Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
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MeghanP...Steiner album pages has a free link to quadruled pages, and you can type in the country name.
I have bee using these pages for my WW collection, and the only costs ths I incur is that for the acid free paper ( Which I purchase at Staples ) and an Ink cartridge.
And also the cost of a nice three ring " D " binder.
I always say that I rather spend my money on stamps, rather than expensive stamp albums 
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Bobgggg said, "I always say that I rather spend my money on stamps, rather than expensive stamp albums."
Me too. Except that I did spend a smallish bundle recently on a bunch of identical ring binders, each with a pocket on the binder spine to slip labels into, about 20 packages of mostly one- and two-pocket Vario stock sheets, and an inexpensive laminator . I use the laminator to laminate labels. In the past, I've found that the toner on labels, even if they're printed with a laser printer, tended to transfer to the clear plastic of the binder pocket so I couldn't change the label and have it look nice, assuming I could even get the old label out of the pocket — they often got "glued" to the clear.
The new binders, Vario sheets, and labels have replaced a motley accumulation of various makes and sizes of binders, several of which were falling apart. Labels wouldn't stick on some, apparently because chemicals in the binder plastic dissolved the adhesive of the labels. It's a pleasure to be able to go to a binder and pull it off the shelf without danger of it falling apart. Next I need some binders by country, period, etc. Here's a picture of one of the new binders:
Bob
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"Steiner album pages has a free link to quadruled pages, and you can type in the country name. "
That's what I'm using
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I have been making my own pages for several years now. I use the binder and Vario inserts as I add many different items about each stamp, such as FDC, plate blocks, Line Pairs and mint and well cancelled used, plus any personal stuff I can fit too. I have hundreds of sheets of these stamps and since they do not fit properly on the page I scan them and then print them along side of the other stuff. My biggest problem so far is finding new colors for the binders. I currently have 18 binders for the US stuff and the other things I collect. I have not been able to come up with a way to put all the postage from 2000 to the present in these books. These I store in 11X14 envelopes with sheet protectors inside to keep the stamps from sticking to each other. Although I've created over 800 pages so far I never stop enjoying the process. To me presentation is as important as collecting.
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Could someone please post a picture as an example of a Vario sheet? How much do they cost per sheet and could someone recommend a web site to buy them?
Thanks.
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Here you are:
I buy my sheets from a local dealer, and most stamp shops stock them or can at least order them. There are lots of on-line sources, including eBay.
Bob
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Adam: A lot of people like this guy:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/mit_63/m.html
I have not purchased Varios from him, but I did purchase some Michel catalogs from him back when he used to sell those, too.
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Thanks, I appreciate the information!
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Varios are relatively heavy, so shipping costs are more of a factor than you'd like them to be.
Another possibility is that if you have a local stamp store, that might be worth checking out. Most of the time it'll be retail (but no shipping), and some dealers occasionally offer accumulations of used. If you run into that situation, then you can evaluate what kind of shape they're in, and, again, no shipping!
Same thing goes for local stamp shows. Sometimes you find dealers selling them only at the highest possible prices, but sometimes that's the place to get a good deal.
Good luck with this!
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Hello from snowy East TN!!
Today is the perfect day to work on my collection. I have been building some pages for my US collection based on the Steiner work. Luckily my old copy of Pagemaker still works under Windows 7! It took years, but I've finally settled on my modified Steiners on 67# creme cover stock from Staples in Keep Filing archival Heavyweght page protectors, in G&K Nassau binders and slipcases. I'm mounting most of my material with Hawid clear mounts and the ancillary, covers, etc with corner mounts. It is a simple system. The Vario pages can go right alongside the write-ups as both fit in the same binder.
So, now I'm off to mount some material.
Don
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I am also making my own pages. I use the usual Word program and print the pages ona 120gm light-grey paper with a Laser Printer.
In this way I can group the stamps according to what I think is more rational (similar images all together, independently of the year they were issued, see Belgium page), or only straight sides from booklet issues (as shown in the US page)
Its also great fun to go through the collections when designing the pages!!
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Hi Everyone;
@ mitoneu;
Nice looking pages. Show us one of your early Brazil pages, with some of the long definitives. I always loved the long sets of early Brazil issues.
I have the Scott's Specialty album for Brazil (Green & Gold series), along with several other South American nations, Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
Keep on stampin'
TuskenRaider
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You're reconstructing the booklets with used singles! Oh that is very cool - and fun to do! I've done that with a few issues myself - I'm working on an Irish booklet issue right now. Challenging and fun fun fun!
Nice job, Mitoneu!!
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mitoneu:
You have stamps with Leopold III of Belgium from 1931-32?
But he became a king in 1934, didn't he?
donhearl:
PageMaker still working on Win7??
How did you do that?
I have an old PC with XP to be able to edit the Steiner .p65 album pages, never knew that PM would run on Win7.
EDIT: I have not scanned any of my pages from Belgium, but here is a page from Belgian Congo, modified from a Steiner original:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1364402/StampPageNOJ/bc1894.jpg
(Modified by Moderator on 2014-11-19 18:27:19)
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A very attractive page! With, of course, stamps that I covet! (I'm slowly working on getting a complete set of the État indépendant du Congo stamps, in part because I like the designs but also because I'd like to create a web page about the early history of the Belgian Congo, which, in its first incarnation, was the private property of Leopold II, who never set foot there but was responsible for genocide at least as bad as the Holocaust.
Recommended reading: Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild, and King Leopold's Soliloquy by Mark Twain.
Among other atrocities recounted in these publications: Amputating the hands of Congolese who failed to produce their quotas of rubber sap; "girdling" rubber trees to maximize production of rubber sap, which resulted in the destruction of vast tracts of rubber trees; the virtual enslavement of Congolese for the construction of a railway (thousands of the workers died); and a Belgian world's fair pavilion which included caged Congolese pygmies.
I'm reminded of a bit of black humour I heard in the U.S. Navy: "Join the navy, see the world, meet exotic foreigners, and kill them."
Bob
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@kentallpines
Hi Ken,
Thanks for your comments on my album pages!
I will scan a couple of the pages I made fro Brazil and send them directly to you. If on the Discussion Board it will take a lot of space.
When I made those pages, I still tried to differentiate between the different types of paper, perforations and watermarks. The latter are a real hard job when collecting used stamps? Possibly, when I get to my Brazilian collection again, I will eliminate some differentials, like 5 or 6 or 7 mm high wmks, 1/2 gauge different prforations, and maybe printing types.
I have made also pages were no different variations are taken into account: only images and colours (by the way, that is also the way I do it with my GB Machins collection!)
If you are interested, I can send you a bunch of my dups of the old Brazilian stamps, so you can examine them and keep any you need.
Best regards, Miguel
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Hi Miguel;
In 1968, my ship, USS Valcour was headed from Manama Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, to Norfolk Virginia, for a dry dock overhaul. The voyage was quite long and would require a refueling stop. And our port of call was Recife Brazil. When my shipmates saw those beautiful women there they truly did not want to go back to the states!!
I must admit I forgot all about getting stamps at the post office, and instead bought a Spanish guitar, and proceeded to find a girl to teach me how to use my instrument.
I don't know if I will ever get to go back there, but if I ever do I will never leave!!
Would love to see those pages'
TuskenRaider
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"donhearl:
PageMaker still working on Win7??
How did you do that?
I have an old PC with XP to be able to edit the Steiner .p65 album pages, never knew that PM would run on Win7."
Sorry for the late response!! I'm back after the holidaze...
Yes I have Pagemaker 7 working perfectly under Windows 7 Professional. I'm printing out heavily modified Steiner pages weekly. I hope I can run this program well into the future.
Cheers,
Don
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Here is an example from my modified Steiner pages. I've done some rearranging since this page, but this is the general idea.
Now I need to start sorting dry vs wet printings!
Regards,
Don
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Very nice pages!
I generally organize my stamps differently to the traditional strict chronological approach, so I create my own custom-made albums. I arrange multi-year series and long-running themes together. Plus, I'll vary how simplified vs specialized I go based on my interest in and the availability of the particular issue.
Here's an example page.
BTW what software do people use to create their pages?
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I really like your page, and may need to take some design cues from your work! At first I didn't want to tinker with the Steiner pages too much, but I'm finding that I'm doing full redesigns, separating regular from commemorative and making room for minor varieties and line pairs.
I've been trying to determine whether to describe my stamps above or below. Maybe I'll type the main heading or date above and stamp description below, if not obvious by the stamp design. I describe covers below each cover. And while Copperplate Gothic looks good for single lines of text, I'm not sure about 3-4 lines of text. I want to maintain a classic look so I've been experimenting with some serif fonts like Goudy Old Style and Garamond for the description part, but haven't been as pleased with the display.
I'm getting ready to reprint my pages...choices!
Don
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Here's one of my modified Steiner pages.
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I make my own - I use Vario for temporary storage - I can never keep the stamps straight in them 
Sorry, the scan is a bit dirty
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ChrisW,
Very nice page - Which font are you using for the descriptions? Thanks in advance!
Don
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Thanks. That is "Bookman Old Style"
Chris
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It really works with that classic page. Thanks for responding.
Don
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Don,
All my changes were made using Powerpoint.
Love to see some of your scans too1
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i noticed you put identifying information within the box where you attach the stamp. i prefer to put that information above the box rather than inside because i'm nervous about ink contacting the stamp. if we are printing our own pages, we can use acid-free paper, but we have no control over the ink. can you be sure that it won't damage stamps over time?
i read an article once about plasticizers used in laser printer toner that can make it sticky if exposed to pressure over time. i haven't investigated inkjet printers, but some (all?) inkjet inks are not immune to moisture. if a drop of water falls on a page, even on the back, it can make the ink run.
has anyone had any good or bad experiences with inks and toners?
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My rule is never to place a stamp in contact with toner. I've had toner from both inkjet and laser printers transfer onto other surfaces. In theory, laser toner, once fused to the paper, shouldn't come off, but I once had a laser printer that wasn't working properly and toner would easily become smeared on the paper. I have no doubt that it would have damaged any stamps it came in contact with.
I have a Lighthouse U.S. album that I had a problem with. The ink from brown stamps was transferring to the backs of the previous pages. There was no visible damage to the stamps, but over time I expect that they could have become visibly scuffed. I guess it wasn't so much a problem with the album but the stamps themselves. Anyway, I solved it by buying heavy glassine interleaves to put between each pair of album pages.
Bob
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"i noticed you put identifying information within the box where you attach the stamp. i prefer to put that information above the box rather than inside because i'm nervous about ink contacting the stamp."
This is a very good point.
I place all of my stamps in clear Hawid mounts. I have read about laser printing vs. ink jet. For now I'm staying with laser with the fusing adjusted to work with cover stock.
Don
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That's an interesting point about the ink I hadn't really thought about. The information in the boxes was left as is from the original Steiner pages, which I know a lot of people are using, I guess with both ink jet and laser printers.
Chris
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The scans are poor (need to get a better scanner), but these two pages are the same layout but with Bookman Old Style font first (Thanks Chris) and Copperplate Gothic second. I like both fonts, but would like the forums input on this very minimalist design. I do plan to incorporate covers into this collection, so I'm not sure that the country name is desired on every page. Instead maybe I should make the title "1961-62 Postage" or something similar. I probably need to break away from the Scott look and that title is very Scott Specialty!
These pages were built in Pagemaker 7 modified from Steiner.
