What's Your Opinion Of Steiner Stamp Album Pages?

Wow!
what a review........balanced, polite, broad ranging and extensive.
I heartily agree, and yes, I am biased.
He saved the hobby for me, I had stamps everywhere, in packets, envelopes on Graph Paper, in Hagners, my enjoyment was waning
there was just no order.

Stamp collecting has never entailed spending a lot of money on an album, much though album manufacturers might like us to believe that. Buying some paper, some hinges, a springback album, borrowing a catalogue from the library ... kids in the sixties could afford that. Take a look at lots 365, 366 and 371 (other pages from this collection are dotted through the sale). Patently not a child, but an adult who didn't need a printed page to show off his/her collection ...

https://www.warwickandwarwick.com/a...ved?save=yes

After doing a search for Steiner stamp pages, I found the website at stampalbums.com. If you're looking for specific sets (Burkina Faso/Upper Volta elephants, Belgian King Philippe, etc.), this might be the website for you. However, if you have duplicate stamps for multiple years of the same country, search for a seller that deals with that country. The stamp pages that are half illustrative, half blank work for me. Or design your own pages from blank pages.

Does anyone remember the original Steiner Album pages from the 1980's?
The were clones of Scott Specialty albums in size and design.
He stopped making them about 1992 and switched to current size and design.

"Stamp collecting has never entailed spending a lot of money on an album . . . . "

Correct, but only if you bought (or were given) a very modest album. Or if you tried making your own album from notebook paper and a 3-ring binder. Otherwise, it did cost a lot of money. Sixty years ago (when I began collecting), a middle-range album was far more than any young collector could possibly afford, and a top-of-the-line album was out of the question for nearly all collectors. The same thing is true today 60 years later.

Here are some examples. 'm looking at an ad for H.E. Harris albums from 1960. I was 12 years old in 1960 so I had little money to spend, maybe a few bucks from time to time. I'll price pre-printed albums of the type most collectors used then -- and still use today.

For Harris beginner world albums like the "Ambassador" and "Statesman" which looked nice but had very few stamp spaces, prices were $5 and $6 respectively. That was quite a few months of my allowance. So I couldn't afford them. If you're curious $5 for an album in 1960 dollars is the equivalent of $45 today. How many young collectors in 1960 had the equivalent of $45 for a beginner album? No one I knew. How many young collectors can spend $45 for a beginner album today? Few.

The Harris Statesman is still sold today -- except it now costs twice as much as back then -- $90. For a modest worldwide album, that is a heck of a lot of money.

Mid-range albums wouldn't fill up so quickly and were probably a better choice. The Senior Statesman (spaces for 40K stamps) and Citation (65K stamps) cost $9 and $18, respectively, in 1960. In today's dollars, that's $78 and $157! Affordable by young collectors? Not a chance. Those were albums I never could have afforded.

Harris' best album was the 2-volume Standard (80K stamps). It cost $22. That's $192 in today's money. I dont' know if it's still sold. If it is, it's not going to be cheap.

There weren't any collectors I knew, except a few adults, who would have spent that much on a stamp album. I'd say for most collectors, it's the same today.

I started collecting in a $3 or $4 Grossman "Majestic" album that was ridiculously small and very limited in coverage. So I asked for a Grossman "Regent" album for Christmas one year. It was much bigger and had far more coverage, in fact way more than I could fill. It cost about the same as the larger Harris albums, around $20 (that would be $175 today). These are not prices most ordinary young people could have afforded.

More upscale and much better albums were the Minkus Global or the Scott International. Today, the International album will cost you $500 just for the pages up to 1840, plus nother $200 for the binders. So about $700. If you also collect modern stamps, start adding at least $150-500 per decade for those pages. Prices for the Minkus Global are pretty similar. Back in 1960, that same International album cost three times what the top-of-the-line H.E. Harris album cost, around $60.

So, stamp collecting did entail spending a lot of money for a decent album. And it still does today.

