Looking For Advice On Palo Hingeless Albums

Hello,

After considering many options for storing a large collection of Ireland stamps, I've decided to bite the financial bullet and "go hingeless." Right now I'm leaning toward Palo. I've looked at sample pages but have not yet seen the proprietary 5-hole binders (with slipcases) that Palo sells to house its hingeless pages. Can those with experience using Palo hingeless albums give me advice on these questions:

1. Do the mounts stay mounted and hold the stamps securely?
2. Are the pages durable and easy to turn?
3. Are the binders sturdy and durable enough to hold up for years?
4. Does Palo provide reliable customer service?

Many thanks, in advance, for your advice and opinions.

Aquinas

I'd commission NSK to make some for me.

https://goscf.com/t/78697&SearchTerms=eire

I'm using Palo albums for my Bahamas, Bermuda, and Australian States collections, but they are all the economy version and only the Bahamas is hingeless.

...but to answer your questions on my experience with them:

1. Yes, the mounts are clear, top loaders and are as good as any at keeping the stamps intact. (of course, one drawback with all hingeless is that plate# singles or stamps with selvage don't work too well, but that's a moot point if that isn't a concern)

2. The paper weight (on my economy version ) is lighter than than the deluxe, but still better than plain paper (my guess is somewhere between 24lb and 32lb).

3. I only have the economy binders with slip cases, but again they are durable enough for me.

4. I have also used Palo for my Lindner hingeless supplements and in every case, their customer service has been excellent. I had bought an economy hingeless group of pages that was missing a few and they immediately shipped replacements and offered to build custom pages for reasonable prices.

One unrelated point to keep in mind with expensive hingeless albums - dealers won't pay you anything for them if you decide to sell, so there is no ROI except for the advantage of keeping your collection safer from damage.

That's my two-bitz!

Al

I used to use Palo hingeless for my French colony collection. Happy with the quality but since cut down what I collected to only common design issues have stopped using them. To answer your questions -
1 - Yes, mounts are good top loaders.
2 - Good solid paper stock, although I prefer an even heavier weight myself
3 - Binders are good. The slipcases have no thumbgrips, so getting the binder out isn't as smooth as it could be.
4 - Excellent service, quite responsive.

GeoffHa--Many thanks for the link to NSK's amazing Ireland pages. I could never compete with his scholarship or aesthetics. Truly interesting and beautiful work. --Aquinas

Yes, they're great. Have you also looked at the alternatives to Palo offered by Lighthouse and Schaubek?

GeoffHa—

Yes, I've researched most all the hingeless options. Many are beautiful, all are expensive. One Palo advantage—they follow Scott Catalogue order.

I currently have my Ireland collection (1922-1980) on 65 Minkus pages mounted with black Showguards in a Lighthouse Vario binder. Works well and looks great, But Ireland 1981-2024 is going to fill at least 300 pages with well over 2000 stamps.

As much as I love my stamps, I'm overwhelmed at the thought of all that mount cutting and time. So that's why I'm considering hingeless albums. Want to get my collection mounted sooner rather than later so that have time to enjoy it before I enter my dotage.

Aquinas

Most European collectors would consider Scott order a disadvantage! Palo albums tend not to pop up in Europe, but my concern would be that, as they're fancy Steiner pages, they might follow his design, with its faults.

The only long run of hingeless albums I've sprung for has been Yvert's albums for France, bought in a moment of weakness a few years ago. I find them good for modern material, a little frustrating for earlier stamps which had lots of common varieties that were provided for in older Yvert productions. Lots of additional blank pages needed.

Lindner and SAFE albums are expensive - perhaps even more so than others - but their T-Bar-type hingeless pages have the advantage of enabling the collector to mount used copies of stamps behind the displayed mint copy.

Good luck with whatever you end up with!

1. Do the mounts stay mounted and hold the stamps securely? Yes, but if you drop it they might come lose.
2. Are the pages durable and easy to turn? No - I hate turning palo albums. There are too many rings.
3. Are the binders sturdy and durable enough to hold up for years? yes
4. Does Palo provide reliable customer service yes

No such thing. The more rings, the better. Three-ring binders are a pox on humanity.

More rings have more opportunities to break.

I can't predict what might happen, but I can describe what I know has happened. I own many 3-ring binders, many in use regularly, and I own many multi-ring binders, mostly 22-ring binders from Europe also in use regularly. By far the most likely to not work properly are the 3-ring binders. I'm not sure why, but the rings tend to be larger and over time that seems to make them less likely to line up properly. One factor may be that often American 3-ring binders lack a lifting mechanism that opens the rings and one that closes the rings, so one way or the other you end up either prying the rings open or closing them by pushing them back together, both of which can bend or deform the rings.

All my 22-ring binders (and some of my 3-ring binders) have opening and closing levers. All my 22-ring binders also have smaller rings which Europeans seem to favor. And all my 22-ring binders open and close easily because the rings still line up even after years of use -- with only rare exceptions, and in those one or two cases a gentle bending has put the ring back into alignment with its other half. With larger rings, this realignment never seems to quite work for me, perhaps because the rings are larger or the metal is thicker, but I'm not sure.

