How To Create My Album.

If I use hinges on card stock, should I mount on both sides of page or just one? These will all be topicals arranged by country.

And how do I deal with countries from which I only have one or just a few stamps, should they still have their own pages?

If you hinge on both sides, you'll need glassine interleaving to prevent the stamps from locking together. Best to wait until you have a reasonable number of stamos from a country before creating a page.

Thanks GeoffHa, I have a lot of stamps that I acquired 20 years ago. I have only now started working on them again, and I want to put them into albums.

Hello Djj7

I am assuming that you will be adding to your collection.

Mounting on both sides will be a problem if you find material that belongs between what you have on the front of the page and the back.

Also, as Geoff pointed out, when you turn the pages the stamps will pull stamps off of the on facing page.
Glassine will help, but it adds thickness to your album.

In my opinion, mounting on both sides looks cheap, of course most of my stamps are cheap!!

My countries with only few stamps for a page get their own page.
This allows adding more stamps to the country later.

Putting two alphabetical countries on a single page assumes you will never find more stamps from either country, or any countries that would fall alphabetically between them.

I would recommend using Vario style stock pages so you can be flexible in mounting (no hinges) and organization.

1) don't hinge on both sides. Only do this for cheap stamps. If your collection has any type of value don't do it.
2) One country per page. Look it as an opportunity to addd
3)Also consider mounts instead of hinges for expensive stamps.

Personally, I'd rather hinge on both sides of pages and take Geoff's advise to use page interleaves. Glassine interleaves do have the problem of not being acid neutral, though they typically cost approx 12 cents a piece.

As an alternative, perhaps consider a thin (e.g. 20 lb), acid-free copy page which will do the job of protecting stamps, be "acid free," and cost perhaps a penny a page or so at Walmart.

My opinion, I think you schould use mounts, it takes a little longer if you cut them, but it is easier to rearange and creat a new page. if you use hinge you are in risk to tear the stamp if youwant to move it.

I think you schould set up the stamps that you have most, you can organise by year or by thema,there is a lot of ways to collect and set up pages. The Countrys where you do not have that many stamps I suggest you place in a stockbook until you have what you think is enough stamp from the country to start mounting.

I collect Belgium at the momment and one of pages looks like the bellow:

I have decided to do just one side of page, still undecided on the mounts.
I like Viking's suggestion to use a stock book until I have enough stamps to make a good page. That would also focus my collection efforts too.