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Not sure how to quote a previous post, but regarding the ink situation. I am using Epson's DURABrite Ultra Ink Cartridges (T126520), and a quick internet search shows that they are reported to be "smudge-, fade-, and water-resistant" and are acid-free. In addition, although I hinge most items, anything with a relatively high CV get put into a mount.
So, I am not worried about this issue.
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Don,
Very nice pages. The two fonts look very similar to me. I actually picked my font because it was a close match to the Scott International albums. I originally had the idea of getting a large format printer and printing on blank Scott International pages to supplement my album, but not sure if I will go that route of just use all Steiner pages. On mine, I also increased the size of the country name and bolded it to help it stand out.
Chris
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" I originally had the idea of getting a large format printer and printing on blank Scott International pages to supplement my album, but not sure if I will go that route of just use all Steiner pages."
I had an HP 5000 large format printer for several years and did just as you mentioned to integrate into a Scott Specialty series. I was a little frustrated with the quality of the printing (specks on the pages) so I scrapped that idea and started printing off 8 1/2 X 11 sheets on a decent Canon and putting them in page protectors. Those printers can be had for fairly cheap on eBay, and If I went that route I'd get a 5100 or later with a RAM upgrade.
I still have about 15 Scott Specialty and G&K 2 post binders that need a good home.
Don
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Donhearl said,
"The scans are poor (need to get a better scanner)"
Don,
I'm not sure that you need a better scanner. I do have an expensive scanner now, but the only difference is that my new one can scan negatives and transparencies, whereas my previous one, which I bought in the late 1990s, could only scan documents or photographic prints. The quality of the scans I got from the old scanner and the new one is the same (although the new one is faster).
Even though I've been scanning stamps and covers for the last 15-plus years, it's still a Black Art in many ways. However, I've learned enough tricks through practice, practice, practice! that I can nearly always obtain the image that I need. It may be that you just need to do a lot more scanning, changing one parameter at a time to see what changes. It's also important to use a good image manipulation program; scanners provide good raw images, but they nearly always can be improved with a program like Irfanview, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or Pixelmator (which is only for Apple computers).
Bob
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yes definitely you need to experiment with scanner settings to get the best results. i've never bought an expensive scanner and i've never had trouble with getting good enough output from the cheaper Canon ones.
For software, I use GIMP because it's both free and very powerful. It's not the most user-friendly, but at least there's lots of documentation and tutorial pages on the web.
Don, i much prefer the bookman font, and i would put the page title in a larger font than the country name, but all that is a very personal choice based on personal preferences and tastes, and on what you want to emphasize.
if you are building a US collection, then i would give the collection a title page saying it's USA and then put "USA" in a not-very-big font at the top of each page, and put most emphasis (larger and/or fancier font) on the contents of each page, e.g., "Presidential Series", the year if you are collecting chronologically, or the topic if you are arranging material thematically.
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Thanks Bob and George.
This is good to hear. Since I'm going to be scanning more covers and stamps, I need to learn the tools I have and look into a better scan software.
I have done some modifications to the pages since I scanned them. Since the US collection is part of a larger Worldwide collection, I will retain a country heading, but I'm making it less prominent (not expanded) and maybe left justified. I will experiment with what you are saying George, because it makes perfect sense. I know that my page style is a tribute to the Scott Specialty pages I collected in for a number of years. Now is my chance to make it really my own.
I still like that Copperplate font though!
Regards,
Don
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All your pages are making my simple hand written pages feel very inadequate!
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MeghanP said,
"All your pages are making my simple hand written pages feel very inadequate!"
Oh no!! I bet your pages are great. Please share your recent stamp show finds.
Thanks for starting the thread - this has been very helpful to me!
Cheers,
Don
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02:15:27pm
I wonder why almost all, if not all, who make their own pages feel that "Boxes" are necessary ?
On some pages, especially where there is a long set of different color/values of the same image I think that boxes are not needed and needlessly clutter up the page.
It probably would be something that would get a page marked down in a competitive exhibition.
I suppose that there is some reason why in an album plainly marked on the cover and back spine with the nation's name as well as an identifying flag or logo, and where 50% of the displayed stamps clearly state the same name in 30+ type lettering, why the collector feels that the name needs repeating on each page as if suddenly in the dead of night some Grand Fenwick imperforates might migrate to the middle of an Outer Thumbelina collection.
Now, there is nothing wrong with repeating the countries name several hundred times in bold type atop each and every page, I just wonder why ?
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i use boxes when designing a page on the computer screen to help me work out the page layout and for working out which stamps to put on each page.
after printing a page, the boxes indicate where to place each stamp so that the page looks neat. i can't line stamps up and space them correctly just by looking at a blank page, especially if half the items are still missing. in the days when you could use quadrille, you could use the lines to help. now we can't so i use boxes.
empty boxes of course tell me which stamps are still missing from the collection.
i can't see why you think boxes clutter a page, when, once the page is filled, they simply outline each stamp. when there are holes, they serve a purpose too. if you buy an album, doesn't it have boxes for each stamp? i'm not sure what the difference is if you make the album yourself.
as for competitive exhibitions, i'll leave that issue to competitors.
repeating the country name? as i said before, it's a matter of personal taste, but i prefer each page to stand alone, but yeah it's not really necessary.
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"... as if suddenly in the dead of night some Grand Fenwick imperforates might migrate to the middle of an Outer Thumbelina collection. "
haha! You NAILED IT! This is exactly the reason I do this!
I personally like the presentation of a traditional printed album for my general collection. With a homemade album I get to choose which boxes to fill in!
Don
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"I wonder why almost all, if not all, who make their own pages feel that "Boxes" are necessary?"
George covered part of my answer: to tell me which stamps I still need to collect.
The other part of my answer comes from the small bit of enjoyment that comes from placing a stamp in a box, as if to say "mission accomplished" or "another task completed." I don't know if that feeling is unique to us OCD types or is widespread, but it is there.
That small satisfaction is part of what caused me to move away from the Harris Standard WW albums I had picked up years ago and move to the Scott International. The Harris albums had too much white space, as if to say "put whatever you have here." The Scott Internationals are not perfect, as several of you warned me about before I made the switch, but they do provide for a more satisfying collection (at least for me).
Steve
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"I originally had the idea of getting a large format printer and printing on blank Scott International pages to supplement my album."
Chris, I had the same idea, but have held off as well. Part of my idea was a bit more involved: I wanted to reduce some of the unwanted "thickness" of my Scott International Albums. That unwanted thickness comes from those many pages with only one stamp or only a few stamps on them. My thought was to scan that one part and print it onto an another page that itself had lots of white space, say at the bottom or on the backside. Should be able to eliminate several hundred pages that way, although it would be a lot of work.
Don's comment added another data point to the pros and cons mulling around in my mind:
"I was a little frustrated with the quality of the printing (specks on the pages) so I scrapped that idea."
I'll probably continue to hold off even though my WW collection (Parts I through V organized by country) is spread across seven large binders. I still need to add another 200-400 glassine interleaves, which will leave all seven binders rather tight.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
Are you happy with your Scott Internationals? I too collect worldwide, but only up to 1940 or so, so I'm only using Vol 1. I think the layout and date ranges for the stamps are just about right, but of course they are missing a lot of inexpensive and common stamps from the classic era. I debate with myself whether or not to completely switch over the Steiner pages, but that would require 30-40 or more binders just for the classic period 
The Minkus Supreme Global would be another option, but the page layout seems rather overcrowded for my taste.
Chris
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Chris,
I like the Scott Internationals a lot. They are a good general WW set of albums that give me enough of a taste of many areas to know if I want to dig deeper with a Specialized album or something similar. When I got back into the hobby about a year ago, I decided to collect WW used up through the year I was born. After I decided on the Scott albums, that meant I needed Parts I-IV. I bought them all used, some with stamps and some without. Not sure the used route was the right way to go, but it was the only way I could afford all I needed in one year.
The guy I bought Part IV from also had Part V, so I have everything through to 1965. That's actually okay, because it gives me a buffer of sorts. I only look for stamps before 1960, but often acquire some that spill over into the early 1960's. Having those pages in there usually saves me time by finding where stamps go without having to look them up.
The pages in Part I are more cramped than in Parts I-IV. I'm not sure if this is true with later/current publications of Part I, but with mine there is almost no white space. My constant decision is what to do with the many stamps that Scott omits. I see three options: 1) don't keep them (boo, hiss!); 2) cram them onto an already crowded page; or 3) add a blank page at the end of each country's Part I section, at least for those countries that have extra stamps. I'm opting for choice #3, but it is taking some time. The later parts have enough white space that I can usually find a nice way to arrange the extra stamps.
The other thing about my Part I pages is that they are printed on thinner paper than the parts II and later. The paper is also acidic, and I know their current paper is non-acidic, so maybe the modern paper is thicker as well. The thinness of the paper is only an issue because of occasional bleed-through from old hinges on the other side. Those old hinges are acidic, and over-zealous tongues applied too much moisture in some cases. I also have some hinge stains where I have removed extra stamps crammed into the margins and placed them more orderly on blank pages. That latter problem is a result of my having purchased used albums in which I had to accept the previous owner's choices. As you probably know, early Brazil is a particular problem, but so are others. Used albums also might be missing pages, so I have to occasionally deal with that when I not only can't find a place for a stamp, I can't find several entire years!
One upside of buying used is in sharing some collecting history across generations. Several albums have the original owner's name, address, and start date in them. That is very cool. It has prompted me to make similar notes inside the covers on the facing pages. In one case, the album was a gift from parent to child (I'm assuming anyway). In another, the owner gives the date started (in the 1940's) and gave stamp counts for several years.
Another long winded answer to an easy question!
Steve
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I use Word for my albums. For both postage stamps and for postal history. I prefer the blank pages so I can play around with them to the way I want them to be.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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Bujutsu,
Very nice. Do you then print these out and put in a 3-ring binder?
Chris
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Hi Chris
Yes, I do. I also created binder labels with images of the different album topics because I got tired of looking at the blank binders. This way, I know at a glance what each binder is.
Here are a few examples I use for my WW ship postcard albums, the steamer "Noronic" album and my advertising cover albums.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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Bujutsu,
I like your presention. Simple and the stamps do the talking.
I'm debating on removing the country names as suggested. I'm keeping the boxes though! I haven't printed the pages yet, as I'm still working on them. This process has been alot of fun, and has allowed me to do even more research on my stamps, beyond just following a printed album's design. It's only taken 32 years to come to this realization!
Don
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Thank you and I know what you are saying Don. I have been collecting since 1955 and I am still learning new ways. Of course, the computer helped too 
Chimo
Bujutsu
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Wow! Collecting since 1955. I have been collecting since 1982, but still feel like a beginner.
BeeSee - I also admire your page designs. On another forum you showed an A.W.N album page. You took a country and built a specific page around that nation with a map and a timeline. I was hoping to see an update to this wonderful collecting idea, and maybe you could share a page or two. I am also looking at building pages for those areas I will never try to dig into completely.
Regards,
Don
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10:26:14am
Don, regardless of how you set up your album pages, just create them in a way which pleases you when you pull out your collection. Remember the immortal words of Ricky Nelson: "...ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself..." (Garden Party 1972)
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"Remember the immortal words of Ricky Nelson: "...ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself..." (Garden Party 1972"
You know the conversation is getting good when Ricky Nelson is quoted! Thanks Bobby!
