Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

Not doable for me , Scott Specality series too heavy and bulky and expensive and Palo albums/pages even more expensive . I recently purchased a set of Palo albums at auction with $400.00 of stamps and albums cost $400.00 , paid nothing for binders, dust covers and pages . Bought at $325.00 for everything .

It is not hard for a worldwide collector spending $15,000 to $25,000 just for albums and seeing nothing in return at the time of sale . That is why Steiner Pages is so successful with collectors .

floortrader - Some not all, buy collections for the album. The adage, pay for stamps not albums, does not always hold true. I saw a number of collections that were clearly more valuable (by a good margin) sell for less than the collection in the lighthouse hingless album for the same country. That 325 you paid. You only think you paid for the stamps. Take the stamps out of the album and sell the album empty vs just the stamps. I wonder which one would sell and for how much. Maybe you get 125 bucks for the stamps and 200 for the album.

Also, scott specialty series discontinued a lot of countries. The albums of the countries they discontinued have value at auction. How do I know this. Sometimes I am astounded what some people on ebay get for thieir collections. And then I think about it more and I realize the Scott specialty album is out of print. Still I like Steiner pages though. He wins the Nobel Prize in WW Stamp Collecting in my book.

Given that Palo are, for the most part, just versions of Steiner's generally badly designed pages, they're a very expensive proposition. Can't say I've ever had much success in disposing of stamp-free Lighthouse, Lindner etc binders on ebay, although I didn't do too badly with a set of empty Gibbons GVI albums.

Steiner pages are great for what they are. Were they lighthouse hingeless? Were they album I's or just some random years.

In any case, stamp albums have far more value than people place on them. Look even Stiener pages have value. I saw collections with common stamps on them sell just because they were organized on Steiner pages. Stamps that would have gone for 5 dollars went for 35-50 dollars on pages. And any real stamp album that is still in great shape sell. Esp album ones in good condition even without the stamps. Stamp prices have fallen off a cliff. And in many cases people pay for albums not stamps. The auction houses and dealers will tell you stamp albums have no value, so that they can give the collector pennies on the dollar for their collection. ebay sold listings say that albums have value. Now are they worth what you bought at new. No way. Expect to pay 25% or so of the original cost. But it is not correct that expensive stamp albums have no value, because I see them sell all day all night.

Green Dragon---- Thanks for that information on albums and their resale value . Years before ebay became the place to sell albums ,the albums were a hard sell at stamp clubs and stamp bourses .

What I was doing was taken a pair of scissors and cutting up the pages for a mixture box , because they had zero value at a large public auction ,they were a give away item for many years .

displaying a WW collection. I have been Oberving. Steiner pages look better than Scott international, Minkus or Harris. Most of the albums I see for auction look like they are falling apart. If you buy heavy card stock paper for steiner pages, the pages actually hold up better. Also mixing hinges and mounts does not look as good.

Agree ....... Some albums just do not hold up to the daily or weekly handling which every collector does .The time frame of 15 or 30 years cause these albums to fall apart

Different people handle this problem in various ways . The most expensive way of solveing this problem would be to buy set of new binders every 15 or 20 years . ,the cheapest way to solve this problem is to go the hardware store and buy fabric tape ,we see this at auction firms with albums held together with silver duck tape . The next expensive way to solve this problem would be to do what I have done and that is to buy a full set of extra albums and use that on a daily or weekly basis as a working set that would become a feeder set ,to transfer what is needed into my main collection every few years .

I also played around with cutting down and repunching holes so the album pages fit a three ring binders . The binders are better made than the established muti-volume stamp binders . Easier to handle and easier to expand to add pages .


On your statement about card stock pages , I disagree too expensive and makes the binders fatter . Card stock is fine if your mounting covers or a lot of large souvenir sheets and using a lot of mounts per page then the 20 or 24 Lbs weight paper is not for you .

I like 60 pound paper. I chose white for lack of choices on hammermil. 24 pound only if I was just using hinges. 60 pound because I am going all mount used or not.

does anyone know what scott international paper is in pounds or gsm?

Nice French India page!

Thanks ,for the kind words . I try to collect those countries that are lacking or have a weak showing in many of the worldwide collections

I picked up parts of William F. "Bill " Csolkovits collection ,at Daniel Kelleher Auction from their December 9-10-2022 auction . I never knew him but he had a decent Worldwide Collection that realized over $225,000 at auction . With over 100 large volumes up for auction . I plan this week to work on his St.Pierre & Miquelon .They are spread over three different types of pages plus many stamps still in their auction lot envelopes . I hope to have it all on Steiner pages .