Scott Specialty Albums And Mount Strips

I recently purchased a small partial Austria collection that came in an old Scott Specialty album with pages up to the early 1970s. Some stamps were in clear mounts, some in black, and some sadly hinged by the original owner's dog for all of the saliva that went into it.

With the stamp boxes a little tight, when multiple individual mounts were used for stamps grouped together there was overhang at both ends. I did notice in a couple places that instead of mounting the items in a row individually the person would mount a strip and then place the stamps for the entire row. It required a little more care to remove the stamps, but otherwise I thought it looked nicer overall and didn't seem to make the pages harder to flip through.

For any of you who use Scott Specialty albums and mounts, do you ever place a strip instead of a number of single mounts for a row of spaces? I suppose the question could also be asked of anyone using Minkus Specialty albums although I do not know the weight of the paper used there.

Thanks in advance,

Dale

I use clear top loading Hawids and always use a strip when I can. I think it is much neater and with the clear mounts it's almost invisible.

I do exactly what KRelyea does, for the same reason.

I mounted the Prexies in this way in a Scott Album w/ black showgard strips, It's difficult to line them up neatly with even spacing. Takes a little math and careful use of a ruler OR eyeballing it.Clear mounts would have none of that problem. In the future I think I would have put the stamps into the mount strips first in this case to ease lay out. The page is a bit heavy but it would be with all those mounts on it as well.

Using strips for a row of stamps doesn't appeal to me to me. I like the look of individual mounts. A strip just looks less attractive. In albums I've bought with stamps in them, row after row of long mount strips makes the album look sloppy as if the collector couldn't be bothered. In turning album pages, long mounting strips bend more and I find their adhesive seems to come loose more easily. I understand why collectors do it, especially when stamps are very close together, but I prefer the look of each mount cut individually. Trimming each mount so it fits both the space available and the stamp does take more time and effort, though. And in a cramped album it may not work very well.

As for a row of individual mounts producing "overhang" at each end of the row of stamps, that would matter if the stamp spaces remained visible after the stamps were mounted, or if there were identifying names under each stamp, but with neither, a row of mounts that extended a little farther would not likely even be noticeable.

One way to avoid noticing a long mounting strip would be to use clear-backed mounts which you notice less than the black-backed kind. This may be the reason all major album makers use clear-backed mounts. Or take the extra time and effort to cut each mount, black or clear, individually. I still use hinges for most of my used/hinged stamps -- which I suppose is another way to avoid long mounting strips. For most used stamps, I've never understood the need for mounts, in most cases, or why the extra expense is worth it. For mint and rarer stamps, I see a benefit. Finally, a page combining hinged stamps with stamps in mounts looks better if the mounts are clear.

I mount stamps both with individual mounts and with long strips. The individual mounts are for the "traditional" page, for example, displaying a set of stamps. The long strips are used to display a group of the same stamp that have a related characteristic such as tone or postmark.

The one thing to be aware of when using the strips is that the strip, which is plastic, and the page, which is paper, don't expand and contract at the same rate. Even a small change in humidity will result in bending of the page for part of the year. In my case it is small and I don't consider it a problem. If you live in an area with large humidity swings this method may not work well.

My OCD won't allow me to mount strips like that, whether in a Scott Specialty album or any other. Every mount must be cut to fit the box and every stamp must be centered in the box intended for it. I have also seen collections where the owner mounted stamps without a box provided elsewhere on the page and, while this may be acceptable to them, I couldn't force myself to do that and throw the page out of symmetry. That's the beauty of stamp collecting, you can collect how you want and mount your stamps how you want with no hard and fast rules.

I also use individual mounts for each stamp, and cut to fit if needed. I have seen strips used when the album page allows for it, but personally feel it doesn't have the same appeal as individually mounted. I also don't like album pages that are crammed full of stamps, so I typically will redo a page to minimize the amount of stamps on a page.

I use black top opening mounts and when I first started using them 50+ years ago and didn't have a proper cutter, I mounted strips. Over time I noticed that the stamps within the strip would shift slightly one way or the other. This made the page look very unattractive after a few years. Now that I am retired and have proper tools I am going back into my old Scott Specialty albums and replacing all of the strips with individual mounts for each row. If a stamp is missing within a row, I still add the mount since I have found it next to impossible to add a mount in the middle of the row at a later time and make it look clean. The pages look a lot nicer now.

I just finished putting Hawid mounts into every regular and semi postal space in my Scott Specialty Album for France, thankfully I only collect to 1948. I like using clear strips because for me they result in a neater look. With my eyes and hands I can't put individual mounts in a row without making a mess, but that's just me.

I have an old Germany Scott Specialty where many clear mount strips were used. If you look very carefully you can see a slight bit of warping of the underlying paper in the 30+ years since it was done, but it is barely noticeable.