It may seem like I'm laboring over this, but I've never had so much fun with my collection than I am having now!
Don
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"It may seem like I'm laboring over this, but I've never had so much fun with my collection than I am having now!"
Well said, Don! Ditto.
Steve
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"BeeSee - I also admire your page designs. On another forum you showed an A.W.N album page. You took a country and built a specific page around that nation with a map and a timeline. I was hoping to see an update to this wonderful collecting idea, and maybe you could share a page or two. "
Thanks Don. I am still working on AWN (All World's Nations) pages, it is just that of late I have been mainly doing some countries that I have expanded on with more than one page. Below are two older scans of AWN pages. Both now have small colour flags of the entity in the upper right corner. Also, the Silesia page has been expanded into two as I now have the complete sets of both issues shown.
I make the AWN pages as complete as I want, no rules to follow
The scans were done at different resolutions.
Brian
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Those pages feel like I'm looking at a newly discovered turn of the century album! Great stuff Brian!
Don
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"Those pages feel like I'm looking at a newly discovered turn of the century album"
I use a font called "Bohemian Typwriter". It makes the pages look like they were actually typed out.
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Brian, those are beautiful pages. Hope you don't mind my stealing a few ideas...
Steve
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Very nice work on all the album pages! I haven't created anything in the computer era, all my old collection pages were done on a typewriter with borders and graphics drawn in India ink on my old drafting board! The possibilities today are endless! So I will be organizing my hoard and making pages.
My question of the day... I am quite partial to covers, so I will have albums that are all covers... such as my NJ cancel collection which now lives in a shoe box. How do you all mount covers in collections? Does everyone buy clear mounts, use regular hinges (like two hinges on the back of a cover) or even corner mounts like used in a photo album?
In the past I have used all of the above. I also cut corners off scrap envelopes and used those as cover mounts, using a dab of Elmer's Glue on the back of each to affix to the album page.
Recommendations?
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In the UK, Gibbons sell a large version of the (now old-fashioned) corner photograph mount, which I have used with reasonable success. They are branded as 'Herma Transparol', and are 37mm on the diagonal, costing £8.50 for 100. (This translates as visible 21mm from each corner of your cover.) However, (1) they are comparatively expensive for what they are, and (2) they are not especially well made, more than one falling apart before even hosting a cover corner.
My latest 'Lighthouse' catalogue lists two sizes - 19mm square and 32mm square, which I think means 'from the corner' rather than 'on the diagonal'. The former (250 for £4.75) seem good value for postcards, though may be a bit tight for covers. The latter (250 for £14.75) are very big and doubtless suitable for very big covers. However they are better value than Gibbons.
I hope you can translate these prices into USD, and that mail order will not alter the cost too greatly, if you choose this method of mounting.
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Just curious if there is anyone else out there who is either making their own pages or modifying Steiner pages and omitting or deleting spaces for the more expensive stamps. If so, what cut off are you using to define "expensive"?
I have been thinking about deleting out any stamps with a CV >$500 from my Steiner pages, but wanted to get thoughts from others.
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"Just curious if there is anyone else out there who is either making their own pages or modifying Steiner pages and omitting or deleting spaces for the more expensive stamps. If so, what cut off are you using to define "expensive"?
I have been thinking about deleting out any stamps with a CV >$500 from my Steiner pages, but wanted to get thoughts from others."
Chris,
I have a work in progress that addresses this topic for US stamps. I used a 2008 Scott Specialized to get CV prices for all major catalog numbers (definitives and commemoratives, but not airmail) through 12-31-1999, and picked the cheapest option (used, MNG, or MH).
Here are the results:
Total CV = $7,521,178. Half of that is the Z grills ($3,780, 250). Reprints account for $1,739,045. A-E Grills are $643,253, Paper types (e.g. China Clay) are $425,506, and 2nd Bureau coils are $344,000.
That leaves 3 categories:
Perforation varieties: $308,290
Minor Type/Color varieties: $194,636
Everything else: $86,198
The perforation varieties that are important are not at all expensive (I can explain that later).
I believe that all pre-Civil War varieties are simply normal variations of the process, and there are only TWO post-Civil War varieties with a high CV.
That leaves us with "Everything Else" at $86,198
Of that, the 3rd Bureau 5c red imperf is $12,000 (easily omitted if you have 505).
F + H/I grills are $26,778 - perhaps a future expansion?
Watermark varieties are $6,506 - another possible expansion, but I hate checking watermarks, so not for me personally.
That leaves a CV of $40,914. Of that, $25,800 is simply face different stamps, so it's possible to have a very comprehensive collection including coils, booklet stamps, common type differences, imperforates, etc. for about $40,000 CV. If you set your standards according to your budget, you can get many items for 25% of CV or even less. There are a few rarities that will simply cost you.
I wish I had the entire presentation (including pie charts) ready to share, but it's still a long way off.
Good luck, and feel free to take any ideas you want from my collection (see link below).
Lars
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"i read an article once about plasticizers used in laser printer toner that can make it sticky if exposed to pressure over time."
George, you are correct. I have had many three ring binders through the years that I got in training classes that had a title page and a spline strip printed on a laser printer and then inserted in the outside clear flaps of the binder. After time, the pages do stick to the clear plastic. To get the stuck paper out of the sleeves, it was necessary to insert a ruler down the sleeve to release the toner from the clear plastic. Often the printed words from the toner would remain on the plastic. I do believe that the same would happen to a stamp over time, and the stamp would wind up sticking to the lettering on the page.
I use ink jet, and have done so for a long time, almost all of my stamps are in mounts. The maybe dozen that aren't (they are singles from souvenir/mini sheets that I haven't yet obtained), I haven't had any problems with them sticking to the ink jet printing or the printing transferring to the backs of the stamps when I removed them from the page.
Since that's only a few stamps, I won't say with 100% certainty that there is no problem with ink jet ink. There are different types of that ink. At one point, it was fashionable to get to a store to get the ink jet cartridges refilled. I did that a couple of times. Each time, the cartridge would only print for maybe a week, then it wouldn't print anymore. I thought that was because they weren't filling up the cartridge (ala ripping me off). I also bought refill kits and tried it myself, with about the same results. I went back to the store to tell them of my findings. I was told that the refill stores and the refill kits use organic ink, while new cartridges from the factory do not. The result is a clogging of the cartridge ink ports. I could clean the ports with alcohol, but that only lasted a couple of days. If I didn't print for a couple of days, the cartridge wouldn't print. I had this same problem with Epson, Lexmark and Dell ink jet cartridges. It actually ruined my Epson printer.
Now, I only use factory or remanufactured ink cartridges. I use a Dell ink jet printer. No problem with clogging.
I have not seen any evidence of acidic damage to any Steiner pages that I have printed using ink jet printer ink, and that numbers in the thousands.
Just FYI of my experiences.
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The look of your album page is as much a matter of personal taste as your favourite stamp designs: for that reason I would always prefer to make my own pages than buy or download someone else's. Actually I did begin by mounting my Third Reich used collection on a downloaded set of pages - this saved a lot of time, obviously, but brought with it some disadvantages. Principal among these were the rectangles provided for the miniature sheets; unlike those of the stamps, they were identical in dimension to the sheets, resulting in no visible border once the sheets were affixed. The stamps had to be hinged to their own rectangles, which suited me, but some prefer to put even used stamps in Hawid mounts. Finally, any pre-printed page will contain information you may not need, and omit some you might.
Gaps for the material you cannot afford obviously remain. In the case of TR (non-specialised), assuming you buy cheapest to dearest, these are (in date order) the Zeppelin overprints and the St Elisabeth sheet of 1933, and the Ostropa sheet of 1935.
For my mint TR collection I decided to retain the spaces for these issues, while noting their latest catalogue price and printing them out in grey, rather than black. I appreciate that for different collections there may well be far more gaps than these, which may render pages of blank rectangles unsightly. My cut-off prices (quoted MLH) are therefore £1900 ($2826, St Elisabeth), £1200 ($1785, Ostropa) and £1000 ($1487,the Zeppelins) (Stanley Gibbons, 2011). Dealers typically offer one-third catalogue, but strangely they are less generous with these TR issues, of which they nevertheless seem to have reasonable stocks! Doubtless they can be had for less via a well-known online mart, but I don't intend to go down that road.
In my own pages I like to include some information about what the stamp depicts, but that reflects my personal interests. So for example in 1936 I mention some details about Otto von Guericke and describe briefly the flight (and eventual fate) of the Hindenburg, but omit specifications of the aircraft shown on the Lufthansa Airways issue.
I create pages with Word (sidestepping the well-known page-border glitch which they have never corrected!), using the grid overlay to position spaces (which are measured to include Hawid mounts) and preferring a small italic font for notes so that my writing does not dominate the stamps themselves. I use A4 paper (my printer will accept no larger), with an ivory tint because I find that easier on the eye than bright white. Finally I insert pages into exhibition protectors, which are not cheap but avoid many of the problems mentioned elsewhere on this thread.
So the effect looks a bit like this (to show the missing Zeppelin set):
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Hi ChrisW,
Yes I am modifying the Steiner pages for the early US. My threshhold for exclusion is really the ridiculous italicized values, but as I grow in my collecting, I will modify further. I really do not see my collecting anything over $1000. That buys alot of baby wipes!!
Don
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Thanks Don, I just may have to be flexible as far as a cut-off CV depending on the country...
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I've noted elsewhere that I experimented quite a bit with designing my own pages back in the '90s and into the early years of this century. I've displayed examples elsewhere and explained that I quickly learned I preferred graphic design to collecting the stamps for the pages.
I experimented a great deal with typography back then, but don't remember the names of the fonts I used. I can look them up if anyone is interested. Cartography had been a hobby of mine for many years. So I usually incorporated maps (or at least tried to) in my pages to add context, interest and a little color. I also decided to present my collections chronologically rather than by catalog number. This decision arose primarily from the large French African colonies sets. Talk about monotony! in presenting my stamps chronologically, I could break up the sets by year. This gave me more flexibility when it came to designing my pages. And, lastly, I wanted my stamps presented against a black background. So, my boxes were a little larger than average and had wide borders.
Some of my pages were designed for the Lindner T-Blank pages and others for 3-ring binders, but I didn't get very far in actually putting them to use. Other priorities got in the way.
I began my designs in Pagemaker and used Coreldraw! initially for graphics and ultimately for complete pages. Later, when newer versions of Microsoft Publisher became available, I experimented quite a bit with that program as well. Later still, I used Photoshop for more of the graphics. Initially, Photoshop was useless as far as text was concerned. Once that shortcoming was eliminated, Photoshop became a much better tool for page design. Besides, I needed it for my other work and couldn't justify continuing to update Coreldraw!. And Aldus stopped upgrading Pagemaker.
Epson was the first to begin introducing more archival quality inks. It took a few years for Canon and HP to catch on, but they finally did and I doubt if there is much difference in that regard between them these days.
I always preferred natural color papers to white, but archival quality papers of all types and colors were scarce in the '90s. Today, the selection is far greater.
Here are a couple of examples that show what I was trying to accomplish. These were created in 1996 with Coreldraw!, but I exported them to Photoshop to create these JPGs this evening.
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Very nice, Tom!
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Yes Tom,
I can see exactly where you are coming from. These pages are great.
