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

Some more pages.Thanks to Krelya on ebay.
Togo 1

Togo 2

togo 3

Togo 4

I need some advice as I work on my bigblue. It is getting harder to get Dennison hinges. I have been using them like gold. I was not planning to use any mounts as I have the 1943 version of big blue with thin pages . Now I I feel I may be able to put some stamps in mounts as I now have each page in scott protectors which gives them more stability. I do not like black mounts and absolutely hate pages with both hinge stamps and black mounts. I bought a feeder album which has pages with both hinged stamps and stamps in clear mounts which do look acceptable. I like the top loading mounts.
My question are the following.
1. Which brand should I buy
2. What size of mounts are the most versatile ie how to do this most cost effectively.
3. How do you cut mounts fast.
4.How do you attach the mounts to the pages?
Thanks much
Aragorn

They make little mount slicers (they look like little versions of paper cutters with a knife edge on an arm) that make clean straight cuts.

There is dry gum on the back of mounts, so you just apply a little moisture. Note I said a little -some people go nuts and get the contents wet.

Buy the largest height mount at a particular price point. Buy in lengths, not individually. Use a decent pair of scissors. Stick with a dab of glue-stick, not water.

God, Scott made a mess of those Togo pages. The German, GB and French issues should be separated. And if Scott wasn't going to integrate air-mail and charity stamps with other issues, it shouldn't have jumbled them up with each other and with postage dues. How not to lay out an album.

One well seasoned collector I knew used top loader mounts and would put in stamps in upside down if they had any flaws with them so they could be upgraded

Floortrader
Thanks for bringing up the topic about missing stamps. My ( fledgling) experience is exactly the same as yours.There have been times that even for countries with easily available stamps I have been unable to fill 2-3 spaces as sometimes even 2-3 feeder albums are missing those exact stamps!
On the same token, I have been seeing certain countries are very poorly represented in many baiger/intermediate collections I have come across. if I arbitrarily classify albums in the beginner and intermediate collection ( I am excluding advanced collections as the only ones that I have seen is Jim and Bud's collections from the bigblue1840-1940 blog fame)) buckets, a yard stick that I have been using to assess is the availability or unavailabilty of certain countries in an album.
Off the top of my head If I open a big blue to "A" and I see a full ADEN or a moderately filled ALAOUTES or ALLENSTEIN page my interest is piqued.
Aragorn

Aragorn,

I'm using Hawid clear top loading mounts in a 1947 Big Blue. I attach them with Elmer's glue sticks so they are removable. On some pages I will have both sides of the page filled with mounts which works although not ideal since the pages are so thin. But on pages with fewer mounts it's not a big problem.

Some collectors recommend buying strips of the maximum height at a particular price point, and cutting them to size. Personally I prefer getting strips in many different sizes so I don't have to cut the height. The sizes I use the most are 26, 33, 29, and 41.

Thank you everybody. Hawid clear top loading mounts it is. I will order the sizes that TSMATX mentioned.

@aragorn, how high are those TOGO stamps at the bottom of your page 2?

Up to the 1940s stamp formats tend to be very similar with some exceptions, thereafter, they start to be all over the place.

@NSK hopefully this helps. The ruler is not exactly aligned though.

beautiful page. Never seen those stamps