Using Glassine Interleaving Pages—advise Sought

I would never take on a large, messy project like gluing interleaving into an album when the problem can be resolved easily and quickly with a second binder. Move half of your pages into the new (or used) binder, and your problem is solved! I have a 35-volume Scott International album (Yikes!) but it started out as fewer volumes. My pages are alphabetical (not by decade), so I keep spreading the pages out into new binders. This is a 50-year lifetime collection that just grew.

ebay has used binders. So do dealers at stamp shows (and shops, if any of those still exist). Subway Stamp Shop sells their own identical version of the binder (which is new, of course) and it's a little less expensive than Scott/Amos.

If you're talking about a sewn-binding Scott International album, that's an entirely different story. For that, I suppose you would have to glue interleaving between the pages - but really who would do that? Not me, that's for sure. I don't want glue anywhere near my stamps, and I certainly would make mistakes as I glued the interleaving into the binder.

Also FYI: I use clear interleaving, not glassine. The price difference for a package of 100 sheets of glassine vs. clear is only a few dollars, and the clear interleaving is much higher quality. And it's clear (!) so you can see the stamps on the next page clearly which you can't with glassine. I've never understood why people use crinkly, tearable glassine when clear interleaving is available. Also, much of the old glassine I've seen has yellowed noticeably. I don't think the clear interleaving yellows over time.

DrewM -- Where do you get clear interleaving. Great idea, not sure I've seen it anywhere. Thanks!

I am so glad someone posed this question. I purchased a 4 foot by 50 yard roll of glassine on Amazon and cut it into sheets just slightly less that would fit my pages with my band saw. Then took my paper guillotine and cut the remaining rolls to the proper size. That was a whole lot more economical than buying a pack at a time. Cheap. No frugal. The problem comes in inserting them between the pages and you just solved that problem. Thank you.

Bud: it's been a few years since I purchased glassine interleaving. And I have generated a lot of extra glassine pages as I've downsized my former world wide collection. I suspect you can find glassine interleaving on various websites, like Subway Stamp Shop and Potomac Supplies.

I'll gently disagree with Drew. Glassine interleaving that I bought 30 years ago generally still looks like I bought it yesterday. I agree that it can not only yellow with time, but can get both brittle and really ugly. I've seen that in collections I've bought. A key could be how and where the collection is kept. I live in a semi-arid place (Colorado) with usually low humidity. I also don't store stamp albums in either attic or basement. That said, I have a few pieces of clear interleaving, but still prefer the glassines.

It will be interesting to see how clear interleaving holds up over the years. I really don't know, though. If glassine doesn't age, that's a plus, but I've seen a lot of it age badly. Might be from bad storage habits, though, like too much heat. I guess time will tell.

I find glassine gets stuck between the pages in awkward ways and ends up getting creased. Clear interleaving has "static cling" that usually keeps it from doing that. As I turn the pages in my albums, the clear interleaf adheres to one page or the other. If it adheres to the page I'm turning, that's good. If it adheres to the upcoming page, I just turn the next page plus the interleaving as one page. My main issue with glassine is that I like to look at both pages of stamps at the same time. So clear interleaving just looks and works better for me. I's worth a few more dollars to me to buy the clear stuff. Something like $15 vs. $12, give or take. Then there's that crinkly noise as you turn the page! Not a fan of that.

I've bought clear interleaving a few times on ebay, but mostly from Subway Stamp Shop. They sell it for both the Scott International and the Scott Specialty-National albums. I'm surprised Scott (Amos Advantage) doesn't sell clear interleaving, and I have no idea why. It seems like a no-brainer to me. But Scott does some strange things -- like discontinuing the sale of smaller size Scott International and Specialty binders, replacing those binders with enormous 3-ring binders so big they hang way off bookshelves, choosing 3-ring album pages instead of multi-ring pages (which look much nicer), not selling title pages for either the International or Specialty albums, not scoring the folding edge of album pages so they lie flatter in 2-post binders (cheap and easy to do), even sometimes misspelling names of countries on their pages (It's "Tunisia," not "Tunesia". Sometimes I think someone's not paying much attention At Scott/Amos anymore.

FCPapa- My Big Blue is also a '47 (best version IMO, if you can live with the thin pages)...

I had some glassine interleaves to begin with in the starter albums, but I've purchased the poly clear interleaves since. Agree with Drew that it's nice to be able to see through.

And, just hit 22,000 last weekend, and a few months back I moved the collection into 3 binders vs. 2 binders. Now easier to pick up and handle. Even at 2 binders, with the poly interleaves, the albums get heavier fast.....

Hope this is helpful, Ray