Regards ... Tim
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Thanks, Michael and Tim. Another thing I tried to do was create an introduction for the country. The one for St. Kitts was probably the longest of the handful (or two) I completed. The artwork was found online. Not sure about any copyright issues. The map was created in CorelDraw! and imported into MS Publisher (2000?) where the remainder was created.
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So, I have followed this thread with a good deal of interest.
I think that the pages that you folks have designed or modified are all terrific. I'd like to have just half of the artistic flare you have shown us here.
I too would like to design my own pages, but thinking better of starting from scratch - see remark about lack of artistic ability - I have decided that I would be far better off starting with Steiner's pages (or something similar) and modifying them to suit my tastes.
Thing is, I believe Steiner's pages are in PDF format. As far as I know PDF files cannot be modified without purchase of advanced software from Adobe. Is that what those of you who have made such modifications have done / used? Or is there some other software solution that you're using?
David
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David,
That is not true. With a free app, you can convert your Steiner PDF into a PowerPoint file. You can then easily make any modifications you want, then "save as" back to a PDF again 
Chris
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Very nice work everyone! The pages you've created are so nice that I can see the collection having more value, as I can see someone buying it someday and keeping it intact, instead of quickly stripping the stamps out of a commercially produced album!
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"Another thing I tried to do was create an introduction for the country"
keesindy: I also had been thinking about having an introductory page for each country. But since I collect WW, that would add some 400+ extra pages to my collection. I do like the idea of learning about each country and having a map to show where the country is located.
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I hear you on that, Chris. For a true world wide collection ANY extra page takes up valuable space!
When I work on a country now, I look at the pages and see if there are any that I can combine. Often the Scott specialty pages have a lone souvenir sheet on a page. The page before or after sometimes only has a few spaces for stamps with plenty of room for the sheet. I move the sheet to that page and toss the page that had the souvenir sheet. The same happens with individual stamps with some pages in a row that have spaces for only a few stamps. I combine the pages, or I'll even print Steiner pages front and back and remount the stamps on those pages. That happens alot with back of book items.
I have found that I can reduce each binder by around 5 to 10 pages. Each binder that I have can hold up to 500 pages. I have 85 binders, so that recovers about two binders for me. Right now I have one binder with no shelf space for it. I'll eventually recover enough space to empty that one, or else I'll need to build more shelf space.
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The idea of a 'title page' appeals to me, and so for each of my collections the first page gives some sort of illustrative idea of what lies within.
I am no master of design, but I find the challenge of choosing an appropriate image and incorporating the right size and font of lettering a pleasing task. One constant in these title pages is their 'greyed-out' appearance: for some reason I find a full colour or black and white page too visually insistent. As always, I print on ivory-tinted paper, the effect of which never reproduces very well in the images posted on these boards.
The images on the examples shown below tend towards the obvious - other parts of the collection present sterner challenges!
A question that has arisen in the letters pages of the newspaper recently is whether the phrase 'Nazi Occupation' should better read 'German Occupation'. I admit to a kind of 'political correctness' here, which comes from teaching WW2 to ten and eleven year olds. For them, we always fought 'the Nazis' in WW2, to avoid planting any seed of hatred against modern Germans or their country. I seem to have carried this over to my title pages, probably incorrectly.
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I dunno, I'd be putting art over function here guys! I'd certainly make room in my albums for those nice title pages, and I'd be more for presentation etc of the stamps than how many will fit on a page. Those are all the benefits of creating your own albums!
Remember that the pleasure of paging through your album far exceeds the temporary inconvenience of building another shelf! 
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LOL.
Combining the album pages is better than having a page with one stamp on it, then turning the page and there are two stamps on a page, then the next page has one stamp on it, etc. Pages look better when they have stamps on them rather than 99% white space.
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04:26:47am
" ... I have been thinking about deleting out any stamps with a CV >$500 from my Steiner pages, but wanted to get thoughts from others. ..."
The real question, Chris, is how do you feel about that idea.
I see that there are quite a few suggestions or examples of what others are doing or want to do. Almost to a man (or woman) they seem fine to me.
The thing to do is after seeing the examples, just incorporate what appeals to you into what then becomes your system.
I remember over the years being asked for advice about certain things and the first thing I'd try to discover was what the person felt (Never thought, people will tell you their feelings about something but avoid committing those same ideas to the category "thoughts.") about the subject, then unless there was something very detrimental, what they felt they liked was the thing I suggested. I knew, by then that that was their likely choice regardless of my advice, so I may as well suggest the likely result anyway.
Human nature 101.
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Charlie,
Of course you are correct. In all likelihood no one other than myself will ever even see my collection/albums. My personality is such that I like to gather advice from several different sources, think about things for a while, then decide what to do...Also, there might be undesired consequences of my actions that I haven't thought about, so I find it good to get thoughts and advice from others with more experience...the whole point of forums like this one, right?
Chris
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There was an Andy Capp cartoon many years ago. The first four frames show him talking to a different bloke in each. The last frame he addresses the viewers and says, "If you ask enough people, someone will tell you to do what you were going to do in the first place!"
I wouldn't delete any stamps from my album. I always want to know what I don't have. And blank spaces keep you collecting! Suppose you find that $500 stamp for 10% of catalog value? Or in an old album you've bought? You never know if / when you may get lucky. And that's what keeps a lot of folks collecting / sorting!
Many years ago I bought a 50 pound box of old covers on eBay. Most of it looked like a dealer kept a box under his desk that he dumped in things that were too crummy to sell. But I found a bunch of nice covers and postmark collections as I searched through it. I noticed that one cover had something inside it... it was a glassine envelope with a dozen great old 19th century USA beauties! Stamps too good for me to have purchased, but they are mine! Ya never know!
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You can also emphasize the stamp designs on select stamp pages or the title pages. Use elements from the stamps themselves. Or simply dramatically enlarge an interesting or unique part of the stamp design—or an error. Use plain outline maps for backgrounds or detailed maps beside the stamps. If you're working with late 19th century stamps, use late 19th century maps. There is a learning curve, but Photoshop Elements and other tools can be used to pull cancels and overprints from stamps. You can then use those, enlarged or not, on your pages. Your imagination is your limit.
If you get images from online, be sure to use those that are in the public domain. Avoid using copyrighted material.
Have fun!
Here are some examples.
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Love seeing the creative work posted here :-) Creating pages is almost like a hobby by itself! I know I can have fun with things like this if I just remember to have fun and keep my "be efficient!" voice silenced ;-)
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I use an Excel template to create my own pages. It is too difficult to line up the corner marks with the grids on the pages so I remove them from the Spreadsheet before printing and then reapply them with a pencil afterwards.
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Keesindy said,
"If you get images from online, be sure to use those that are in the public domain. Avoid using copyrighted material."
Isn't this carrying political correctness ("legal correctness") to a place too far? My album pages, not to mention my exhibit pages, are non-commercial efforts which can hardly have any impact on the rights of any copyright holder. My web pages are a different matter, since the images I post are available to anyone to use and re-use as they see fit; I rarely used copyrighted images unless I obtain permission from the copyright holder.
Having said that, copyright issues remain a hugely complex problem for publishers of virtually any image not their own. Many members will remember Ann Mette Heindorff, a Danish collector who was forced to remove the bulk of the stamp images from her huge, not-commercial "Art on Stamps" web site after CopyDan, the Danish copyright police, threatened her with huge fines for copyright infringement. To me, that raises questions that cannot be answered at this time about the wholesale use of philatelic images by collectors, dealers, and publishers around the world. At the level of Stamporama, are we at risk because we publish philatelic images, all of which at some point must have been or are copyrighted? I have no idea at all.
Bob
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I believe you can use an image on your own album page, as fair non-commercial use.
And time for a charming story...
I used to work for a large concern that had it's own NASCAR race team. Our corporate PR department would send us a weekly email as to our standings. I was reading the local newspaper and saw that our car would be appearing the next weekend at a local car dealership.
I was facility manager for their large R&D and office complex, so I called PR and asked if we could have the car visit our site. It took a few days, but at the last minute (Wednesday) it was confirmed that yes, the car was already in the area, and we could have it on our location on Thursday. Score!
So we crank out a quick flyer to announce this special event. I take it to our print shop / mail room to be printed in color and to be posted on the glass door of all of our site buildings by 7am the next morning. Great!
I come in at 8am on Thursday and there are no flyers anywhere. I make my way over to the print shop / mail room and ask what the heck happened.. the peon of a supervisor there had put a halt to the whole request. He told me that the flyer contained a copyrighted photograph! Yea.... our frigging product. We were the copyright owner.
I gave him an hour to get the notices printed and posted. We had the car out front of our cafeteria and anticipated people enjoying it over the lunch hour. The car showed up at 9am and there was already a line. The event was a major success, despite the hiccup!
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I'm not an attorney (and have never played one on TV )The following is not legal advice. However, as a graphic designer, artist and author, I've researched this topic at length in the past few years.
I've learned that those who create copyrighted material (whether it be a book, a piece of music, a movie, a computer program, a photograph, a painting, an architectural structure, etc.) are more likely to understand what the fair use doctrine is—and isn't. The law is designed to protect the creators and encourage creativity. Just like with products and their patents.
Simply because something is visible in public, whether it be something on the internet or a stylish new building on the street, doesn't put it in the public domain. Public access does not equal public domain.
Nevertheless, fair use is a murky area of the law and commonly misunderstood. The test for compliance with the fair use doctrine is basically:
1. How are you intending to use the copyrighted material/object? In particular, how will your use of the item be "transformative?" Simply copying or making minor modifications is in no way transformative.
2. Is the copyrighted item more factual or more imaginative/creative? The former more easily complies the fair use doctrine limitations.
3. Will your use negatively affect the value?
4. How much of the copyrighted item are you planning to use? The larger the percentage used, the less likely the use is covered by the fair use doctrine.
The courts have had a field day with this doctrine in recent years. The fact that it's a gray area of the law means different courts have ruled differently.
The bottom line is that personal use MAY be covered by the fair use doctrine, but there are major restrictions that apply. If you choose to ignore copyright law, that's your prerogative. I'm just saying that doing so while thinking you're covered by the fair use doctrine is often (usually?) an incorrect interpretation of the law.
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Bob, I began looking into copyright issues related to stamp images back in the '90s when I was experimenting with album pages and contemplating selling them. I corresponded with a few authorities around the world and was flabbergasted by the bureaucratic and often nonsensical and uninformed replies. There are international agreements, but some nations are signatories and some not. Postal authorities in some nations didn't seem to know they were signatories!
Dates of issuance can make a difference here and there. Here in the US, stamps (without exception, I believe) issued prior to the creation of the USPS are public domain while those issued by the USPS are not. Similar situations exist elsewhere in the world where earlier stamps are public domain and later stamps not. My pursuit of the creation and sale of pages with any images was going to be a deeper quagmire than the murky fair use doctrine issue.
This wasn't the reason I didn't proceed with the production of album pages, but it could have made things difficult with certain countries' stamps had I gotten that far.
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I think I'd be more concerned about using copyrighted numbering systems (Scotts, Gibbons, etc) than stamp images.
Overall, I think it may be a question for Mr Steiner, who has successfully distributed a grand array of country albums.
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This weekend I finally sat down and started designing my own stamp album pages. I'm using quadrilled sheets and am just playing with layouts of the stamps and labeling as I see fit. I'm loving it! Now I just have to get to some stamp shows again so that I can have more stamps for my pages
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11:38:51am
re: I'm making my own pages :)
MeghanP...Steiner album pages has a free link to quadruled pages, and you can type in the country name.