You can collect in blank albums, but most collectors don't. Most prefer filling spaces in pre-printed albums. And have you priced good quality blank album pages and binders lately? For modest blank stamp albums, you'll spend about $20-50 for quality album paper plus $30-50 for a decent stamp album binder. That's $50 per volume. If you're content with office store paper and a cheap three-ring binder, maybe $20-25 is enough for one volume. For a world collection, though, you're going to need a lot of volumes! Is five enough? Is ten? And you're going to have fairly cheap looking albums that I would not have wanted even as a kid. Most collectors like putting stamps in spaces, which is why they buy pre-printed albums, and those are not cheap.

I've purposely left out all the highest quality, really expensive albums from Davo, SG, Lighthouse, Schaubek and others since few beginning collectors and most adult collectors can't possibly afford those. Albums covering one country alone by Davo or Lighthouse will set you back $1000 or even $2000 or more. I've only priced mainstream albums, the type collectors used to be able to buy in a stamp store 60 years ago -- or online today.

So the truth is stamp albums are not cheap at all. This is the appeal of Steiner's pages and other print-your-own pages. But even those cost money, at least $50 for Steiner's CD. Plus paper ($12 for 200 sheets of 60# weight) plus a decent binder. But if you collect the world, you would need 30, 40, 50 or more binders -- plus all that paper. Good luck with the expense of all that! You might as well buy a really good pre-printed album.

Have I priced albums recently? Yes.

Binder @ £25.50

https://www.dauwalders.co.uk/wessex...101792-p.asp

1000 leaves @ £105

https://www.dauwalders.co.uk/wessex...101792-p.asp

As kids in the mid-'60s, when we discovered loose-leaf albums, we used a generic, cloth-bound springback binder and graph paper. Probably better quality than you'd get today from your ring-binder and computer-generated pages on standard printer paper.

And if you're happy with second hand there are definitely bargains to be had out there. I recently bought several old (but in very nice condition) Stanley Gibbons albums each with quite a lot - each one had 50+ - of unused quadrille pages with interleaving. They were bundled in five or sixes and worked out at about £5 each including the postage.

Or if pre-printed albums is what you're after there are a lot around at far less than the new price, often in lovely condition. I actually like getting an album with a few stamps in and feeling that I'm carrying on somebody's work. I often feel quite uncomfortable stripping stamps off a page that somebody has lovingly collected the stamps for and designed the layout and even written out interesting annotations

But our family has always bought things second hand, we've always liked antique shops and junk shops, car boot sales and charity shops! I realise that's not everybody's thing

When I started collecting (only a few years ago), I read somewhere that most Europeans preferred stock books to printed albums, so that's the route I took, and have been quite happy with the results. Yes, as a world-wide collector I do need many stockbooks (currently around 60). But that's no problem, because my credit card (which is quite an ordinary one) gives "rewards points" for use, and these are used for purchases online (e.g., at Amazon). Thus, every few months I get a new Lighthouse or Stanley Gibbons, 60-64 page stockbook free. I like the look and feel, and my "album cost" is zero.

I started collecting around 1972. Like most kids, I purchased Harris Albums. Liberty and Canada and Provinces. Bought supplements every year for both up till about 1980 when I joined the Navy. Picked up collecting again for a couple years, bought many supplements to get albums current again. Stopped collecting in the early 90's and picked it back up about 5 years ago. Cost to update my albums was not worth the $$$ to do it. Looked at just buying new albums and re-mounting everything. Have way too much for that. Besides, I've gotten somewhat lazy in my later years, lol.

So I got a subscription to Bill's site, downloaded and printed what I needed and made up albums to cover the gap from my old Harris Albums to present.

Do the pages look fancy like pre-printed albums? No, not really. Do they do the trick? For me? Yes. Do I like how my albums have turned out? Yup. And in the end, I am very satisfied with them and that's all that matters with me. After all, it's the stamps that count. They are what has some value. If someone purchases your collection, they are way more interested in what you have as opposed to what the pages look like - just my opinion.

