Binder/Slipcase/Paper Size Recommendation For Potential Homemade Pages > 8.5x11

The pages are very professional looking. Your album as a PDF would be an excellent reference for others. It should be considered literature and belong in a library.

I saw this on ebay. The seller claims it came from a Minkus album. It looks like someone copied a Steiner page to a larger page and then put in a two post album. Given it was in a lot of Scott pages, it was actually a Scott album.

Greetings glyphmon.

I do exactly what you are doing...Tell the story on the left side, put the stamps on the right; use MS Word for page design, mirrored pages, artful borders, lots of color and custom design, etc. I build my album content assuming the reader knows nothing about stamp collecting and I like the history, particularly for the 1765 - 1901 US timeframe.

I don't like 3-4 ring binders and I like large format pages. I do NOT like 8 1/2 x 11 albums. I use the following:

1: Lighthouse 'Classic' 13 ring binders (come in blue, burgundy, green and black) - product number CLDEKA $59.99 with slipcase. I really like the 13 rings. I tried everything else and I like pages that lie flat - particularly for the mirrored page concept you are doing. These albums are made in China, not Germany, but I like them better than the German ones. In slipcases, they measure 12 1/2" wide, 12 3/4" tall, and 2 7/8" thick.

2. Lighthouse (i.e., Leuchtturm) Blank pages - without borders - product number BL02 $32.99 for 50 pages. High quality and very heavy stock - I don't like paper-thin style album pages. My only very minor complaint is that I do like the contrast of the starker stamp popping white pages of Davos to the creamier Lighthouse approach, but the creamier pages are softer on the eyes - it is a tradeoff for me. I have looked at better pages made, the die mold is about $350, but you would need to run a pretty large batch - at least 3,000 pages, and with Lighthouse I don't have to worry about paper quality.

3. HP Officejet (mine is older 7612 series) wide format printer - about $200.00 and readily handles the large heavy-weight pages of Lighthouse. There are comparable Canon and Epson choices.

4. I really prefer MS Word to all the page design softwares (which I have also used since they were invented) because, frankly, custom stamp albums are not that complex compared to free form product catalogs, advertising items, web sites - and the simplicity of Word is readily transferable to most everything. ANYWAY, using the Gutters and Mirrored document choices in Word, you can easily convert 8 1/2 x 11 pages to the larger 10.62" W x 11.75" H format in seconds. Of course, you can also easily change your album page borders in seconds with the Format Borders Art and standard choices in Word.

Occasionally I will get some stamps that do not have a country listing in an oversized Harris stamp book. I just create a title on an 8.5"x11" paper and use a perforator or hole puncher to fit the page into the book.

Yes, that is a Steiner page.

These are lovely looking pages!