I have bee using these pages for my WW collection, and the only costs ths I incur is that for the acid free paper ( Which I purchase at Staples ) and an Ink cartridge.
And also the cost of a nice three ring " D " binder.
I always say that I rather spend my money on stamps, rather than expensive stamp albums
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Bobgggg said, "I always say that I rather spend my money on stamps, rather than expensive stamp albums."
Me too. Except that I did spend a smallish bundle recently on a bunch of identical ring binders, each with a pocket on the binder spine to slip labels into, about 20 packages of mostly one- and two-pocket Vario stock sheets, and an inexpensive laminator . I use the laminator to laminate labels. In the past, I've found that the toner on labels, even if they're printed with a laser printer, tended to transfer to the clear plastic of the binder pocket so I couldn't change the label and have it look nice, assuming I could even get the old label out of the pocket — they often got "glued" to the clear.
The new binders, Vario sheets, and labels have replaced a motley accumulation of various makes and sizes of binders, several of which were falling apart. Labels wouldn't stick on some, apparently because chemicals in the binder plastic dissolved the adhesive of the labels. It's a pleasure to be able to go to a binder and pull it off the shelf without danger of it falling apart. Next I need some binders by country, period, etc. Here's a picture of one of the new binders:
Bob
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
"Steiner album pages has a free link to quadruled pages, and you can type in the country name. "
That's what I'm using
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
I have been making my own pages for several years now. I use the binder and Vario inserts as I add many different items about each stamp, such as FDC, plate blocks, Line Pairs and mint and well cancelled used, plus any personal stuff I can fit too. I have hundreds of sheets of these stamps and since they do not fit properly on the page I scan them and then print them along side of the other stuff. My biggest problem so far is finding new colors for the binders. I currently have 18 binders for the US stuff and the other things I collect. I have not been able to come up with a way to put all the postage from 2000 to the present in these books. These I store in 11X14 envelopes with sheet protectors inside to keep the stamps from sticking to each other. Although I've created over 800 pages so far I never stop enjoying the process. To me presentation is as important as collecting.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Could someone please post a picture as an example of a Vario sheet? How much do they cost per sheet and could someone recommend a web site to buy them?
Thanks.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Here you are:
I buy my sheets from a local dealer, and most stamp shops stock them or can at least order them. There are lots of on-line sources, including eBay.
Bob
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Adam: A lot of people like this guy:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/mit_63/m.html
I have not purchased Varios from him, but I did purchase some Michel catalogs from him back when he used to sell those, too.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Thanks, I appreciate the information!
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Varios are relatively heavy, so shipping costs are more of a factor than you'd like them to be.
Another possibility is that if you have a local stamp store, that might be worth checking out. Most of the time it'll be retail (but no shipping), and some dealers occasionally offer accumulations of used. If you run into that situation, then you can evaluate what kind of shape they're in, and, again, no shipping!
Same thing goes for local stamp shows. Sometimes you find dealers selling them only at the highest possible prices, but sometimes that's the place to get a good deal.
Good luck with this!
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Hello from snowy East TN!!
Today is the perfect day to work on my collection. I have been building some pages for my US collection based on the Steiner work. Luckily my old copy of Pagemaker still works under Windows 7! It took years, but I've finally settled on my modified Steiners on 67# creme cover stock from Staples in Keep Filing archival Heavyweght page protectors, in G&K Nassau binders and slipcases. I'm mounting most of my material with Hawid clear mounts and the ancillary, covers, etc with corner mounts. It is a simple system. The Vario pages can go right alongside the write-ups as both fit in the same binder.
So, now I'm off to mount some material.
Don
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03:30:29pm
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
I am also making my own pages. I use the usual Word program and print the pages ona 120gm light-grey paper with a Laser Printer.
In this way I can group the stamps according to what I think is more rational (similar images all together, independently of the year they were issued, see Belgium page), or only straight sides from booklet issues (as shown in the US page)
Its also great fun to go through the collections when designing the pages!!
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Hi Everyone;
@ mitoneu;
Nice looking pages. Show us one of your early Brazil pages, with some of the long definitives. I always loved the long sets of early Brazil issues.
I have the Scott's Specialty album for Brazil (Green & Gold series), along with several other South American nations, Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
Keep on stampin'
TuskenRaider
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
You're reconstructing the booklets with used singles! Oh that is very cool - and fun to do! I've done that with a few issues myself - I'm working on an Irish booklet issue right now. Challenging and fun fun fun!
Nice job, Mitoneu!!
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
mitoneu:
You have stamps with Leopold III of Belgium from 1931-32?
But he became a king in 1934, didn't he?
donhearl:
PageMaker still working on Win7??
How did you do that?
I have an old PC with XP to be able to edit the Steiner .p65 album pages, never knew that PM would run on Win7.
EDIT: I have not scanned any of my pages from Belgium, but here is a page from Belgian Congo, modified from a Steiner original:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1364402/StampPageNOJ/bc1894.jpg
(Modified by Moderator on 2014-11-19 18:27:19)
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A very attractive page! With, of course, stamps that I covet! (I'm slowly working on getting a complete set of the État indépendant du Congo stamps, in part because I like the designs but also because I'd like to create a web page about the early history of the Belgian Congo, which, in its first incarnation, was the private property of Leopold II, who never set foot there but was responsible for genocide at least as bad as the Holocaust.
Recommended reading: Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild, and King Leopold's Soliloquy by Mark Twain.
Among other atrocities recounted in these publications: Amputating the hands of Congolese who failed to produce their quotas of rubber sap; "girdling" rubber trees to maximize production of rubber sap, which resulted in the destruction of vast tracts of rubber trees; the virtual enslavement of Congolese for the construction of a railway (thousands of the workers died); and a Belgian world's fair pavilion which included caged Congolese pygmies.
I'm reminded of a bit of black humour I heard in the U.S. Navy: "Join the navy, see the world, meet exotic foreigners, and kill them."
Bob
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01:44:58pm
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@kentallpines
Hi Ken,
Thanks for your comments on my album pages!
I will scan a couple of the pages I made fro Brazil and send them directly to you. If on the Discussion Board it will take a lot of space.
When I made those pages, I still tried to differentiate between the different types of paper, perforations and watermarks. The latter are a real hard job when collecting used stamps? Possibly, when I get to my Brazilian collection again, I will eliminate some differentials, like 5 or 6 or 7 mm high wmks, 1/2 gauge different prforations, and maybe printing types.
I have made also pages were no different variations are taken into account: only images and colours (by the way, that is also the way I do it with my GB Machins collection!)
If you are interested, I can send you a bunch of my dups of the old Brazilian stamps, so you can examine them and keep any you need.
Best regards, Miguel
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Hi Miguel;
In 1968, my ship, USS Valcour was headed from Manama Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, to Norfolk Virginia, for a dry dock overhaul. The voyage was quite long and would require a refueling stop. And our port of call was Recife Brazil. When my shipmates saw those beautiful women there they truly did not want to go back to the states!!
I must admit I forgot all about getting stamps at the post office, and instead bought a Spanish guitar, and proceeded to find a girl to teach me how to use my instrument.
I don't know if I will ever get to go back there, but if I ever do I will never leave!!
Would love to see those pages'
TuskenRaider
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"donhearl:
PageMaker still working on Win7??
How did you do that?
I have an old PC with XP to be able to edit the Steiner .p65 album pages, never knew that PM would run on Win7."
Sorry for the late response!! I'm back after the holidaze...
Yes I have Pagemaker 7 working perfectly under Windows 7 Professional. I'm printing out heavily modified Steiner pages weekly. I hope I can run this program well into the future.
Cheers,
Don
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Here is an example from my modified Steiner pages. I've done some rearranging since this page, but this is the general idea.
Now I need to start sorting dry vs wet printings!
Regards,
Don
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Very nice pages!
I generally organize my stamps differently to the traditional strict chronological approach, so I create my own custom-made albums. I arrange multi-year series and long-running themes together. Plus, I'll vary how simplified vs specialized I go based on my interest in and the availability of the particular issue.
Here's an example page.
BTW what software do people use to create their pages?
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I really like your page, and may need to take some design cues from your work! At first I didn't want to tinker with the Steiner pages too much, but I'm finding that I'm doing full redesigns, separating regular from commemorative and making room for minor varieties and line pairs.
I've been trying to determine whether to describe my stamps above or below. Maybe I'll type the main heading or date above and stamp description below, if not obvious by the stamp design. I describe covers below each cover. And while Copperplate Gothic looks good for single lines of text, I'm not sure about 3-4 lines of text. I want to maintain a classic look so I've been experimenting with some serif fonts like Goudy Old Style and Garamond for the description part, but haven't been as pleased with the display.
I'm getting ready to reprint my pages...choices!
Don
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Here's one of my modified Steiner pages.
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I make my own - I use Vario for temporary storage - I can never keep the stamps straight in them
Sorry, the scan is a bit dirty
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ChrisW,
Very nice page - Which font are you using for the descriptions? Thanks in advance!
Don
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Thanks. That is "Bookman Old Style"
Chris
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It really works with that classic page. Thanks for responding.
Don
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Don,
All my changes were made using Powerpoint.
Love to see some of your scans too1
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i noticed you put identifying information within the box where you attach the stamp. i prefer to put that information above the box rather than inside because i'm nervous about ink contacting the stamp. if we are printing our own pages, we can use acid-free paper, but we have no control over the ink. can you be sure that it won't damage stamps over time?
i read an article once about plasticizers used in laser printer toner that can make it sticky if exposed to pressure over time. i haven't investigated inkjet printers, but some (all?) inkjet inks are not immune to moisture. if a drop of water falls on a page, even on the back, it can make the ink run.
has anyone had any good or bad experiences with inks and toners?
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My rule is never to place a stamp in contact with toner. I've had toner from both inkjet and laser printers transfer onto other surfaces. In theory, laser toner, once fused to the paper, shouldn't come off, but I once had a laser printer that wasn't working properly and toner would easily become smeared on the paper. I have no doubt that it would have damaged any stamps it came in contact with.
I have a Lighthouse U.S. album that I had a problem with. The ink from brown stamps was transferring to the backs of the previous pages. There was no visible damage to the stamps, but over time I expect that they could have become visibly scuffed. I guess it wasn't so much a problem with the album but the stamps themselves. Anyway, I solved it by buying heavy glassine interleaves to put between each pair of album pages.
Bob
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"i noticed you put identifying information within the box where you attach the stamp. i prefer to put that information above the box rather than inside because i'm nervous about ink contacting the stamp."
This is a very good point.
I place all of my stamps in clear Hawid mounts. I have read about laser printing vs. ink jet. For now I'm staying with laser with the fusing adjusted to work with cover stock.
Don
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That's an interesting point about the ink I hadn't really thought about. The information in the boxes was left as is from the original Steiner pages, which I know a lot of people are using, I guess with both ink jet and laser printers.
Chris
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The scans are poor (need to get a better scanner), but these two pages are the same layout but with Bookman Old Style font first (Thanks Chris) and Copperplate Gothic second. I like both fonts, but would like the forums input on this very minimalist design. I do plan to incorporate covers into this collection, so I'm not sure that the country name is desired on every page. Instead maybe I should make the title "1961-62 Postage" or something similar. I probably need to break away from the Scott look and that title is very Scott Specialty!
