Help Selecting A Finland Stamp Album

As part of getting back into the hobby, I've been looking for a decent Finland album. I'm sure there are more than a couple out there who can provide me a little feedback and food for thought.

My intent is to collect Finland used up to around 2010 or so. I don't want to necessarily spend a crazy amount of money on the albums, as I'd rather spend that budget on stamps. I've been looking at the Scott specialized album, as well as what's offered on Nordfrim and NORMA (note I don't speak or read Finnish). I've also been looking at some of the print your own pages CDs or downlaodable albums, but based on other topics in the forum most people don't care for those.

I'd love to hear the thoughts of those who collect Finland, especially from those out there who have forgotten more than I will ever know about the hobby.

Lance

When I had a Scandinavian collection, I had a Davo Finland album that I acquired at auction. I can't say I liked the Davo font, page colour or peg system, although they will be cheaper than better quality albums from Lighthouse or Lindner. Schaubek would be another, slightly more economical option. If I were beginning again, I'd use quadrille and save the money.

In my younger days, I went with Lighthouse for my Finland collection. It has been quite durable, but the page size is a bit clunky, IMO.

As, I got older I focused more on stamps than albums. So, at this point I favor stock books and Vario pages.

IMO:
1) Lighthouse, Lindner, Schaubek
2) Davo, Palo
3) Scott, various print your own

Obviously, you'll have to weigh cost, convenience, format, etc. for yourself. I use Lighthouse almost exclusively (hingeless and Vario) for non-Commonwealth, but I place a premium on presentation (can't stand flimsy paper, 3-ring binders, and poorly cut or misaligned mounts). I also collect MNH/**, so the one-time expense of pages winds up being minimal over the decades. Something else to consider are Stender albums, probably the most specialized of the hingeless Scandinavian albums available.

Actually, I don't think that is strictly correct.
Although SOME people do not care for self-printed albums if anything I think that the Steiner downloadable pages are probably one of the more popular album alternatives.

At least in North America at any rate. Steiner follows the Scott catalogue which is not widely used outside of North America, limiting the appeal of his pages in the rest of the world.

Another alternative that has become increasingly popular is to create pages from scratch or download easily modifiable pages that could be customised to suit.
For example, you will find a free to download Finland album covering 1856 - 1968 here https://www.thestampweb.com/albums/...stamp-albums you could use it as is, or customise it if you like.
Clive

Consider how you want your stamps presented. If you have the equipment and time, you might prefer to make your own pages, or ready-to-print pages you can alter.

I do like to keep permanent series together. Some album brands do so, but many do not. Those that do tend to do so up to the 1980s and then stop. Often, this is because they sold annual supplements.

My main collecting areas are GB and Ireland. I go far beyond the basic listings. Almost no album producer goes that far.

So, I make my own pages. Whereas Lindner's standard album pages are wholly inadequate for my collecting interests, I do use their (somewhat expensive) T-Blanko system. I keep my (limited) Dutch collection in old DAVO hingeless albums. And when it comes to perforations, it is erratic.

Being Dutch means I grew up with DAVO. They produce both hingeless and mountless albums. It is fine if you do not collect but the basic issues. They produce blank pages - sometimes with the country name imprinted - and (self-adhesive) hingeless mounts. So, you can add extra stamps. They do belong to the group that will keep series together up to some year and then have annual supplements.

When it comes to European stamps, what is shown here from Scott and Steiner does not impress me. - I am not a fan of the cluttered Steiner pages either. - If you use Scott and buy a European album, you might find there are gaps. DAVO, Stanley Gibbons (because they carry re-branded DAVO albums), and most German producers tend to follow Michel.

Your own preferences for collecting and presenting might prevail when choosing an album.

If you're new to Finland, I'd suggest using a stockbook or Vario pages. After a few months you'll start to see what direction the collection takes you… you may find modern issues uninteresting, or collecting blocks, or errors, or who knows. Once you have a few hundred of whatever, you'll be able to better figure out what sort of product best suits you.

