My Mystic Heirloom Albums Arrived Today

And there's more!

The frustration of album pages that are too thin can be remedied easily. It requires that you buy all-blank paper punched to fit your album. It should be in the heavier weight you find appropriate. Many "print shops" can provide such paper. Bring a sample page of the size you want. Ask for the heavier weight you prefer, choose your page color, and specify a hole punch. Then all you have to do is photocopy your album pages onto it, and you'll have good-looking heavy album pages at a fairly cheap price that will fit right into your album. I do this all the time for damaged album pages and even for missing pages at my local Fedex place.

If you prefer to house your pages in a non-standard album binder, be sure to get a sample album page that shows the location of the holes you want.

For an entire album this could get a bit expensive. Figure paper cost plus the cost of photocopying to equal about 50¢ a page. Still cheaper than what most album pages sell for which is closer to $1.00 or more without mounts, but not really as cheap as pages printed on your home printer for a 3-ring binder. Those smaller sized pages will cost closer to 10¢ a page (paper plus ink), maybe a little more. But for a little more, you end up with much nicer "real" album sized pages compared with school binder sized pages. You decide.

DrewM:

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

My hands are tied now by sunk costs and the fact that I've begun mounting the used (hinged) specimens on my new Scott National pages. Still working on mounts for the MNH stuff. But to your point, I would consider DIY page production if I ever get around to starting a specialty collection.

In the meantime, I'm working on a remedy for the Scott pages which (surprise!) like to snag as they are turned on the binder's 3-ring mechanism. That remedy involves drilling out the pages' outer holes (but not the center hole), employing tools and materials from my other expensive hobby. I may post pics of this if there's interest.

Some print shops will refuse to copy anything they believe to be copyrighted.

I was interested in this new post thread because I am having a similar experience. I was also a Minkus All American album guy 40 years ago. When I got back into collecting about a year ago, this forum was very helpful in choosing a new set of albums. However, I made some mistakes along the way which I'm happy to share. First, through a local dealer, I acquired one volume of a Schaubek Hingeless Album (1975-1992). I loved the fact that I could easily transfer stamps from my Minkus album easily and without the hassle and cost of buying new mounts. But that didn't help me with respect to pre-1975 issues so I went looking for an earlier Schaubek volume. The retail cost from Amos was more than I wanted to spend and for months found no help on ebay or Amazon, so I looked for other alternatives. After reading a whole thread about other albums, I decided to go the Mystic Heirloom route but I didn't want to buy the multi-volume set from Mystic. (I don't think Mystic sells individual volumes of this album.) On ebay, I found someone who was selling Mystic Heirloom pages and binders, covering the period through 1998 at a very reasonable price. It was a copyright 1999 edition, which was fine because I really had no intention of going beyond 1998 for my collection. I was going to use these volumes for pre-1975 and post-1992 issues, while I continued my search for Schaubek. While the pages were adequate, there were some problems, specifically, the pages were not numbered, which created difficulty when I wanted to add Andy's "hacked" pages; also these pages pre-dated Mystic's acquisition of a license to use Scott's numbers, so that feature was missing. The lesson I learned was to be more careful when you you purchase on ebay. Yes, the page were thin, not 70 lb. as Mystic says they are, probably only 24 or 32 lb. at best. The main problem from me was purchasing all those mounts, in all those sizes. Then, on an ebay auction I found exactly what I really wanted, Vol. I of the Schaubek album I craved, with pages, binder and slip case. I was the low bidder for a week, until less than 1 minute before the auction ended, when someone out bid me and the auction ended without an opportunity to increase my bid. Lesson learned; I will be a more careful bidder. Out of frustration, I contacted Mystic and bought pages only for Volume II of their Hingeless album, which are much better. They are on card stock and the mounts are easy to use with one caution: the mounts for pages that have souvenir sheets are different from the mounts for single issues; the latter are attached on the entire back, whereas the former are only attached at the bottom, the sheet actually goes between two unattached portions of the mount. If you aren't aware of this, you will think, as I did, that the sheet won't fit in the mount and if you try to further enlarge the back side, you might rip the mount. Fortunately, when I called Mystic to complain, I was told about my mistake and Mystic offered to replace the pages that might have been damaged. So now I have 4 different albums, Mystic Heirloom from issues through 1934; Mystic Hingeless from 1935-1966; Schaubek Hingeless from 1975-92; and back to Mystic Heirloom from 1993 forward. Unless I get very lucky or want to spend a lot more money, I will probably spring for Mystic Hingeless pages or albums in the future because buying mounts seems like a waste of money I'd rather spend on completing my stamp collection and my time transferring stamps from my Minkus album.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

