What's The Best Way (Less Time) To Buy And Place Mounts For Each And Every Stamp In A Country Album?

angore made a good comment. You can get clear split back mount strips (say 50 mm) and cut them lengthwise and get two 25 mm strips that are open on 3 sides. You can be creative cutting larger mounts down to the size that you need for those odd size stamps.

Following Scott order may not be what a collector wants, however. I don't find that "advantage" very advantageous, myself. Over a century ago, Scott chose to separate various types of regularly-issued common stamps into Airmails, Semi-postals, and others. The only thing worse, in my view, is the odd Japanese catalogue habit of also separating regular stamps from commemoratives. All of these stamps are normal postage stamps sold at post offices and used to mail a letter. Why do they get separated? And why aren't souvenir sheets listed in a separate catalogue section? Why are they listed with "real" stamps? Scott has a number of odd habits that make little sense.

If stamps are issued for postal use in the same year, what are they doing a hundred pages apart in a catalogue or album? One of the strangest things you can see in a U.S. catalogue or album is the sad little page on which Scott lists all seven (7) U.S. semi-postals -- far away from all the other stamps they were issued with and used to mail letters with.

In my Scott albums, I move Air Mail and Semi-Postal pages to the appropriate earlier part of the album where they belong. It just makes a lot more sense to me. Are there collectors who refuse to collect air mails or semis because, you know, they're not "real stamps"? I don't think so. It's a weird segregation Scott forced on itself which they can't get themselves out of now. Just list stamps in the years in which they were issued.

So, a non-Scott organized album may actually be a better, not a worse, choice. I use Davo albums for a few countries. Davo combines semi-postals with other stamps. I'm not sure about air mails. But I'd put them with the other stamps. I want all postal stamps from a year to be together.

As for the question of which album manufacturers use open-top mounts, I'm not sure, but in my experience most of them do. Maybe it's because it's easier to attach those mounts to the pages? Not sure.

I bought a used Marini (Italy) hingeless album recently where nearly all the open-top mounts were falling off the pages! Yikes! I guess I could re-glue them. Each mount was held to the page by the tiniest sliver of glue imaginable. Not sure why they do it that way. I find stamps slide around in open-top mounts and some can fall out. They're only held in place at the bottom. In split-back mounts, they're held at both top and bottom. Turning the pages in albums with open-top mounts I've often had to put stamps back in their mounts more securely. This is based on looking at albums at a number of auctions, but it may not be typical.

My mount preference would be split-back and clear. But black mounts would look pretty nice, too.

But I mainly use hinges -- a different subject entirely. They're much cheaper than mounts, they're far easier to use, and stamps rarely "fall out of" hinges.

Davo separates air-mails, Lighthouse and Schaubek don't (unless they configure their US albums along Scott lines for the US market). The obvious way to avoid the tyranny and irrationality of printed albums is not to use them, of course.

Palo Albums (They also sell Davo)
https://paloalbums.com/

Lighthouse Albums
https://www.lighthouse.us/collect-s...nted-albums/

Mystic Stamp Company (US albums only)
https://www.mysticstamp.com/Listing...loom-Albums/

Schaubek Albums
https://www.schaubek.de/

Lindner and SAFE also produce hingeless albums, though not with the type of mounts you are looking for. Stender, out of Denmark, produces hingeless albums for the Scandinavian countries and are available from Jay Smith & Associates. http://www.jaysmith.com/Albums/Sten...-Albums.html

I have albums from Palo, Lighthouse and Mystic and can recommend each one. I'm considering a Stender album and might be able to let you know about those later.

Hingeless albums can be quite expensive and, if you don't have the stamps to fill the majority of the spaces, you might be better off in the long run to buy an ordinary album and, as you add stamps, cut your own or buy packs of pre-cut mounts. Depending on the size, mounts are available in some standard, pre-cut sizes where there are many stamps of the same size, such as US definitives and horizontal and vertical commemoratives of the 20th century. If you are collecting US stamps, I believe that Mystic offers year sets of pre-cut mounts, with one to fit each stamp of that year. Unless you try to do an entire album at one time, cutting mounts isn't really that big of a chore, though, if you use a dedicated mount cutter, such as this one by Lighthouse.

I prefer the clear mounts because the stamps stand out more on a Harris or Scott album. I use Crystal for cheaper mint stamps and Showguard for more expensive mint stamps. It's best to sort your stamps and mount strips by size (Crystal small and medium, Showguard 25 and 27 and etc.) before you assemble them.