Recommendations For Beginner-Level World Albums

Hello all,

I would appreciate some recommendations for beginner-level world albums.

Right now, I'm working on the Smithsonian's Stamp for Every Country printable album and that's fun but I have lots more than one stamp for some countries and I'd like to put them somewhere!

I also have my eye on the Dover "A First Stamp Album for Beginners" so the pages have a reasonable chance of filling up at a steady pace.

Thanks for your thoughts,
ShadowRogue

The question is: About how many stamps do you have now and how far do you expect to progress? What era of stamps do you mostly have and hope to expand?

At some point, something like the Dover album is going to be bulging to some degree and you'll have stamps on facing pages catching on each other. Then you will look for the next size album to transfer all the stamps to, and so on and so on. I spent a lot of time as a kid doing that; it's a waste of time unless you like that sort of thing. It can be daunting to get a larger album with all those empty spaces, but you will also have more illustrations at hand.

The Harris Statesman would allow progress for some time, if you're up for that. More costly that the Dover album, but it avoids the constant transfer from album to album. Since it's looseleaf, you can add blank or quadrille pages if needed and add interleaving between the pages where stamps will potentially catch on each other. That said, the screw posts are the cheapest they could find and replacing the screws that come with is not easy. Still, they also seem to have returned (more or less) to a better balance of stamps you are likely to get rather than giving a blank page followed by pages with spaces for stamps of only the last few years.

An alternative is to go free-form, buying blank or quadrille pages and an album binder. There are also Vario pages or stockbooks that can be bought as needed for expansion.

Ah, moving stamps from one album to another! I did that all the time as a young collector. There was probably more hinge than stamp remaining at the end. As hy-b suggested, I'd kick off with stock-books or stock-pages. You can then decide if you want to move to something more detailed. I don't actively collect worldwide anymore, but I do have the three-volume Gibbons Ideal album, which provides spaces for foreign (i.e. non-British Commonwealth) stamps up to 1936 (no officials or dues). Frankly, it's fun, but, unless you're ready consistently to blow some money, albums of this kind are intimidating.

@hy-brasil: I'm not sure the number of stamps I have right now. Perhaps it would add up to two very full Ziploc sandwich bags. I have, say, about 120 different Netherlands stamps, for example. And perhaps 300 different South African stamps. Other countries might only have one or a few stamps. I have a dedicated Canada album, which has my nicest examples, and I have plenty extra to fill most Canada spots in a worldwide album.

As for how far I'd like to progress, I'd like to keep collecting low-stress and modest cost, so I'm more likely to be happy with whatever comes my way in kiloware. That will probably leave my very early and more recent pages sparse, and I accept that.

As for what era of stamps I mostly have, it's kind of all over the place. I have some British Commonwealth items from the 30s-70s and some Africa items from the 80s.

As for what I'd like to expand, Japan, Australia, UK, South Africa as well as contemporary Canada are my top interests for a fulsome collection.

"but you will also have more illustrations at hand." -- I do really, really like illustrations where possible.

I like the idea of a looseleaf album so I can customize. Re: the Harris Statesman, so I'm looking at the right thing, it's the "HE Harris Statesman Worldwide Album" and comes in two volumes, yes?

@GeoffHa: I went to the Gibbons website but I didn't see the Ideal album. Would you please provide some more information about it?

I don't think the Ideal is produced any longer. I wasn't recommending it as a beginner level album. It will have more spaces than Big Blue (aside from officials and dues) for the same time period.

The albums, which covered both Empire and foreign stamps, were produced over a long period up to the death of George V. As a fastbound album, it rapidly became out of date, which must have been incredibly frustrating for collectors. In 1936, because of such impracticalities and the large number of new issues, Gibbons decided to make the foreign album "permanent" and cease new additions. It did the same with the Imperial, which was a more detailed British Empire album. The Ideal then became available in a three volume edition, which was reprinted a few years ago. I imagine that changing collecting tastes mean that it's unlikely to reappear.

SG now has this

https://www.stanleygibbons.com/prod...world-leaves

The old Ideal Album

Those original copies have much clearer images than the reprints, which lose the British Empire stamps. Content of the remainder also changed over time, with some items that were plainly of less interest - eg various Mexican watermarks - dropped.

@ShadowRogue, thanks for the details to give me some idea of where you are. I feel you are well beyond what the Dover album will do for you. The next step up would maybe be the Harris Traveler album but I think you are also beyond what that will provide.

For image references and issue dates, here in the US, most public libraries have current Scott catalogs in the reference section with perhaps slightly older copies available for checkout. Online, there is the Stampworld site that is well-illustrated in color though sometimes with blurry images. Don't take the prices as gospel in either.

For older stamps, there are many off-paper equivalents to kiloware with inexpensive older stamps. There are also (mostly used) country collections offered all the time. It can be hard to figure the value in many cases, but if there are many stamps of interest in it and the price is US5c-10c each or less for a clean bunch of stamps, I'd easily go for it. Obviously, a major factor today is postage/shipping and provincial tax for you.

Yes, it's the HE Harris Statesman Worldwide Album(s) I meant. The alphabetically arranged volumes can be bought separately so you can spread out the cost over time. It used to be in one volume so a gently used old one of those (probably with cheap stamps included) might also be a consideration, but obviously won't cover anything within the last decades. So, avoid the ones with yellow-edged pages. Blank or quadrille pages can always be added, yearly supplements are made though aren't available all the way back. Once again, this onetime kid worldwide collector would buy yearly supplements but that would only bulk up the binders with a lot of blank pages for too many countries that liked to issue too many stamps. In any case, I don't know of any alternative worldwide albums at the same content/price level these days.