So, BFRomeos, if I might ask, several months on, how has your transition gone from the Minkus album to the Scott National? Are you content?
I believe I am in the same boat you were in, having picked up the bug again after some 40 years. So am grappling with the issue of whether to migrate from the old Minkus albums (my late mother's ca 1965) with the captions I loved on heavy paper, to a Scott numbered album so I can extend and fill in.
NB I am not disposed to continue into the self-adhesive error / era. Too much & too cumbersome.

Let's just say my album strategy has evolved since then. I'm still focused on U.S. only. I obtained a set of Scott National binders: (1) 3-inch binder from 1845-1970; (2) another 3-incher for 1971-1993; and (3) a 1-incher for select back-of-book stuff. My intention is to collect MNH-only in the Scott binders. For the most part, I don't bother with post-1993 issues.

I have retained the Minkus pages (up to 1978), but now use a newer-version All American binder with a somewhat larger spine - used, but in better condition than my old binder. The Minkus is now intended for used specimens only. It had space left over for stocksheets in which I've stored a random selection of modern souvenir sheets, sheet remnants, and covers. No real pecuniary value there, but many items were harvested from family estate material - so there's sentimental value.

I was sorely disappointed with the Mystic product (thin pages), but they were quite good about accepting the return.

jieb1979: welcome to the Forum. You will like it here.

BF: thanks for your update. Having different binders to house your collection could be worse. US is not one of my specialty areas, but I do have a decent collection. It's housed on Scott International pages in a 4 inch Big Blue international binder. The same album houses other North American countries, including Canada, Newfoundland, Mexico, St. Pierre, etc. As an aside, I anticipate needing to re-activate a surplus 3 inch binder soon as the 4 incher is getting pretty jammed.

Part 1 of the Scott International pages; 1840-1940; isn't very comprehensive, at least the version I bought around 1983-84. So, I'm using a lot of G & K Scott blank quadrille pages from Subway as those are a bit thicker than what you buy direct from Scott. I have classic Mexico housed on trimmed down Scott Specialty pages and have been working in some trimmed down pages from an almost empty Scott Specialized US album I bought about a year ago. Probably not aesthetic enough for the purist, but the system works for me. The collection runs through the late 1960s.

So, I need to chime in here. My biggest issues with Mystic was the way they treat se-tenants. I tried to figure out what their logic was, but it continued to escape me. Then I figured it out. Their se-tents are laid out to maximize their profits. So, if you can only get say 4 blocks of 4 out of a sheet, but you can get 5 or 6 strips of 4, Mystic will make a sheet that wants you to mount a strip of stamps and their website will sell strips of stamps that neatly fit into the album.

This totally didn't work for me, because on some pages, Mystic wanted you to break up a perfectly good se-tenant to mount the stamps individually.

I kinda took the bull by the horns with this one, and started to make my own pages that grouped stamps properly. I then made a website with PDFs of my pages. The pages are drop in replacements. They contain descriptions on the back. So, you can print out my pages and just remove your existing page and swap it out with my page.

https://www.stamphacks.com

This made the Mystic Heirloom far more useful for me.

As for the 70 lb paper. Technically their pages are 70 lb paper. But they're using the "text" scale for paper, and not the "bond" scale we're all used to. So, 70 lb text paper is the same as 28 lb bond paper.

You can see a chart explaining it here.

https://paperworks.com/about-paper-weights