Does anyone have any insight as to why albums are so expensive? I'd like to start putting my stamps in albums as opposed to stock sheets, but I'm just wondering if $600 for the Scott albums plus the cost of mounts is really the best deal I can find. If thats the case I can find "inexpensive" albums for 2 of my areas of focus, but I can't find any good deals on albums for my PRC stamps.
Albums are expensive without a doubt...what i did will not work for everyone..i purchased partial collections ..thats i how got my nine Scott International albums. Most of us would rather spend on stamps rather than albums..many use plastic stock sheets or print their own pages to avoid buying expensive albums. I do not think i really answered of why albums are so expensive though .
I may be wrong but I think part of it is that we are (or used to be - haven't seen a new album in 30 years)talking about high quality acid free paper and quality bindings in a very small quantity - it would be interesting to know how many PRC albums are out there.
Another reason may well be "because they can" - just like big pharma. Once you are hooked on a manufacturer ypeople tend to stay with them.
If you search around a bit you may find a collection in an album offered for much less than the cost of the album itself - if you are real lucky it will be hingeless. All of my Specialized albums came from collection purchases.
I envy a new collector starting from simple quadrille pages. If you intend to get serious quickly with a broad interest area I still would recommend blank/quadrille pages. The printed albums simply offer security of pictures and organization. As soon as you grounded and seriously in you will find your own organization works best. And using standard sized pages in regular bindings saves costs & space. (One man's opinion).
I am a detail guy who expands the Internationals I collect in for my worldwide collection. I have literally replaced the first few pages of every major country to accommodate my accumulation of typing for various issues and/or acquiring all of sets only partially represented.
They are so expensive, because we continue to buy them at whatever prices they charge. There isn't much of any competition in the market either for comprehensive albums:
Amos = Scott, Minkus and HE Harris
Palo
Mystic - US only
Steiner (do it yourself)
The advice of finding used albums is very good. You will save plenty of money, and you may get stamps in the album. Then, buy the pages that you need that you can't find used.
I confess to having spent quite a few sawbucks on several Davo albums. Very nice indeed, but my next album or two, which will house my childhood collection of world wide and US stamps will be quadrille pages and inexpensive binders. There is added satisfaction on doing your own layout that I miss in the pre-made albums. And MUCH more flexibility.
Also, as I have started collecting Great Britain First Day Covers, and did not want to spend a lot on special binders for those, I made a trip to Target and bought some "mini" binders & "mini" clear sheet page protectors to hold the covers, and lined paper to put in for amplifying information, etc. A binder and 15 sheet protectors run about $6.98. Much better than 30 or 40 dollars for a specialized binder. And you feel quite smug for being so brilliant. Or vice versa.
A/ Short print runs, single sales, low volume business overall.
{/2c}
I've attended many conferences at which we were handed very nice customized binders stuffed with all sorts of stuff. No way that the final production cost - even with all of those inserts, and the assembly work - went past, say, a very few tens of dollars each.
We can all make our own decisions about what to do in light of the costs of pre-printed albums.
But I don't think we should be jealous of the publishers, or run to compete with them.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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"I collect stamps today precisely the way I collected stamps when I was ten years old."
May I respond as a retail manager in a Canadian stamp shop? Note that we sell very few Scott albums. We sell mostly Lighthouse, Lindner, and Canadian Wholesale Supply (CWS) brands. So, why are albums so expensive?
1. Paper. Most of the paper we use to-day is recycled and of low quality. Compare an envelope you purchased at a shop in the last few years, to the one in your collection from thirty years ago. Same goes for the three-ringed binder paper your children buy for school, and the notepad you use at the office. That envelope is about three times lighter than the older on. Stamp albums are made with top quality paper. There is little commercial demand for top quality paper. Other than the stamp people, and wedding invitations, the only other folks using top quality paper are the scrap-booking hobby.
2. Demand. It is WAY down! When I started working at Ian Kimmerly Stamps, in 2009, we sold hundreds and hundreds of annual supplements each year, for a number of different albums. I'll probably sell less than 100 this year. Why? The collector who collects a whole country, front to back died, and the people who are new to the hobby generally don't collect whole countries. Why?
