Mystic Hingeless Stamp Album Pages Getting Warped

The pages in some of my albums are really getting warped and am wondering if this is happening to others. It seems to be worst on the more bulky albums with a lot of stamp sheets. In the photo, volume I is on top, volume 2 is in the middle, and volume 6 on the bottom. My house is humidity controlled, obviously there will always be some variation but it does not reach extremely high or low humidity. The albums are in slip cases. Anyone else having this issue? I can't image there is too much I can do to prevent this, other than maybe breaking up some of the albums so that there is a smaller quantity of pages in each. The sheets were nice and crisp when I purchased them. Thanks.

I had the same thing happen when I was collecting U.S., particularly when an album was full. I contacted Mystic and they sent new pages, but the same thing happened again. So it might just come with the territory. Maybe someone else has had a different experience and can share how they avoided this phenomenon.

Looks like the pages are fine.

What you are seeing is that you are adding stamps to different parts of different pages. So, for example, if you add a whole lot of stamps to the top of the pages in your album, the thickness of the stamps will make the top of your album a different thickness than the rest.

I doubt it's your pages. As Alub said, as an album fills up, it tends to expand where the largest number of stamps are, and that is generally in the middle of the pages. Albums that are really full of pages and stamps will bulge hugely in the middle and on the outside of the pages which is why cardboard "spacer strips" are generally recommended along the inner edge of album pages. They even out the bulging by simulating stamps along the inner margin so all parts of the pages from inner margin to outer margin are more evenly distributed.

If you have a lot of souvenir sheets and they are mounted in the middle of pages, you'll get bulging in the middle of the album pages. If you put most things into into stamp mounts, you're adding even more thickness which will also add to the bulging problem. The stamp on the page may double the thickness of the page in that spot. A stamp mount with a stamp inside probably quadruples the thickness of the page! A stamp mount has a back and a front, after all, plus the page, plus the stamp. That's making that part of the page seriously thick.

It's fairly inevitable that when you fill a nice, neat, tidy brand new book of empty pages with lots of "stuff" that those pages will bulge. Photo albums and scrapbooks do the same thing. The "stuff" on the pages is forcing the combined pages to bulge and there's not much you can do to stop it beyond (1) using spacer strips which you should try adding -- and (2) by keeping albums from having too many pages in them.

To prevent page bulging, the most effective loose-leaf binders for stamp collections are narrow, the size generally used by the high-end European albums from Lighthouse, Schaubek, Lindner, and Davo. Yet many collectors use huge albums, thinking they're getting more bang for their buck that way. To me, that's poor thinking. The larger version of the Scott International binder is something like 4.5" thick. That is seriously enormous and pages filled with stamps in that binder will bulge a lot -- not to mention that album being impossible to pick up with one hand! And you will eventually drop it. It's a false economy some collectors fall for. All my albums are in binders no thicker than 3" and I prefer binders about 2.5" thick. Almost none of my albums have a bulging problem. That, plus page spacers every 20 pages or so helps even out the bulging problem pretty well in my albums.

Good luck.

My Mystic Heirloom non-hingeless look exactly like that. It's the nature of how stamps git on pages. I do have Ireland on White Ace card stock pages that do not look like that.

When I'm trying to evaluate a collection in an auction from only a few pictures I look at the "bulge" in the albums, the more bulge, the more stamps, so in that way it's a good thing.

My Palo albums do not exhibit the same phenomenon as the Mystic even when the pages are full. There's definitely a difference - perhaps due to larger pages or heavier stock.

I think the real answer to keeping the pages flat is to keep the album empty. Have a virtual collection, Place hypothetical bids for material and when you a bid more than the person who won the lot in reality then note down what you got. As well as keeping your albums pristine this method is more economical not having to buy stamps, pay for shipping , insurance, etc. no need for stockbooks. No messy soaking, tongs perf gauges, Watermark detectors a whole lot easier.