Stamp Albumm For British Colonies And British Empire - Pre - Qe2

Does anyone know if there is a stamp album that covers British Colonies and Empire, Pre - QE2?. Looking for an album that covers all of the Colonies and Empire. I know that Steiner pages are available for each of those Norfolk Island, Sarawak and son and so one). I'd prefer something that has all of that in it already.

Gibbons is in the process of revamping its Imperial albums, which covered the Empire from QV to GV, and its separate GVI album. The period from EVII has been covered thus far. See p24 ff on the attached

https://www.michaelkay.co.uk/brochu...brochure.pdf

The stanley Gibbons albums are your best bet, but you can always make your own pages. I use Vario pages and then make tabs with whatever information I want listed for each stamp. Here is a page from my Jamaica collection. The nice thing about this system is that you can collect whatever you want and can redesign things quickly when you find something new.

Palo has what you are looking for.

https://paloalbums.com/collections/...layout-pages

The other advantage of the SG albums is that they contain catalogue numbers, which is definitely useful for the earlier material. As a general principle, if you're going to buy printed albums, I think it makes sense to go with the country's "own" supplier - SG for GB, Yvert for France, Lighthouse for Germany etc.

Like KGVI, I make my own pages for the later (post-1936) issues, although I use quadrille, as I don't much like using stock-pages as an album.

Years ago, Minkus produced good albums for British America, British Europe, British Africa, British Asia, and British Oceania. I had America and Europe, but transferred the collections to the Scott International Big Blue albums in the mid-1980s.

Don't know if these are still made; Amos owns the rights. But I suspect good used copies can be found in auction house sales.

The Palo are laid out according to Gibbons catalog.

Old fastbound albums from Gibbons are in my opinion very attractive, and are what I use. They are no longer available new, but good condition used are available if you look around.

You would need two - one for pre-1936 and one for 1936-52.

The very pre-1936 one is either the New Imperial or the New Ideal, like this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/STANLEY-...AOSw~w5d7Q0f

The 1936-52 - the King George VI would be the 'Crown' album, like this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GEORGE-V...047675.l2557

Ringo, thanks for those links. It helps me understand older SG albums. Stanley Gibbons albums have always confused me. I understand U.S. albums, Minkus (now largely gone), Scott, and the others which are generally very simple -- worldwide, in some depth or other, or U.S. And Scott Specialty albums originated as regional albums soon became single country albums. Now we have Palo albums which rely on Steiner page layouts. But British albums either keep changing or just were never very clear to me, in the first place.

Can anyone explain?

SG seems to keep changing their albums. Do they revamp the older page layouts or are they pretty much static?

I see ring binders now which makes sense to me, but do they still publish those wonderful old sewn-binding albums? Didn't they have expansion strips built into them to accommodate for the "bulge factor" of added stamps?

Are these three albums -- New Imperial, New Ideal, and Crown -- still in print in some form?

And what's the difference between the first two pre-1936 albums?

I don't believe SG has ever issued a truly worldwide album as opposed to a British world album? Is that correct? And SG does not publish its own regional or country albums, either, I believe. Instead, they seem to sell adopted Davo (from the Netherlands) albums for these areas.

I once ended up in the old Vera Trinder collecting shop around the corner from where Stanley Gibbons still is. VT has now moved on. While poking around, I ended up getting a very long lecture from two very excited clerks about all the different styles of SG and Davo albums, the different bindings and page formats, mounts and no mounts. They were just happy to spill all they knew. It was very nice of them, but I left very confused. I did like the old bound SG albums that were still in print, but I didn't collect Britain or its empire. And for someone my age back then, the prices seemed astonishingly high compared to my lone Scott National album and my one Davo album -- a one-volume Belgium -- that I had bought in Brussels.

The Ideal and Imperial fast-bound albums were reprinted (in three and two volumes respectively) and were available until a few years ago - I have copies of each - but are no longer produced. Each contains additional pages for supplementary material. However, copies frequently turn up in auctions in GB. Both albums run to 1936, which is when Gibbons decided that it was impractical to keep producing fast-bound albums that were, by their nature, almost immediately outdated. The albums thus became fixed in a particular period. You can see one collector's efforts to fill a reprinted Imperial here

https://www.stampboards.com/viewtop...f=17&t=38856

The albums appeared in various formulations. The Imperial was the more comprehensive world album, with spaces for regular issues, officials and postage dues. Ferrary was probably the only collector who could conceivably have filled an Imperial Empire album. After updates ceased, the Imperial became the British Empire album, and that is what the reprints cover. The Ideal contained spaces for regular issues only, with far fewer varieties. Permanent volumes were published covering the period to WWI, and 1915-30. After 1936, the Ideal became the album for foreign countries.

If you pick up original albums at auction, and wish to use them, remember that an Ideal may be one of the permanent type, or may cover only a few years. It may cover the Empire and foreign, or just one of the two. The illustrations will be clearer than on the reprints, but the paper will be inferior. It may well have more spaces for particular issues than the reprint.

Gibbons therefore no longer produces a world album. The revamped Empire/Commonwealth albums will, however, be comprehensive.

In the early 1980s, I bought a world wide collection from a Canadian auction house that had a Volume I fastbound Ideal, to 1914, and two Volume II Ideals, from 1915 to about 1930. The stamps I wanted were moved into other albums long ago, with many cheap stamps and/or duplicates still in the three albums. I have never discarded them, or sold the albums as remaindered, because I find the British sections to be useful references.