After looking at all the major albums for a few years and trying out a few of them, I settled on Scott albums. They use high quality paper, their layouts are excellent, the binders are durable, supplements are fairly inexpensive, blank pages are pretty cheap, and I can get whatever I need quickly and easily. And they look good. I didn't want to spend a thousand bucks on an album for each country I collect, particularly since I "specialize" in an amazing (to me, anyway) 20+ countries which I need albums for. If I were collecting only one or two countries, my choice might have been different, but probably not. The Scott albums are excellent for what I want.

The pages can be put into the traditional two-post binder which is what I use, or into Scott's ring binders -- if you prefer pages that lay flat and can be easily removed and moved around. I have some of the smaller-size Scott ring binders which I like a lot, and I maybe do one or two countries in them. All Scott pages are punched for both styles of binders. I don't like the large-size Scott ring binder, by the way. It's too large for my taste and seems clunky and unwieldy, not "stamp album like".

What's "wrong" with other albums? Nothing really, but they are different. Here are my quick thoughts on the major contenders.

Lighhouse -- the highest of the high-end albums has very nice page layouts on good quality paper. Their binders are very good, either two post, ring binders, or clamp-style. But LH pages are pretty large and the layouts are very stark unlike Scott page layouts whose borders appeal to me and whose number of stamps per page usually seems about right. All LH pages have six narrow slots to help the pages bend better, a system I don't particularly like. Also supplements are very expensive and not quite as easy to get as Scott supps which I can get in a week or so. Most importantly, LH albums are extremely expensive. Some countries would require six or more binders and the total cost would be $1000 or more, sometimes even $2000. That meant LH would not work for my needs. I might own maybe one (small) country in a LH album, but not all my countries, that's for sure. I'm not made of money.

Schaubek -- also high quality paper and page layouts with good binders, for the most part. But their pages are also larger than I like, similar to LH pages. Schuabek also uses a strange five-slot page bending system like LH but the slots are wider. I find it just looks bad. It would also be hard to get supps, and like LH supplements, they are very expensive. And I have some Schaubek binders which have not impressed me. In fact, some of their ring binders have literally fallen apart. I'd stay away from their ring binders. Also Schuabek albums are almost as expensive as LH albums, so that's not going to work at all for me.

Davo - their bright white paper bothers my eyes, and the page layouts are unusually stark with no effort to make the page look aesthetically pleasing, just a single line border and some boxes on a bright white page. I'm just not a fan of single-line borders. It's not hard to get supps for Davo albums, but they are expensive. Davo binders are only the two-post type. Davo albums are almost as expensive as Schaubek, but a little less expensive. Still, figure almost $1000 per country. Remember, for each country you need three, four, five, or more volumes. So clearly Davo albums also wouldn't work for me.

Steiner "print your own" pages -- everyone tried to talk me into using these, but I'm not convinced. First of all, the usual paper size most collectors use with these layouts is computer paper size, 8.5 x 11" and that is just not a good look for what I want. I want my collection to be displayed more elegantly than that. I would not put my collection into cheap three-ring office-supply store binders, either, so I'd buy nicer-quality binders. Steiner layouts can also be printed onto larger-sized pages which might work for you. One of the big selling points of Steiner page layouts is that they are relatively inexpensive, but that's only if you print them at home yourself. If you want the layouts on larger album pages with a correspondingly larger binder, you'd need to figure a couple hundred dollars per volume times however many volumes you'd need. I did this for a couple of countries, and the price per album was pretty close to what a Scott album would cost, so I gave it up. Not so cheap, really unless you use the small 3-ring binders with home-printed pages which is very inexpensive. Except I don't want albums like that.

Scott -- good quality paper, good binders, nice layouts, etc, etc, and the prices are a fraction of all the others. An entire country's pages and binders often costs just a couple hundred dollars, perhaps a little more. I think at the upper level with some countries that have issued huge numbers of stamps, you might spend $500 for an entire Scott album, but that's pretty rare. And even that would be a fraction of what the others cost. That amount of money would get you maybe two volumes of the other brands, and you'd still need three or four more volumes to complete the country. Scott supplements are maybe $20 a year (or so) compared to LH, Schaubek, etc. suppls which are closer to $50 a year.

That's why I chose Scott albums. I'm up to about 15 complete albums so far, so at least 30 separate volumes and still going (how did that happen?). But it's been spread out over a few years, and at that rate, Scott albums have been far more affordable than the others, saving me literally thousands of dollars I can now spend on stamps. And they look really good. I'm very happy with them.