These pages were built in Pagemaker 7 modified from Steiner.
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Not sure how to quote a previous post, but regarding the ink situation. I am using Epson's DURABrite Ultra Ink Cartridges (T126520), and a quick internet search shows that they are reported to be "smudge-, fade-, and water-resistant" and are acid-free. In addition, although I hinge most items, anything with a relatively high CV get put into a mount.
So, I am not worried about this issue.
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Don,
Very nice pages. The two fonts look very similar to me. I actually picked my font because it was a close match to the Scott International albums. I originally had the idea of getting a large format printer and printing on blank Scott International pages to supplement my album, but not sure if I will go that route of just use all Steiner pages. On mine, I also increased the size of the country name and bolded it to help it stand out.
Chris
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" I originally had the idea of getting a large format printer and printing on blank Scott International pages to supplement my album, but not sure if I will go that route of just use all Steiner pages."
I had an HP 5000 large format printer for several years and did just as you mentioned to integrate into a Scott Specialty series. I was a little frustrated with the quality of the printing (specks on the pages) so I scrapped that idea and started printing off 8 1/2 X 11 sheets on a decent Canon and putting them in page protectors. Those printers can be had for fairly cheap on eBay, and If I went that route I'd get a 5100 or later with a RAM upgrade.
I still have about 15 Scott Specialty and G&K 2 post binders that need a good home.
Don
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Donhearl said,
"The scans are poor (need to get a better scanner)"
Don,
I'm not sure that you need a better scanner. I do have an expensive scanner now, but the only difference is that my new one can scan negatives and transparencies, whereas my previous one, which I bought in the late 1990s, could only scan documents or photographic prints. The quality of the scans I got from the old scanner and the new one is the same (although the new one is faster).
Even though I've been scanning stamps and covers for the last 15-plus years, it's still a Black Art in many ways. However, I've learned enough tricks through practice, practice, practice! that I can nearly always obtain the image that I need. It may be that you just need to do a lot more scanning, changing one parameter at a time to see what changes. It's also important to use a good image manipulation program; scanners provide good raw images, but they nearly always can be improved with a program like Irfanview, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or Pixelmator (which is only for Apple computers).
Bob
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yes definitely you need to experiment with scanner settings to get the best results. i've never bought an expensive scanner and i've never had trouble with getting good enough output from the cheaper Canon ones.
For software, I use GIMP because it's both free and very powerful. It's not the most user-friendly, but at least there's lots of documentation and tutorial pages on the web.
Don, i much prefer the bookman font, and i would put the page title in a larger font than the country name, but all that is a very personal choice based on personal preferences and tastes, and on what you want to emphasize.
if you are building a US collection, then i would give the collection a title page saying it's USA and then put "USA" in a not-very-big font at the top of each page, and put most emphasis (larger and/or fancier font) on the contents of each page, e.g., "Presidential Series", the year if you are collecting chronologically, or the topic if you are arranging material thematically.
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Thanks Bob and George.
This is good to hear. Since I'm going to be scanning more covers and stamps, I need to learn the tools I have and look into a better scan software.
I have done some modifications to the pages since I scanned them. Since the US collection is part of a larger Worldwide collection, I will retain a country heading, but I'm making it less prominent (not expanded) and maybe left justified. I will experiment with what you are saying George, because it makes perfect sense. I know that my page style is a tribute to the Scott Specialty pages I collected in for a number of years. Now is my chance to make it really my own.
I still like that Copperplate font though!
Regards,
Don
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All your pages are making my simple hand written pages feel very inadequate!
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MeghanP said,
"All your pages are making my simple hand written pages feel very inadequate!"
Oh no!! I bet your pages are great. Please share your recent stamp show finds.
Thanks for starting the thread - this has been very helpful to me!
Cheers,
Don
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
09 Jan 2015
02:15:27pm
re: I'm making my own pages :)
I wonder why almost all, if not all, who make their own pages feel that "Boxes" are necessary ?
On some pages, especially where there is a long set of different color/values of the same image I think that boxes are not needed and needlessly clutter up the page.
It probably would be something that would get a page marked down in a competitive exhibition.
I suppose that there is some reason why in an album plainly marked on the cover and back spine with the nation's name as well as an identifying flag or logo, and where 50% of the displayed stamps clearly state the same name in 30+ type lettering, why the collector feels that the name needs repeating on each page as if suddenly in the dead of night some Grand Fenwick imperforates might migrate to the middle of an Outer Thumbelina collection.
Now, there is nothing wrong with repeating the countries name several hundred times in bold type atop each and every page, I just wonder why ?
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i use boxes when designing a page on the computer screen to help me work out the page layout and for working out which stamps to put on each page.
after printing a page, the boxes indicate where to place each stamp so that the page looks neat. i can't line stamps up and space them correctly just by looking at a blank page, especially if half the items are still missing. in the days when you could use quadrille, you could use the lines to help. now we can't so i use boxes.
empty boxes of course tell me which stamps are still missing from the collection.
i can't see why you think boxes clutter a page, when, once the page is filled, they simply outline each stamp. when there are holes, they serve a purpose too. if you buy an album, doesn't it have boxes for each stamp? i'm not sure what the difference is if you make the album yourself.
as for competitive exhibitions, i'll leave that issue to competitors.
repeating the country name? as i said before, it's a matter of personal taste, but i prefer each page to stand alone, but yeah it's not really necessary.
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"... as if suddenly in the dead of night some Grand Fenwick imperforates might migrate to the middle of an Outer Thumbelina collection. "
haha! You NAILED IT! This is exactly the reason I do this!
I personally like the presentation of a traditional printed album for my general collection. With a homemade album I get to choose which boxes to fill in!
Don
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
"I wonder why almost all, if not all, who make their own pages feel that "Boxes" are necessary?"
George covered part of my answer: to tell me which stamps I still need to collect.
The other part of my answer comes from the small bit of enjoyment that comes from placing a stamp in a box, as if to say "mission accomplished" or "another task completed." I don't know if that feeling is unique to us OCD types or is widespread, but it is there.
That small satisfaction is part of what caused me to move away from the Harris Standard WW albums I had picked up years ago and move to the Scott International. The Harris albums had too much white space, as if to say "put whatever you have here." The Scott Internationals are not perfect, as several of you warned me about before I made the switch, but they do provide for a more satisfying collection (at least for me).
Steve
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"I originally had the idea of getting a large format printer and printing on blank Scott International pages to supplement my album."
Chris, I had the same idea, but have held off as well. Part of my idea was a bit more involved: I wanted to reduce some of the unwanted "thickness" of my Scott International Albums. That unwanted thickness comes from those many pages with only one stamp or only a few stamps on them. My thought was to scan that one part and print it onto an another page that itself had lots of white space, say at the bottom or on the backside. Should be able to eliminate several hundred pages that way, although it would be a lot of work.
Don's comment added another data point to the pros and cons mulling around in my mind:
"I was a little frustrated with the quality of the printing (specks on the pages) so I scrapped that idea."
I'll probably continue to hold off even though my WW collection (Parts I through V organized by country) is spread across seven large binders. I still need to add another 200-400 glassine interleaves, which will leave all seven binders rather tight.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
Are you happy with your Scott Internationals? I too collect worldwide, but only up to 1940 or so, so I'm only using Vol 1. I think the layout and date ranges for the stamps are just about right, but of course they are missing a lot of inexpensive and common stamps from the classic era. I debate with myself whether or not to completely switch over the Steiner pages, but that would require 30-40 or more binders just for the classic period
The Minkus Supreme Global would be another option, but the page layout seems rather overcrowded for my taste.
Chris
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Chris,
I like the Scott Internationals a lot. They are a good general WW set of albums that give me enough of a taste of many areas to know if I want to dig deeper with a Specialized album or something similar. When I got back into the hobby about a year ago, I decided to collect WW used up through the year I was born. After I decided on the Scott albums, that meant I needed Parts I-IV. I bought them all used, some with stamps and some without. Not sure the used route was the right way to go, but it was the only way I could afford all I needed in one year.
The guy I bought Part IV from also had Part V, so I have everything through to 1965. That's actually okay, because it gives me a buffer of sorts. I only look for stamps before 1960, but often acquire some that spill over into the early 1960's. Having those pages in there usually saves me time by finding where stamps go without having to look them up.
The pages in Part I are more cramped than in Parts I-IV. I'm not sure if this is true with later/current publications of Part I, but with mine there is almost no white space. My constant decision is what to do with the many stamps that Scott omits. I see three options: 1) don't keep them (boo, hiss!); 2) cram them onto an already crowded page; or 3) add a blank page at the end of each country's Part I section, at least for those countries that have extra stamps. I'm opting for choice #3, but it is taking some time. The later parts have enough white space that I can usually find a nice way to arrange the extra stamps.
The other thing about my Part I pages is that they are printed on thinner paper than the parts II and later. The paper is also acidic, and I know their current paper is non-acidic, so maybe the modern paper is thicker as well. The thinness of the paper is only an issue because of occasional bleed-through from old hinges on the other side. Those old hinges are acidic, and over-zealous tongues applied too much moisture in some cases. I also have some hinge stains where I have removed extra stamps crammed into the margins and placed them more orderly on blank pages. That latter problem is a result of my having purchased used albums in which I had to accept the previous owner's choices. As you probably know, early Brazil is a particular problem, but so are others. Used albums also might be missing pages, so I have to occasionally deal with that when I not only can't find a place for a stamp, I can't find several entire years!
One upside of buying used is in sharing some collecting history across generations. Several albums have the original owner's name, address, and start date in them. That is very cool. It has prompted me to make similar notes inside the covers on the facing pages. In one case, the album was a gift from parent to child (I'm assuming anyway). In another, the owner gives the date started (in the 1940's) and gave stamp counts for several years.
Another long winded answer to an easy question!
Steve
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
I use Word for my albums. For both postage stamps and for postal history. I prefer the blank pages so I can play around with them to the way I want them to be.
Chimo
Bujutsu
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Bujutsu,
Very nice. Do you then print these out and put in a 3-ring binder?
Chris
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Hi Chris
Yes, I do. I also created binder labels with images of the different album topics because I got tired of looking at the blank binders. This way, I know at a glance what each binder is.
Here are a few examples I use for my WW ship postcard albums, the steamer "Noronic" album and my advertising cover albums.
Chimo
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Bujutsu,
I like your presention. Simple and the stamps do the talking.
I'm debating on removing the country names as suggested. I'm keeping the boxes though! I haven't printed the pages yet, as I'm still working on them. This process has been alot of fun, and has allowed me to do even more research on my stamps, beyond just following a printed album's design. It's only taken 32 years to come to this realization!
Don
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Thank you and I know what you are saying Don. I have been collecting since 1955 and I am still learning new ways. Of course, the computer helped too
Chimo
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Wow! Collecting since 1955. I have been collecting since 1982, but still feel like a beginner.
BeeSee - I also admire your page designs. On another forum you showed an A.W.N album page. You took a country and built a specific page around that nation with a map and a timeline. I was hoping to see an update to this wonderful collecting idea, and maybe you could share a page or two. I am also looking at building pages for those areas I will never try to dig into completely.
Regards,
Don
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
13 Jan 2015
10:26:14am
re: I'm making my own pages :)
Don, regardless of how you set up your album pages, just create them in a way which pleases you when you pull out your collection. Remember the immortal words of Ricky Nelson: "...ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself..." (Garden Party 1972)
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"Remember the immortal words of Ricky Nelson: "...ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself..." (Garden Party 1972"
You know the conversation is getting good when Ricky Nelson is quoted! Thanks Bobby!
