US Plate Block Albums

Greetings! I have inherited a pretty large (but not so valuable) collection of mostly US stamps, and am in the process of "filling in the blanks." I have a Harris plate block album, but the quality of the paper and printing on the recent supplements seems to have diminished greatly. I looked into White Ace albums, but they are pretty expensive, and I haven't seen them "used" on ebay. I have a Scott album for my singles, and I like both its quality and breadth. Is Scott the "best" option for plate blocks, too? And if not, what would be a good choice? Thanks.

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I don't think there is any such album for plates that I am enthused over. That said, I use Scott pages. Good paper plus the catalog numbers. You can buy them in sections as needed.

I thought Scott (Amos Advantage) published a plate block album? That would be the one I'd use, for sure.

Either that or a blank album of some kind, maybe with quadrille pages, which could look really nice. Use Scott blank pages with borders, and you're all set. Or some other brand of album and blank pages, though Scott will likely be the less expensive choice while still looking really good. I'm not a fan of small 8.5 x 11" pages (White Ace and so on) especially for larger items like plate blocks. But that's up to you, obviously.

And a third alternative is to print your own pages. That would mean designing your pages and printing out the layouts on regular printer paper, then taking them to a photocopy place like Fedex to print those "originals" onto something like Scott Specialty blank pages with borders already on them. I've done this many times and the resulting pages look almost exactly like the real thing. It will take a little trial and error to center the layout, but once you figure that out, you can print all your pages fairly easily for the cost of the blank paper and the photocopy fee -- about 50c a page. You might look into Bill Steiner's album page website and see if he offers U.S. plate block pages which you could then print out. Then either use them "as is" or print form those onto the larger blank pages. Just google to find him.

If you collecting older US blocks, you can consider vario pages (3 or 4 pocket) rather than a traditional album. You could get at least 6 per sheet (3 front. 3 back). I consider Vario pages an investment since if your mood changes and you do get an album, they can still be used for something else.