3. Size. A new collector wants to collect Canada? France? Germany? USA? Get your wallet out! The run of albums for those countries run from four (Canada) to six (France). Not cheap. Most collectors who have entered the hobby in the last five years use stockbooks / stockpages or print their own albums. As well, they generally collect part countries. For example: GB 1953-1970, Canada to 1952; USA 1847-1932; Germany 1949-1991. Those folks are buying one album, or making their own.
4. Shipping. Canada Post, DHL, Purolator, UPS, CanPar, they all cost about the same. Shipping a 10 kg box with three albums in it, will cost a good $15 - $20. That is added to the price.
I hope this helps.
David
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"President, The Society for Costa Rica Collectors"
Retired Ap. Book Mod, Pres Golden Gate Stamp Club, Hi Tech Consultant 24 Apr 2016 01:48:40pm
re: Why are albums so expensive?
The problem is that Album sellers have not yet joined the 21st century. Like book sellers, they are stuck in the past and are not taking advantage of the modern electronic world. What is wrong with album sellers? Well they sell paper!
Why ship paper today? Electronic files and print at home is the only way to go. And with the option to sell and print one page or a whole book at a time, it is the flexibility a serious collector needs (and a beginner collector as well). Would rather spend my money on the stamps!
That is why I will only use Steiner now!
Yes getting a good old used Album books or pages is one way to get around the high cost of albums, but non standard page sizes, hole types, page layout, paper thickness, etc etc..were all features of monopoly inclined sellers...and are very quickly becoming a problem to collectors rather than an asset.
I am taking apart older Scott, Minkus, Lindner, Y&T albums and standardizing..and it looks so much better! Ending up with a lot of pages to discard or donate, but shipping cost are high, so they tend to be donated locally.
I wonder if Album producers just like Catalog producers are not all going to price themselves out of the market. And by insisting in their old ways, they are missing out on true market opportunities! E commerce is a game changer, and you must adapt or perish!
rrr...
Which would you rather have?
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"E. Rutherford: All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
The truth is within and only you can reveal it 24 Apr 2016 04:29:02pm
re: Why are albums so expensive?
I would think that Steiner pages are driving up the prices for the brand name manufacturers.
Other than finding a good used brand name album, I think it should be clear that Steiner pages are the wave of the future and one that the big dogs cannot compete with. They are also very flexible so that you can modify pages to suit your collecting needs which is much more difficult to do with the brand name pages.
Unless a collector has deep pockets and is aiming at completion of any particular country it would be foolish to chose anything but Steiner formats. If you have bought stamps wisely then there is a good possibility that you could recoup your investment when selling.
Money spent on new albums, stock sheets and books are money down the drain.
I use a hybrid approach. I bought used White Ace pages and binders. I bought a long span of commemorative pages for the face value of the included stamps which were mounted in Showguard mounts. I picked the better stamp of the one I had and the one in the album and used the inferior ones for postage. I was able to sell the postage to my business and essentially get free pages and mounts for lots of pages. White Ace uses 8-1/2" x 11" pages so I can make my own. I buy blanks from White Ace (Washington Press) so the border matches, but you can also use 67lb acid-free card stock and get the same thickness as the White Ace pages.
No matter which option you choose, I agree that being able to print your own pages is a high priority. I even bought a 3/8" corner cutter from a scrapbooking store to round off the corners of card stock to match the White Ace corners.
So yes, a new set of albums is quite expensive, but there are several alternatives that are much more affordable.
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"Expanding your knowledge faster than your collection can save you a few bucks."
For me the issue is availability as well as the cost.
In Adelaide (South Australia) 20 years ago, there was a quite a few stamp dealers in the CBD. Now there is only one and one in the outer suburbs and he does not sell what I want to buy. The one in the CBD was so full of cigarette smoke that I only could only stay in there a few seconds before leaving.
That pretty much forces me to buy everything online. I am buying Lighthouse blank pages and printing them myself. At $1 each and as I am not working, it would be good to buy one packet of 10 at a time as I need them. But as the postage on one pack is $7, I have to buy several to make it worth my while. So I am saving up to buy all I need in one go, but that is hard.
I know the albums themselves are expensive, the one I want is about $100 (Lighthouse turnbar Perfect), but I figure that I only need a couple for what I want to do, and they do look nice and after all, presentation is half of the joy of collecting.
