Looking For Advice On Palo Hingeless Albums

I admire the folks who make their own albums to their own specifications and artistic preferences. I've seen examples of some of these and they are impressive and beautiful. I have neither the will nor the aesthetic sense to follow this path, so I opt for manufactured alums; in my case, the Palo hingeless. As someone above pointed out, it's not much different than going to a very nice restaurant versus preparing the meal yourself at home. When I take my wife out for her birthday tomorrow to an upscale restaurant here in Scottsdale, I will end up spending more than it costs for a Palo hingeless album (there goes the kids' inheritances). I will enjoy the memory of that dinner for a long time, as I will enjoy working with my Palo albums for years to come. To each their own, as long as you enjoy the hobby in whatever way suits you best.

I like expensive albums. All of them. Nothing says WW wow, then a complete stamp set on luxurious paper. - stampgreendragons, the greatest stamp album collector off all-time.

This has been an interesting and informative discussion!

Actually, I agree that the "ideal" album is probably custom-made. In my short time on this forum, I've seen sample pages (such as NSK's Ireland pages) that are works of art and scholarship, with beautiful layouts, annotations, etc.

That said, hingeless albums are for me a practical matter--a way to "catch up" with an enormous accumulation of unmounted stamps that piled up during my long dormant period as a collector. In retrospect, I should have cut off my Ireland collection circa 1990. In my opinion, at that point, A Post became a stamp mill, grinding out many pointless and often unattractive commemoratives, sheets, etc. apparently with and eye on the pocketbooks of collectors.

In any event, I'm still undecided. Today, I checked out Showguard mounts to see if they had sizes large enough to house the ever-increasing output of mini-sheets (that are not that "mini"), souvenir sheets, blocks, strips and other questionable items produced by An Post in recent years.

By the way, Palo albums have 5, not 4, rings. Three of the holes do align perfectly with a 3-ring album. But that doesn't matter because the Palo pages are huge—too big to fit in any 3-ring binder that I'm aware of, even a Lighthouse Classic Grande, unless you trimmed off part of the ultra-wide left margin of the Palo pages and then repunched them.

Yes, the Palo binders are outrageously expensive--about $85 for binder and slipcover to hold a max of 100 pages. But the "bargain" Scott specialized binder (small or large size) with slipcase is about $72. The smaller version--which I prefer—holds 100 pages; the bigger version hold 250, which I find way too bulky).

What I have my pages in currently is a Vario F binder (very nice). The 3-ring Vario costs $40, with slipcase, but it holds only about 50 pages. So it would take a lot of Varios to contain the 300-plus pages I'm dealing with. Bottom line: None of the options are cheap, and some are very pricey. (As another poster says, there goes the kids' inheritance.).

Anyway, I'm going to keep thinking about it and reading this forum for ideas.

Aquinas

An Post is a quite conservative issuer of stamps,

If you look at DAVO, the pages for 2019 - 2023 fit in a single album at € 138. That is volume V.
New Zealand is at Volume IX, with volume VIII covering 2018 - 2022 costing € 177.
Great Britain is at volume VIII. Volume VII covers 2016 - 2020 and costs € 210.

Postal administrations mostly process parcels that do not require stamps as labels are more convenient. So, the administrations rely on philatelic sales. A few years ago, Royal Mail shared that, for an issue to be profitable, the face value of an issue had to be at least £ 5. This chases away traditional collectors. So, they target a thematic market. The smaller the market becomes; the more useless thematic stamps are issued. That drives more collectors away.

For modern stamps, pre-printed albums are expensive. They fit only a few years, The stamps have almost no value other than for postage. It is just the huge number of stamps with high face values that cover no tariff that make the albums cheaper than the stamps you can store in them.

An alternative way to collect modern stamps is buying the year books. They, even, may not include some of the silly formats. You get storage, protection, descriptions, and they should not even take up much more shelf space. And you only pay a little over face value, if at all.

Very true. As an example, Yvert no longer sells French year-sets of pages, but six-monthly sets. And two more for self-adhesives. That's around €100 before you buy any stamps. And lots more if you want some of the additional sheets etc that with which La Poste deprives you of your money. I don't indulge in any of this!

A lot has to do with the importance of how time collecting stamps is allocated. It is interesting how people can be stingy to an extreme on one aspect and then quite extravagent on something else.

NSK — Good point about An Post. Relative to many postal authorities, their output is modest. In the latest Scott's monthly magazine, I noticed that Japan, for example, issued more than 300 stamps in 2023–as well as lots of mini-sheets. One of the sets was on Charlie Brown characters, another on Disney characters. They are clearly going after a specific set of topical/thematic collectors. At some point, the stamps become stickers rather than postage stamps.

I've not considered Davo albums as an option, Will look into that,

Aquinas

Well, just as I was mentioning, in passing, France's stream of issues, here's another

https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...guette-stamp

On Davo, having had albums by most of the major European manufacturers over the years, I'd rank them below Schaubek, Lighthouse et al. A personal view, but I dislike their typeface and the harsh white of their pages.