What To Do With So Many Empty Pages

Sorry, normally I'm more disciplined and I am careful not to complain about a free forum.

But today I've been distracted by trying (unsuccessfully) to get my dad discharged from the hospital, and I let it boil over when I should know better.

I'll stop posting for awhile, but please consider my suggestion above as a positive one, if you are so inclined.

No worries, yosclimber, take care of personal business, relax, come back whenever you feel inclined, good luck.

The way to reach 50 posts is just to be more active. Not trying to patronize, I saw that when I read threads that are originally not my field, I sometimes have something minor to add, or ask about the topics there.
As for what to do or how to fill the empty spaces:
1. Get more stamps.
2. Until one has enough stamps of some period (50%-70% stamps of that era), use stockbooks. For example, if one collects a certain country, and has mainly stamps from 1900-1950, he can use album pages for that era and stockbooks for 1840-1900 and 1950-current.

I don't understand.
Why buy (or print) pages that you are not going to use?

In terms of printed album pages, it's usually less of a case of actively "buying" than "acquiring". I've acquired large numbers of French album pages over the years when purchasing collections at auctions. I may or may not need the stamps, but I usually don't need the leaves they're stuck on.

"In terms of printed album pages, it's usually less of a case of actively "buying" than "acquiring". I've acquired large numbers of French album pages over the years when purchasing collections at auctions. I may or may not need the stamps, but I usually don't need the leaves they're stuck on."

That's it exactly.

When I was much younger, I had just a Scott's Vol.5 and kept the rest of my stuff in stock books before I sold most of it. When I started to rebuild my collection years later, I bought multiple copies of Vol.5 on ebay and now have a lot of duplicate pages.

I think there may be an untapped market for individual album pages as well as subsets of pages (for example, certain year/decade pages, or certain country sets from WW albums)--but you would have to have a really good inventory and keep track of exactly what album (including edition/year) each page came from. Consider the case where you damaged a page in your album, and you want to replace it--let's take Scott International as an example. Right now basically your only choice is to buy a whole new album ($100+). But what if somebody was selling individual pages for $2 each or 10 for $10. The buyer would save a lot of money and the seller would earn a huge gross margin (even if they paid full retail for the pages). It is win/win. I say you would need to have a really good inventory so customers know they can depend on you--if coverage was spotty, the chances are a lot lower seller would be able to fulfill buyers needs. I also suspect different album pages have different demand (and therefore value). Pages at the beginning of the album and end of the album--as well as pages which are heavily populated by widely collected stamps--are more prone to damage and would have higher demand, whereas pages for stamps hardly anybody has and which are almost always empty would be worth less.

True Stamp-aholics would fill them.

My opinion : best pages are handmade. I have few interest in manufactured album's pages. I never been in front of a printed page that I was findig perfect. When you get in front of a 50 clean handmade and draw full pages, you don't want to unmount them. Just to look at it, you see the amount of creativity to get there. At that point, it is a piece of art. I just partially reached that point, but I aim that goal. Not the quantity of pages but the quality. Rest will sleep in stock books.

So I would recycle them, or if I have room, store them for maybe trade in the future with someone who will appreciate it..

Marc

Cephus: https://www.stampsforthewounded.org/


Thanks for the link. I spoke with them last year.

They are thankful for anything. I know another forum just sent them a huge collection of stamps and they were thrilled. There are also a number of children's charities that take stamps.