19/2018 3:18 pm