So, no, "more rings" does not somehow result in more rings breaking. In fact there seems to be an opposite effect. With fewer rings, especially if they are larger rings or lack opening-closing mechanism, the rings eventually become slightly misaligned and begin to tear pages. My many 22-ring binders, each with smaller rings, do not do this. However, this is not to say that in 10 years they might not become misaligned and start to tear the pages, but just to point out that they don't seem to be doing so as often as 3-ring binders habitually do.

Europeans seem to be the master stamp collectors of the world. They have been collecting stamps more widely and perhaps longer than anyone else, and while a hundred years ago they favored springback binders, the majority now favor multi-ring binders.

As for albums, I've never quite understood the desire for really expensive albums like Lighthouse and Palo albums -- unless you have a lot of money to spend and little time to collect stamps so you must have stamp mounts already added. They do make it possible to get the business of mounting your stamps over with quickly. But I have to say a hobby which you want to move along as quickly as possible just doesn't appeal to me. Some of the wealthiest collectors used to have a "Philatelic Secretary" or advisor who would mount their rich boss's stamps for them.Give that some thought.

The high prices of some these really expensive albums always calculate in my head with the "stamps I'll never be able to buy." An entire set of some country's albums by LH, Palo, Lindner, Davo and some other manufacturers, can easily add up to $2000. I can't afford that. See my wife about this if you doubt me.

I do own a couple of the less expensive one-volume LH albums, one for the Faroes, the other for Aland, bought on a whim fairly cheaply. But I'm not sure I should have bought them.Why? Well, after looking through theme a few times, that the stark whiteness of LH pages is tiresome. And the very Germanically ordered layouts seem too stark and plain for my taste. Plus there's the bare bones simplicity of LH page borders. I may not even use these two albums and use my Scott Specialty pages instead -- which were much cheaper. It's odd when the less expensive option is more appealing.

Maybe this is because my favorite album is any album a collector has laid out himself -- and written up himself. I love looking at that kind of personal collection especially in the collector's own handwriting. That may help explain my dislike of sterile album pages. So, take that, Lighhouse! And maybe Palo, too.

As you know, Palo albums use Bill Steiner's page layouts which are good enough, but not especially interesting or clever. No interesting pairings of stamps, no clever groupings, just basically "here's the next stamp issued". The simple borders of Palo pages are no more appealing than the simple borders on other albums. I guess I like my albums to have at least a small amount of fanciness. Ever see some of the really old-fashioned stamp pages that used to be made by Yvert & Tellier or other album makers? Wow! Talk about fancy borders and elegant layouts. Using those, I'd feel like a rich man.

The four-ring Palo page hole punching is clearly there so you cannot use a page punched for three-ring pages, a technique all album makers use so you're forced to buy only their supplements and their blank pages. For some reason, this bothers me, though I understand why they do it. I guess I don't like being forced to use only their system -- probably one reason for the popularity among many collectors of 3-ring albums.

Palo's 4-ring binders are very expensive (nearly $100), but so are Lighthouse binders and others. Among mainstream album makers, only Scott binders don't cost a bottle of really good wine and a nice steak dinner -- just one or the other. A shelf of LH albums (or Palo or others) is $100 each just for the binders. That makes me a little uncomfortable.

And I can also make my own Steiner-Palo pages pretty easily -- without the four-hole punch. I print them at Fedex from Bill Steiner's page layouts. First, I convert them from their PDF format into Word documents and then edit them as needed. If I need to, I can easily hole punch the resulting album pages for 3-ring or 22 ring binders. I have hole punches for both formats. The 22-hole punch took a while to find on ebay but it will last a lifetime. But since I mostly print on Scott (or Davo or other) blank pages that are already hole-punched, I usually don't even need to do that. Just feed their blank paper through the printer. If I'm using their blank bordered paper, I need to delete the Steiner page borders in Word. It's a little time-consuming, but it's my hobby so I don't mind. If speed is of the essence, well, then splurge on the fancy stuff.

My result is very professional albums with well-printed pages that get put into good quality album binders for no more than half the price of albums made by someone else. In fact maybe one-fourth the price of higher end albums. I like the thought that I've partly made my own albums. I can buy more stamps with the money I've saved, and I collect stamps, not albums.

My printed album pages generally cost me a total of about 70¢ a page. A 300-page album would cost $210 for the pages -- plus the binders. If new, binders will be between $50-100 per binder. (I do have a lot of recycled album binders in "as new" condition which saves me a lot of money). So, a collection with 150 pages in each of two binders will cost around $400, about $200 a volume. Even a huge five-volume collection (Poland, for example) would be about $1K for all the albums. Compare that to Palo or Lighthouse or the others who want you to take out a second mortgage for their albums.

Whatever you choose, be sure to have fun.

The amosadvantage price for a Scott National set is $828.74. I wonder how many they sell. It would likely be an advanced collector, If you actually added a lot of stamps especially after 2000, you will need a lot more binders.

Paying extra for someone to do the work for you is not much different from going to a restaurant and paying for a really expensive meal you could have prepared much cheaper in your own kitchen at home. Yet, restaurants have been around for ages.

As Aquinas has said, he doesn't want to sit and cut mounts, especially for the huge numbers of stamps issued in the last fifty years. It's a reasonable trade-off if you can lay out for the albums.