It may seem like I'm laboring over this, but I've never had so much fun with my collection than I am having now!
Don
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"It may seem like I'm laboring over this, but I've never had so much fun with my collection than I am having now!"
Well said, Don! Ditto.
Steve
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"BeeSee - I also admire your page designs. On another forum you showed an A.W.N album page. You took a country and built a specific page around that nation with a map and a timeline. I was hoping to see an update to this wonderful collecting idea, and maybe you could share a page or two. "
Thanks Don. I am still working on AWN (All World's Nations) pages, it is just that of late I have been mainly doing some countries that I have expanded on with more than one page. Below are two older scans of AWN pages. Both now have small colour flags of the entity in the upper right corner. Also, the Silesia page has been expanded into two as I now have the complete sets of both issues shown.
I make the AWN pages as complete as I want, no rules to follow
The scans were done at different resolutions.
Brian
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Those pages feel like I'm looking at a newly discovered turn of the century album! Great stuff Brian!
Don
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"Those pages feel like I'm looking at a newly discovered turn of the century album"
I use a font called "Bohemian Typwriter". It makes the pages look like they were actually typed out.
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Brian, those are beautiful pages. Hope you don't mind my stealing a few ideas...
Steve
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Very nice work on all the album pages! I haven't created anything in the computer era, all my old collection pages were done on a typewriter with borders and graphics drawn in India ink on my old drafting board! The possibilities today are endless! So I will be organizing my hoard and making pages.
My question of the day... I am quite partial to covers, so I will have albums that are all covers... such as my NJ cancel collection which now lives in a shoe box. How do you all mount covers in collections? Does everyone buy clear mounts, use regular hinges (like two hinges on the back of a cover) or even corner mounts like used in a photo album?
In the past I have used all of the above. I also cut corners off scrap envelopes and used those as cover mounts, using a dab of Elmer's Glue on the back of each to affix to the album page.
Recommendations?
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In the UK, Gibbons sell a large version of the (now old-fashioned) corner photograph mount, which I have used with reasonable success. They are branded as 'Herma Transparol', and are 37mm on the diagonal, costing £8.50 for 100. (This translates as visible 21mm from each corner of your cover.) However, (1) they are comparatively expensive for what they are, and (2) they are not especially well made, more than one falling apart before even hosting a cover corner.
My latest 'Lighthouse' catalogue lists two sizes - 19mm square and 32mm square, which I think means 'from the corner' rather than 'on the diagonal'. The former (250 for £4.75) seem good value for postcards, though may be a bit tight for covers. The latter (250 for £14.75) are very big and doubtless suitable for very big covers. However they are better value than Gibbons.
I hope you can translate these prices into USD, and that mail order will not alter the cost too greatly, if you choose this method of mounting.
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Just curious if there is anyone else out there who is either making their own pages or modifying Steiner pages and omitting or deleting spaces for the more expensive stamps. If so, what cut off are you using to define "expensive"?
I have been thinking about deleting out any stamps with a CV >$500 from my Steiner pages, but wanted to get thoughts from others.
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"Just curious if there is anyone else out there who is either making their own pages or modifying Steiner pages and omitting or deleting spaces for the more expensive stamps. If so, what cut off are you using to define "expensive"?
I have been thinking about deleting out any stamps with a CV >$500 from my Steiner pages, but wanted to get thoughts from others."
Chris,
I have a work in progress that addresses this topic for US stamps. I used a 2008 Scott Specialized to get CV prices for all major catalog numbers (definitives and commemoratives, but not airmail) through 12-31-1999, and picked the cheapest option (used, MNG, or MH).
Here are the results:
Total CV = $7,521,178. Half of that is the Z grills ($3,780, 250). Reprints account for $1,739,045. A-E Grills are $643,253, Paper types (e.g. China Clay) are $425,506, and 2nd Bureau coils are $344,000.
That leaves 3 categories:
Perforation varieties: $308,290
Minor Type/Color varieties: $194,636
Everything else: $86,198
The perforation varieties that are important are not at all expensive (I can explain that later).
I believe that all pre-Civil War varieties are simply normal variations of the process, and there are only TWO post-Civil War varieties with a high CV.
That leaves us with "Everything Else" at $86,198
Of that, the 3rd Bureau 5c red imperf is $12,000 (easily omitted if you have 505).
F + H/I grills are $26,778 - perhaps a future expansion?
Watermark varieties are $6,506 - another possible expansion, but I hate checking watermarks, so not for me personally.
That leaves a CV of $40,914. Of that, $25,800 is simply face different stamps, so it's possible to have a very comprehensive collection including coils, booklet stamps, common type differences, imperforates, etc. for about $40,000 CV. If you set your standards according to your budget, you can get many items for 25% of CV or even less. There are a few rarities that will simply cost you.
I wish I had the entire presentation (including pie charts) ready to share, but it's still a long way off.
Good luck, and feel free to take any ideas you want from my collection (see link below).
Lars
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"i read an article once about plasticizers used in laser printer toner that can make it sticky if exposed to pressure over time."
George, you are correct. I have had many three ring binders through the years that I got in training classes that had a title page and a spline strip printed on a laser printer and then inserted in the outside clear flaps of the binder. After time, the pages do stick to the clear plastic. To get the stuck paper out of the sleeves, it was necessary to insert a ruler down the sleeve to release the toner from the clear plastic. Often the printed words from the toner would remain on the plastic. I do believe that the same would happen to a stamp over time, and the stamp would wind up sticking to the lettering on the page.
I use ink jet, and have done so for a long time, almost all of my stamps are in mounts. The maybe dozen that aren't (they are singles from souvenir/mini sheets that I haven't yet obtained), I haven't had any problems with them sticking to the ink jet printing or the printing transferring to the backs of the stamps when I removed them from the page.
Since that's only a few stamps, I won't say with 100% certainty that there is no problem with ink jet ink. There are different types of that ink. At one point, it was fashionable to get to a store to get the ink jet cartridges refilled. I did that a couple of times. Each time, the cartridge would only print for maybe a week, then it wouldn't print anymore. I thought that was because they weren't filling up the cartridge (ala ripping me off). I also bought refill kits and tried it myself, with about the same results. I went back to the store to tell them of my findings. I was told that the refill stores and the refill kits use organic ink, while new cartridges from the factory do not. The result is a clogging of the cartridge ink ports. I could clean the ports with alcohol, but that only lasted a couple of days. If I didn't print for a couple of days, the cartridge wouldn't print. I had this same problem with Epson, Lexmark and Dell ink jet cartridges. It actually ruined my Epson printer.
Now, I only use factory or remanufactured ink cartridges. I use a Dell ink jet printer. No problem with clogging.
I have not seen any evidence of acidic damage to any Steiner pages that I have printed using ink jet printer ink, and that numbers in the thousands.
Just FYI of my experiences.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
The look of your album page is as much a matter of personal taste as your favourite stamp designs: for that reason I would always prefer to make my own pages than buy or download someone else's. Actually I did begin by mounting my Third Reich used collection on a downloaded set of pages - this saved a lot of time, obviously, but brought with it some disadvantages. Principal among these were the rectangles provided for the miniature sheets; unlike those of the stamps, they were identical in dimension to the sheets, resulting in no visible border once the sheets were affixed. The stamps had to be hinged to their own rectangles, which suited me, but some prefer to put even used stamps in Hawid mounts. Finally, any pre-printed page will contain information you may not need, and omit some you might.
Gaps for the material you cannot afford obviously remain. In the case of TR (non-specialised), assuming you buy cheapest to dearest, these are (in date order) the Zeppelin overprints and the St Elisabeth sheet of 1933, and the Ostropa sheet of 1935.
For my mint TR collection I decided to retain the spaces for these issues, while noting their latest catalogue price and printing them out in grey, rather than black. I appreciate that for different collections there may well be far more gaps than these, which may render pages of blank rectangles unsightly. My cut-off prices (quoted MLH) are therefore £1900 ($2826, St Elisabeth), £1200 ($1785, Ostropa) and £1000 ($1487,the Zeppelins) (Stanley Gibbons, 2011). Dealers typically offer one-third catalogue, but strangely they are less generous with these TR issues, of which they nevertheless seem to have reasonable stocks! Doubtless they can be had for less via a well-known online mart, but I don't intend to go down that road.
In my own pages I like to include some information about what the stamp depicts, but that reflects my personal interests. So for example in 1936 I mention some details about Otto von Guericke and describe briefly the flight (and eventual fate) of the Hindenburg, but omit specifications of the aircraft shown on the Lufthansa Airways issue.
I create pages with Word (sidestepping the well-known page-border glitch which they have never corrected!), using the grid overlay to position spaces (which are measured to include Hawid mounts) and preferring a small italic font for notes so that my writing does not dominate the stamps themselves. I use A4 paper (my printer will accept no larger), with an ivory tint because I find that easier on the eye than bright white. Finally I insert pages into exhibition protectors, which are not cheap but avoid many of the problems mentioned elsewhere on this thread.
So the effect looks a bit like this (to show the missing Zeppelin set):
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Hi ChrisW,
Yes I am modifying the Steiner pages for the early US. My threshhold for exclusion is really the ridiculous italicized values, but as I grow in my collecting, I will modify further. I really do not see my collecting anything over $1000. That buys alot of baby wipes!!
Don
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Thanks Don, I just may have to be flexible as far as a cut-off CV depending on the country...
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I've noted elsewhere that I experimented quite a bit with designing my own pages back in the '90s and into the early years of this century. I've displayed examples elsewhere and explained that I quickly learned I preferred graphic design to collecting the stamps for the pages.
I experimented a great deal with typography back then, but don't remember the names of the fonts I used. I can look them up if anyone is interested. Cartography had been a hobby of mine for many years. So I usually incorporated maps (or at least tried to) in my pages to add context, interest and a little color. I also decided to present my collections chronologically rather than by catalog number. This decision arose primarily from the large French African colonies sets. Talk about monotony! in presenting my stamps chronologically, I could break up the sets by year. This gave me more flexibility when it came to designing my pages. And, lastly, I wanted my stamps presented against a black background. So, my boxes were a little larger than average and had wide borders.
Some of my pages were designed for the Lindner T-Blank pages and others for 3-ring binders, but I didn't get very far in actually putting them to use. Other priorities got in the way.
I began my designs in Pagemaker and used Coreldraw! initially for graphics and ultimately for complete pages. Later, when newer versions of Microsoft Publisher became available, I experimented quite a bit with that program as well. Later still, I used Photoshop for more of the graphics. Initially, Photoshop was useless as far as text was concerned. Once that shortcoming was eliminated, Photoshop became a much better tool for page design. Besides, I needed it for my other work and couldn't justify continuing to update Coreldraw!. And Aldus stopped upgrading Pagemaker.
Epson was the first to begin introducing more archival quality inks. It took a few years for Canon and HP to catch on, but they finally did and I doubt if there is much difference in that regard between them these days.
I always preferred natural color papers to white, but archival quality papers of all types and colors were scarce in the '90s. Today, the selection is far greater.
Here are a couple of examples that show what I was trying to accomplish. These were created in 1996 with Coreldraw!, but I exported them to Photoshop to create these JPGs this evening.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Yes Tom,
I can see exactly where you are coming from. These pages are great.