Bill's pages do the trick for me just fine. I've created a lot of multimedia and graphics content over the years and simply cannot imaging the amount of time and energy that he's put into making these pages. Well worth what he asks for a year's subscription - again, just my opinion. And by all means, I will renew it again.

OLDMANRIVER ---I am in your corner here, Steiner pages are the way to go .The cost and the smaller size fits on a bookcase better than those 30 lbs binders which now cost hundreds of dollars per country .

DrewM, $100 is becoming the norm for most hobbies or activities today. For stamp albums, you could easily spend $100 on Steiner pages (printing and binders) or ready printed albums. Most young people could be encouraged with a relative, older friend, or other mentor (stamp club at school). That $100 is also competing with a student's other interests: sports (equipment, travel), technology (phones, tablets, laptops), music (instruments, travel) or other hobbies (sports cards, coins, etc).

Absolutely love Steiner pages. After dropping roughly $600 on Israel 1/2/3 Davo Luxe albums; I decided they were worth a shot. Fell in love with them. Yes, they are simple, but I don't care about the aesthetics of the pages, my personal opinion is that the stamps are what I'm collecting, not the albums. A really nice "pro" is that if you can simply re-print a page and re-mount anything you want if a page is damaged, worn or whatever. Sure it is possible to get a single page for any of the numerous albums out there, but a lot easier to just re-print that page at home.

Being able to just download what I want has led to collections of French West Africa, French Guinea, Belgian Congo, Lundy, Japan, Early Philippines and Jamaica. Would never have done that if I'd had to buy expensive albums for each of those.

Everyone's way of organizing and displaying their stamps is different and no way is right or wrong, but I'll use them until I stop collecting stamps, which will probably be the day I either run out of money or die. Hopefully neither is in the near future!

I find Steiner album pages to be a bit "plain." The one things I really really wish was different, was that the country name on the top of the page was in bold.

My only other issue with them is they follow Scott exactly. I use Scott for my US collection, but for Ukraine I use MICHEL and for Ireland I use Stanley Gibbons. This tend to mess with my world.

The other things about Steiner pages is the page size. I'm in the US, so this does not affect me. But, ALL his PDFs are US Letter. In countries that use A4 size paper, the layout is not going to sit nicely centered on the page, and if you stretch to fit, then, the boxes will be the wrong size for the stamps.

If you collect multiple countries, are in the US, and exclusively use Scott, the pages are GREAT, even though they are a tad simple.

I wonder if he's still using PageMaker to design his pages. PageMaker hasn't been supported in 2001, and the upgrade path was to get Adobe InDesign and use the PageMaker importer. Well, it's been so long since that point, that Adobe removed the PageMaker import feature of InDesign.

So, I have this nagging concern that his computer is going to crash, he'll need to get a new one and won't be able to install PageMaker and keep doing the work.

Or he wants to hand if off to someone else to take over and they won't be able to, because they can't use any of the PageMaker files.

He used to respond to my emails, but hasn't in years now.

I had a membership for a few years to "support the cause," but I stopped doing it a while ago.

The Steiner pages look ok. I use Word to make all my pages. I have a couple pages of standard box templates for different size stamps and then I can change the page border using watermarks. Lots of web searches yields plenty of free borders that look decent. It also allows me to play with the settings to get the page that I want including changing the fonts if I need to.

No need to worry!

To my surprise, I had no problem with installing the very old PageMaker program on my new Win10 PC.

So I am still able to edit the original Steiner files (.p65 or .pmd) up to year 2000. I do not have the newer files. (And for most countries I don't collect these stamps anyhow…)

I always start editing Steiner's pages by changing the country name to bold And I try to balance each page, since they often have too much empty space at the bottom. In addition, I often add varieties included in European catalogues. And for many countries I prefer to place the semi-postals and air post stamps together with the postals and commemoratives.

The Steiner pages have been extremely important in the development of my world-wide stamp collection for more than 20 years.. Thank you very much, Bill!