GeoffHa's suggested alternative of stockbooks or (Vario) stockpages might also work for you. I think you'll always need some kind of temporary storage or sorting method anyway, so these would be useful whether or not you decide to use them as your main albums.

There is some great advice in this thread. I would avoid the current 2-volume Harris Statesman, however. You will probably get frustrated with it rather fast. The coverage of earlier issues (20th Century and before) is poor, the vinyl binders are cheap. The coverage stops at around 2010. The two binders with pages retail for about $100 USD, which isn't bad. The print quality on these new Statesmans (made in China) is as poor as the quality of the binders, IMHO.

But, for around the same price, you could get a vintage (huge) one-volume Harris Citation album with a copyright date of the middle to late 1960s, which has much better coverage from 1800's to the year before the copyright date. This will have room for about 65,000 stamps, and, in addition to many, many (many) illustrations, will have the issue date range typed at the top of the page (unlike the current Statesmans). You can toss the vintage binder and punch holes in the pages to fit a three or four ring binder of your choosing. Stamps from later years can be added easily with widely available blank pages (blank or quadrille - the latter called Speedrille in Harris lingo). Or, you could add blank archival pages from any source (the pages are 9x12 inch in size).

For a bit more money, you could opt for a vintage 2-volume Harris Standard Album from the 1970s, with even more coverage and all of the benefits of the vintage Citation album I mention above.

An important consideration with all of these Harris worldwide albums is the fact that they are printed two-sided. You will need to decide whether you will be using interleaving (glassine or acetate) or not.

None of them even approach being comprehensive in scope. But the older, vintage albums Citation or Standard have far better coverage. If you are careful choosing one which has been lightly used (and has all the pages!), it should fit the bill for the beginner-intermediate worldwide collector for a long time to come.

John

Here are a couple options.

1. Create your own album using John Knudsen's Album Easy source code. This is similar to the Smithsonian product except John has one country per page and then you can expand freeform.

2. If you are going to spend much money for something, just start with Steiner pages. These are laid out like a traditional album but in 8 1/2 x 11 format. You print only what you need so lower upfront cost. This also avoids a possible migration to another album if you outgrow the constraining worldwide albums.

https://www.stampalbums.com/

To add to what others have said, the aforementioned Harris albums are decent for beginners if you plan on starting a truly worldwide collection. The more popular countries will probably have room for a few hundred stamps, with some of the smaller or less popular ones maybe having spaces for a few dozen or so.

If you think you will focus on a handful of countries rather than the entire world, the Steiner pages that angore mentioned are probably a better way to go. The Harris albums will have spaces for every country, which would result in a lot of wasted space if you don't plan on collecting them all (or at least most of them), and you'll end up with full pages fairly quickly for the countries you are actively collecting. Steiner pages (print-your-own) have spaces for every stamp that country has ever issued, and you can just print the pages you need, when you need them. Of course, one could also do both, housing the more "casual" countries in your collection in Harris but using Steiner for the countries you're more focused on.

Keep in mind the Steiner pages don't have illustrations. While a Scott Catalog is not an absolute requirement to use Steiner, it is highly recommended. With Steiner, there are times it won't be immediately obvious which stamp goes in which space if you don't have some sort of reference material. Steiner follows the Scott listings very closely, however, and it's pretty easy to determine the correct space if you have a copy of Scott to refer to. Harris albums will have a lot of illustrations, making it easier to get by without any reference materials, if necessary.

If you collect worldwide, maybe printed albums are too much, and using stock books is better until you have about 1000 stamps of a country or 50% of that country's stamps (the smaller of the two options), otherwise you might find yourself with a lot of pages containing just one or two stamps.

You might want to try the Kenmore World Album. It has a single page for each country in the world. There are no stamp illustrations. The pages are in the quadrille format that enables you to neatly mount the stamps you have in the order you prefer. You can order an extra hundred pages to expand country space as you go. The Kenmore Company is located in Milford, New Hampshire and the album sells at a reasonable price with a three ring binder and pages.

@dbuss: That *is* a nice price point for the Kenmore! I like the flags on the pages, too.

@RobRoy: "using stock books is better until you have about 1000 stamps of a country or 50% of that country's stamps (the smaller of the two options), otherwise you might find yourself with a lot of pages containing just one or two stamps."

That's a great tip! I was wondering about how much would be a critical mass of one country's stamps before moving stamps from envelopes to pages.

@TheArtfulHinger: "Of course, one could also do both, housing the more "casual" countries in your collection in Harris but using Steiner for the countries you're more focused on. Keep in mind the Steiner pages don't have illustrations. While a Scott Catalog is not an absolute requirement to use Steiner, it is highly recommended. With Steiner, there are times it won't be immediately obvious which stamp goes in which space if you don't have some sort of reference material."

Thanks for the good reminder that mixing two things would work as well! Building my worldwide collection 'at two speeds', so to speak, is likely going to happen.

Thankfully, my public library carries the Scott Catalogue, so I have access to it. Sometimes I find it tricky to figure out of a stamp I have belongs to a particular entry if the picture isn't right there, but I'm getting the hang of it.

@JohnSim03: "The coverage stops at around 2010."
Indeed, that would make it challenging since I want to collect contemporary stamps as well.

I'll keep my eye out on ebay for the classic Harris Citation and the Standard and see what comes up; I'm certainly open to used albums.

"If you are careful choosing one which has been lightly used (and has all the pages!), it should fit the bill for the beginner-intermediate worldwide collector for a long time to come."

Hadn't thought about checking if there were all the pages! That's good to know that I should check that.
Yes, that's what I'm aiming for -- something I can work with for a long time.

Seek out a local stamp club. They may have items you can have for free and you'll probably learn a lot.