Regards ... Tim
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Thanks, Michael and Tim. Another thing I tried to do was create an introduction for the country. The one for St. Kitts was probably the longest of the handful (or two) I completed. The artwork was found online. Not sure about any copyright issues. The map was created in CorelDraw! and imported into MS Publisher (2000?) where the remainder was created.
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So, I have followed this thread with a good deal of interest.
I think that the pages that you folks have designed or modified are all terrific. I'd like to have just half of the artistic flare you have shown us here.
I too would like to design my own pages, but thinking better of starting from scratch - see remark about lack of artistic ability - I have decided that I would be far better off starting with Steiner's pages (or something similar) and modifying them to suit my tastes.
Thing is, I believe Steiner's pages are in PDF format. As far as I know PDF files cannot be modified without purchase of advanced software from Adobe. Is that what those of you who have made such modifications have done / used? Or is there some other software solution that you're using?
David
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
David,
That is not true. With a free app, you can convert your Steiner PDF into a PowerPoint file. You can then easily make any modifications you want, then "save as" back to a PDF again
Chris
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Very nice work everyone! The pages you've created are so nice that I can see the collection having more value, as I can see someone buying it someday and keeping it intact, instead of quickly stripping the stamps out of a commercially produced album!
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
"Another thing I tried to do was create an introduction for the country"
keesindy: I also had been thinking about having an introductory page for each country. But since I collect WW, that would add some 400+ extra pages to my collection. I do like the idea of learning about each country and having a map to show where the country is located.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
I hear you on that, Chris. For a true world wide collection ANY extra page takes up valuable space!
When I work on a country now, I look at the pages and see if there are any that I can combine. Often the Scott specialty pages have a lone souvenir sheet on a page. The page before or after sometimes only has a few spaces for stamps with plenty of room for the sheet. I move the sheet to that page and toss the page that had the souvenir sheet. The same happens with individual stamps with some pages in a row that have spaces for only a few stamps. I combine the pages, or I'll even print Steiner pages front and back and remount the stamps on those pages. That happens alot with back of book items.
I have found that I can reduce each binder by around 5 to 10 pages. Each binder that I have can hold up to 500 pages. I have 85 binders, so that recovers about two binders for me. Right now I have one binder with no shelf space for it. I'll eventually recover enough space to empty that one, or else I'll need to build more shelf space.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
The idea of a 'title page' appeals to me, and so for each of my collections the first page gives some sort of illustrative idea of what lies within.
I am no master of design, but I find the challenge of choosing an appropriate image and incorporating the right size and font of lettering a pleasing task. One constant in these title pages is their 'greyed-out' appearance: for some reason I find a full colour or black and white page too visually insistent. As always, I print on ivory-tinted paper, the effect of which never reproduces very well in the images posted on these boards.
The images on the examples shown below tend towards the obvious - other parts of the collection present sterner challenges!
A question that has arisen in the letters pages of the newspaper recently is whether the phrase 'Nazi Occupation' should better read 'German Occupation'. I admit to a kind of 'political correctness' here, which comes from teaching WW2 to ten and eleven year olds. For them, we always fought 'the Nazis' in WW2, to avoid planting any seed of hatred against modern Germans or their country. I seem to have carried this over to my title pages, probably incorrectly.
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I dunno, I'd be putting art over function here guys! I'd certainly make room in my albums for those nice title pages, and I'd be more for presentation etc of the stamps than how many will fit on a page. Those are all the benefits of creating your own albums!
Remember that the pleasure of paging through your album far exceeds the temporary inconvenience of building another shelf!
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LOL.
Combining the album pages is better than having a page with one stamp on it, then turning the page and there are two stamps on a page, then the next page has one stamp on it, etc. Pages look better when they have stamps on them rather than 99% white space.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
12 Jul 2015
04:26:47am
re: I'm making my own pages :)
" ... I have been thinking about deleting out any stamps with a CV >$500 from my Steiner pages, but wanted to get thoughts from others. ..."
The real question, Chris, is how do you feel about that idea.
I see that there are quite a few suggestions or examples of what others are doing or want to do. Almost to a man (or woman) they seem fine to me.
The thing to do is after seeing the examples, just incorporate what appeals to you into what then becomes your system.
I remember over the years being asked for advice about certain things and the first thing I'd try to discover was what the person felt (Never thought, people will tell you their feelings about something but avoid committing those same ideas to the category "thoughts.") about the subject, then unless there was something very detrimental, what they felt they liked was the thing I suggested. I knew, by then that that was their likely choice regardless of my advice, so I may as well suggest the likely result anyway.
Human nature 101.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Charlie,
Of course you are correct. In all likelihood no one other than myself will ever even see my collection/albums. My personality is such that I like to gather advice from several different sources, think about things for a while, then decide what to do...Also, there might be undesired consequences of my actions that I haven't thought about, so I find it good to get thoughts and advice from others with more experience...the whole point of forums like this one, right?
Chris
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There was an Andy Capp cartoon many years ago. The first four frames show him talking to a different bloke in each. The last frame he addresses the viewers and says, "If you ask enough people, someone will tell you to do what you were going to do in the first place!"
I wouldn't delete any stamps from my album. I always want to know what I don't have. And blank spaces keep you collecting! Suppose you find that $500 stamp for 10% of catalog value? Or in an old album you've bought? You never know if / when you may get lucky. And that's what keeps a lot of folks collecting / sorting!
Many years ago I bought a 50 pound box of old covers on eBay. Most of it looked like a dealer kept a box under his desk that he dumped in things that were too crummy to sell. But I found a bunch of nice covers and postmark collections as I searched through it. I noticed that one cover had something inside it... it was a glassine envelope with a dozen great old 19th century USA beauties! Stamps too good for me to have purchased, but they are mine! Ya never know!
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
You can also emphasize the stamp designs on select stamp pages or the title pages. Use elements from the stamps themselves. Or simply dramatically enlarge an interesting or unique part of the stamp design—or an error. Use plain outline maps for backgrounds or detailed maps beside the stamps. If you're working with late 19th century stamps, use late 19th century maps. There is a learning curve, but Photoshop Elements and other tools can be used to pull cancels and overprints from stamps. You can then use those, enlarged or not, on your pages. Your imagination is your limit.
If you get images from online, be sure to use those that are in the public domain. Avoid using copyrighted material.
Have fun!
Here are some examples.
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Love seeing the creative work posted here :-) Creating pages is almost like a hobby by itself! I know I can have fun with things like this if I just remember to have fun and keep my "be efficient!" voice silenced ;-)
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02:14:37pm
re: I'm making my own pages :)
I use an Excel template to create my own pages. It is too difficult to line up the corner marks with the grids on the pages so I remove them from the Spreadsheet before printing and then reapply them with a pencil afterwards.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Keesindy said,
"If you get images from online, be sure to use those that are in the public domain. Avoid using copyrighted material."
Isn't this carrying political correctness ("legal correctness") to a place too far? My album pages, not to mention my exhibit pages, are non-commercial efforts which can hardly have any impact on the rights of any copyright holder. My web pages are a different matter, since the images I post are available to anyone to use and re-use as they see fit; I rarely used copyrighted images unless I obtain permission from the copyright holder.
Having said that, copyright issues remain a hugely complex problem for publishers of virtually any image not their own. Many members will remember Ann Mette Heindorff, a Danish collector who was forced to remove the bulk of the stamp images from her huge, not-commercial "Art on Stamps" web site after CopyDan, the Danish copyright police, threatened her with huge fines for copyright infringement. To me, that raises questions that cannot be answered at this time about the wholesale use of philatelic images by collectors, dealers, and publishers around the world. At the level of Stamporama, are we at risk because we publish philatelic images, all of which at some point must have been or are copyrighted? I have no idea at all.
Bob
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
I believe you can use an image on your own album page, as fair non-commercial use.
And time for a charming story...
I used to work for a large concern that had it's own NASCAR race team. Our corporate PR department would send us a weekly email as to our standings. I was reading the local newspaper and saw that our car would be appearing the next weekend at a local car dealership.
I was facility manager for their large R&D and office complex, so I called PR and asked if we could have the car visit our site. It took a few days, but at the last minute (Wednesday) it was confirmed that yes, the car was already in the area, and we could have it on our location on Thursday. Score!
So we crank out a quick flyer to announce this special event. I take it to our print shop / mail room to be printed in color and to be posted on the glass door of all of our site buildings by 7am the next morning. Great!
I come in at 8am on Thursday and there are no flyers anywhere. I make my way over to the print shop / mail room and ask what the heck happened.. the peon of a supervisor there had put a halt to the whole request. He told me that the flyer contained a copyrighted photograph! Yea.... our frigging product. We were the copyright owner.
I gave him an hour to get the notices printed and posted. We had the car out front of our cafeteria and anticipated people enjoying it over the lunch hour. The car showed up at 9am and there was already a line. The event was a major success, despite the hiccup!
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
I'm not an attorney (and have never played one on TV )The following is not legal advice. However, as a graphic designer, artist and author, I've researched this topic at length in the past few years.
I've learned that those who create copyrighted material (whether it be a book, a piece of music, a movie, a computer program, a photograph, a painting, an architectural structure, etc.) are more likely to understand what the fair use doctrine is—and isn't. The law is designed to protect the creators and encourage creativity. Just like with products and their patents.
Simply because something is visible in public, whether it be something on the internet or a stylish new building on the street, doesn't put it in the public domain. Public access does not equal public domain.
Nevertheless, fair use is a murky area of the law and commonly misunderstood. The test for compliance with the fair use doctrine is basically:
1. How are you intending to use the copyrighted material/object? In particular, how will your use of the item be "transformative?" Simply copying or making minor modifications is in no way transformative.
2. Is the copyrighted item more factual or more imaginative/creative? The former more easily complies the fair use doctrine limitations.
3. Will your use negatively affect the value?
4. How much of the copyrighted item are you planning to use? The larger the percentage used, the less likely the use is covered by the fair use doctrine.
The courts have had a field day with this doctrine in recent years. The fact that it's a gray area of the law means different courts have ruled differently.
The bottom line is that personal use MAY be covered by the fair use doctrine, but there are major restrictions that apply. If you choose to ignore copyright law, that's your prerogative. I'm just saying that doing so while thinking you're covered by the fair use doctrine is often (usually?) an incorrect interpretation of the law.
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re: I'm making my own pages :)
Bob, I began looking into copyright issues related to stamp images back in the '90s when I was experimenting with album pages and contemplating selling them. I corresponded with a few authorities around the world and was flabbergasted by the bureaucratic and often nonsensical and uninformed replies. There are international agreements, but some nations are signatories and some not. Postal authorities in some nations didn't seem to know they were signatories!
Dates of issuance can make a difference here and there. Here in the US, stamps (without exception, I believe) issued prior to the creation of the USPS are public domain while those issued by the USPS are not. Similar situations exist elsewhere in the world where earlier stamps are public domain and later stamps not. My pursuit of the creation and sale of pages with any images was going to be a deeper quagmire than the murky fair use doctrine issue.
This wasn't the reason I didn't proceed with the production of album pages, but it could have made things difficult with certain countries' stamps had I gotten that far.
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I think I'd be more concerned about using copyrighted numbering systems (Scotts, Gibbons, etc) than stamp images.
Overall, I think it may be a question for Mr Steiner, who has successfully distributed a grand array of country albums.
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