Show/Tell Me The Difference Between Album Brands

And the organization of the international stamps begins...

FUN! enjoy.

Enjoy the time spent going through the stamps and organizing. I have the next two weeks off and look forward to spending a lot of time sorting my worldwide.

Dale

I found some beautiful stamps! I have them all sorted but I didn't think far enough ahead. I don't have any albums or room in my stock books for them!

I ordered stock pages and I'm excited to put them on display when they come in.

Great advice here and CJ you have a nice sampler of albums to try with the Minkus and the Scott International. As floortrader says eventually space becomes an issue for sure! If I could do it all over again I would have went with the three volume Minkus Supreme Global albums that would have given a pretty decent coverage though the mid 1960's. One drawback is the thinner paper Minkus uses. Then one could buy the parts if they want to go further. One can do that with Scott Internationals, but it would be a minimum of five albums and more likely ten. The ultimate would be Scott Specialty albums, but then the space would really be an issue.

Jumping in. Any advice on a good Mexico Stamp Album. I looked at Palo - very expensive- but I am willing to wait and save up if it is really good. I see Scott and Minkus have one as well - also $$$. The other option I saw is buying the album pages only and I print them and use mounts. Thanks for experience or thoughts on Mexico - I have quite a bit of material including BOB.

Why buy a printed album (and I speak as someone who's blown money on a few over the years)? If you buy blank quadrille pages, you can make your own and fit it to your own interests, rather than following the dictates of a catalogue or album manufacturer. Palo is simply an expensive rendition of Steiner, which is itself a rather dull, mechanical piece of album design/lay-out. One possibility if you went the DIY route would be to pay the relatively low price for the Steiner pages, then use the useful information (stamp size etc) to help structure your own.

Steiner is a great idea, unless one is just starting out and trying to collect the world. I tried the Stiener route early on and while it worked great for US and Canada for me as a newbie, I struggled with Japan. Page after page of the same size stamps from the 80's was hard for me to keep track of. I too hate wasting money on printed albums, buying used albums is definitely the way to go and save money, especially if the stamps are included. I use quadrille pages too and one has to with souvenir sheets or Sand Dunes or the many stamps the Scott International part 1 does not include. Palo is very beautifully designed. Some earlier mentioned hinges.... Yes! get packs of Dennison (not the Dennisen) and in a pinch Fold-O hinge if you can. Comes in handy when you change your mind!

Only addressing your earlier comment about the "thin" pages in the Scott International album. Yours is a very old album back when the Scott International did have thin pages, but Scott has changed them in recent decades to much sturdier pages. So they are no longer thin.

Scott's International is often considered the premium U.S. worldwide album, if that's of interest to you -- but it's not cheap to buy. Buying a used collection in good volumes of the album would save a lot of money, but there's the chance of getting those "thin" pages again if the edition is old enough. Minkus made an enormous worldwide album that competed with Scott for many years, but they've gone out of business and sometimes those pages have been a bit hard to get. These are the Minkus "Global" albums and they are enormous. I can't pick them up easily. Also their pages are massively overstuffed with stamp spaces compared to the more restrained layouts of the (less complete in the early years) Scott International pages.

Worldwide albums are not common so much anymore as most album publishers prefer to focus on albums for particular countries. The British albums which remain in print from Stanley Gibbons follow their (odd) habit of royal "reign eras" which will confuse most Americans and tend to reflect a British imperial view of the world. Other publishers seem to have abandoned their worldwide albums. There are still some small, popular world albums like the H.E. Harris albums (which aren't all that "small") for sale, but they tend to have "thin" pages which are very, very crowded if that bothers you.

The Steiner pages can be overwhelming and I'd never reccommend them to a beginning collector since a world collection would require printing tens of thousands of pages along with the cost of the ink, paper, and subscribing to the website -- so not "free" at all. Plus you'll need binders to hold all those pages. It's true you can "print as you go" but in my opinion that produces a somewhat disorganized or at least incomplete album that ends up occupying entire bookcases of binders. For individual countries, Steiner pages can be a godsend for their completeness and affordability, but I'd dread trying to collect the "world" with those pages! Too much to deal with with too few stamps in them.

I'd just play around and enjoy your stamps in whatever albums you like until you became more familiar with both stamps and albums over time. That's we we all did. Good luck and have fun.

If you are just starting a more than one or two country collection, I would not rush to get any album until you have a better idea on what you want. I recommend going with reusable Vario type pages with tags to identify and organize them stamps.

The traditional collecting method expects a minimum entry fee to get the expected tools (traditional album$, good hinge$/mount$$, watermark fluid, perf gauge, catalog$, magnifying glass, etc) for the first stamp you get.

I just received my 1st order of 60 Anchor Stock sheets. They are 2 sided sheets and sell for $30 w free shipping on ebay. I was skeptical because they were so cheap but for my purposes they look OK.

The good news here is that you have a nice "sampler" of albums. I echo other's comments about buying used albums. (preferably with stamps!) A rough rule of thumb used to be a used loose leaf Scott International 1840-1940 with a couple thousand stamps in it would run about $100. A couple words of caution about used albums. Check and make sure all the counties are complete (US, Canada and British Colonies can sometimes walk away) and there's always the "smell" test. "Smoke" and "musty" are two no-no's!