I even considered some French albums by Yvert & Tellier, Italian albums from Marini, but these are hard to get, hard to update, also expensive, and so on, so they quickly got eliminated from consideration.

There are also some specialized albums for particular countries, but getting supplements will be a problem. And sometimes the stamps included (or excluded) are not quite what you want, and so on. Scandinavian albums, for example, include all perf varieties -- which I don't want. This includes four-sided perfs (normal stamps), coils, three-sided perfs (from booklets), and others. That's not appealing to me. I have an Iceland album like this which I decided not to use. I'm not aware of the names of any specialized Finland albums from that country, but be aware of that. I collect Finland -- along with all my other countries, and I just use a Scott album which matches all my others.

Good luck.

A fair critique, your main driver seems to be cost, and no doubt, albums can get very expensive, especially if hingeless. I only collect one country to the present day, my others (plus Commonwealth) stop around 1945 give or take, so supplements aren't an issue for me. As they wouldn't be for the OP, since 2010 seems to be the chosen end-date. I also hate spending time measuring/cutting/aligning mounts, so Lighthouse (~22 albums) and eventually SG hingeless fit the bill for me.

Using the European "majors" would take 2-4 albums for Finland 1849-2010. And as NSK alluded to, their organization is closer in line to collecting reality for pre-1950 issues, Scott products are almost always found wanting for non-USA issues.

Stanley Gibbons One Country Hingeless albums are re-branded DAVO albums.

Drew's latest review did not include Palo but I would still not expect it it to meet Drew's requirements. Palo are based upon Steiner layouts on larger paper with a different border. No one needs to be convinced to use a specific album nor should they be shamed for their choice.

Happy Stamping in 2022!

A lot of good information has been provided, and I wanted to give a little clarification on my (current) collecting goals. I'll get better with details in future posts.

1. I do only intend to collect to 2010 or so, so supplements should be a non issue.

2. The Scott specialized I was looking at goes up to 2015, and cost comes in at just over $300 plus whatever shipping for brand new. That's about the upper end of my budget, so I think I was looking for any comparables in that range. There may come a time where I get more advanced in my collecting, and look towards DAVO, Lindner, Lighthouse but all cost prohibitive at this point.

3. @ Clivel - I should have better clarified what I meant by print your own, I was referring to the $20 CD's or downloads you can find on ebay by searching Finland stamp albums. Thank you for pointing that out. Steiner and others who personally invested time to create pages and help others are a very viable option.

Finally, I would love to create my own pages but probably lack the patience for it at this point. Although it might give me a goal for 2022.

Although its main focus is the French area, France Timbres has free pages for Finland to 1980.

http://www.album.france-timbres.net/

Are you planning to use Scott as your main catalogue for Finland or would you be looking for something specialized? If sticking with Scott, the corresponding "specialty" album would be a good fit. You would have the major numbers covered. For anything where you would be "coloring outside the lines" you would need either blank/quad pages or the advantage stock pages. I bought the Scott Austria album with pages to 2008 when I thought I wanted to put together a basic Austria collection. My interests have deepened since then so I will be adding to the album.

The Stender album may be a better option if you are looking for a more specialized collection of Finland. There is a U.S. seller who carries them and for Finland the pages plus binders currently run from $215-247 with binders. Slipcases would be extra.

Dale

Getting a bit of topic. Going postal mentioned the catalogues. There are two catalogues published in Finland. Norma and LaPe. Both have standard and specialized catalogues. Both have at least limited content in English. Norma should currently have the current standard catalogue available from the publisher free of charge online. So, you can check what you get. Specialized catalogues are issued only from time to time and that year standard version is not published. So, be aware which version you are talking about. I think Norma is having more context in English.

Another good option is Facit. They produced Nordic Specialized catalogue. They have also content in English. However, keep in mind that currently (I think) their catalogues that contain all stamps are for classic stamps standard level. They have separate classic stamps specialized catalogue which doesn't have modern stamps.

Edit: Improved the language

I STILL am in favor of print your own albums like Steiner. I don't just collect a country's letter postage stamps but also collect the revenue stamps, christmas seals, local stamps, covers and special items. Adding these pages is MUCH easier with print your own albums.