The real reason that album pages cost so much is not because the manufacturers are selling paper, rather it’s because there are too few buyers of their wares. This means that there are fewer albums sold and therefore the intellectual property rights (i.e. the labor it took somebody to conceive of, design, and layout each and every page) have to amortized over fewer and fewer copies. This not unlike textbooks, which also cost a fortune.
Because there are fewer collectors today than there were 20 years ago there are also fewer producers of albums and other supplies. This, combined with the aforementioned amortization problem, does mean that those manufactures that remain can and, given the reduction in competition, do charge more.
If there were more collectors buying more albums, then arguably more firms would enter the market and a case could be made for lower prices.
In the meantime people like Steiner, are successfully eating into what’s left of the album manufacturers market by providing an inexpensive alternative to the nice preprinted products offered by Scotts, Palo, et at. Steiner is not charging full freight for this intellectual property. Rather, he is providing web-based album pages for very little money because, I presume, he enjoys what he’s doing and he doesn’t have to make a living at it.
As the bulk of the work has been done, that is to say all the previous years, the only new pages created are for the last year.
Bearing in mind also that they are undoubtedly now kept as computerized text, the annual cost should be coming down each year. Paper cost has actually reduced over the past few years and here in Canada as in most parts of the world mills have shut down due to an over abundance of pulp.(Recycling has also played a part).
I appreciate that there are fewer collectors than in the hey day, whenever that was, but without having to laboriously typeset today the cost really should not be anywhere near current prices. I feel that there is a certain amount of gouging and reliance on those who will have the newest bit of the set or latest and greatest at any cost.
I see no change on the horizon for the album manufacturers until they fold like a pack of cards (or a bad hand in poker).
Kudos to Bill Steiner for giving a lot of us what we want at an affordable price. It would be even better if he gave us the ability, within his program, to amend his pages to suit some of our differing collecting methods.
this has been alluded to above, but, think about it. There's a significant expense to turn on a big press and make the plates to run the equivalent of six binders' worth of pages for France. That initial expense is the same whether it's 1 or 1 million; the closer to the latter, the cheaper the unit cost; the closer to the former, the higher.
In addition, paper is better and more expensive.
it used to be a publisher could produce a small album for the world; is that possible today? and before, there'd be representative stamps the child was likely to encounter.... how about today?
So, we're talking about specialty pages for specialty collectors who likley already have their albums and approaches down....
David
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
The page album manufacturers are just going to have to learn the lesson of the sheet music industry.
For decades, you went to the brick-and-mortar store to get your sheet music. If they didn't have it, they would order it and you wait. Then it got easy (and a lot cheaper) to copy things, so people would just copy their fellow musicians sheet music.
To make up for the lost sales, the printers increased prices, also touting the quality of their paper as well as the true "full-size" paper of originals (copies were smaller letter size sheets).
Finally, one store negotiated and began playing around with the "print on demand" sheet music. The business model was laughed at. Copyright owners feared it would be too easy to "steal". But the print-on-demand price was reasonable, and certainly much cheaper/quicker than the pre-printed or back-ordered.
Being able to get almost ANY classical sheet music on demand is now pretty common-place. There are still those who prefer the pre-printed sheet music, but it's getting harder and harder to find brick-and-mortar stores that have a decent inventory.
Plus, now the print-on-demand is available online. You don't even have to go to the store. And yes, the sheet music industry is doing fine, although there are definitely fewer brick-and-mortar stores. But it's not like those stores only sold sheet music.
The stamp page album manufacturers are going to have to make some adjustments to their business model.
I personally believe the demand for page albums is still there. It's just that most collectors don't want to spend $100+/$1000+ for a bunch of pages that will be 75% empty for many years. This is why Steiner has been so successful, and I think Palo has been somewhat wise in partially employing Steiner pages into their business model.
The Steiner pages are not perfect. There are still many complaints. But since it's print-on-demand, it's quite easy to make corrections/changes.
The album manufacturers don't have to quit making page albums. There will still be collectors willing to fork out the big bucks for those. They only have to consider making print-on-demand options available for the MANY collectors who aren't willing to spend that much money on supplies.
The sheet music industry has learned, that competition and innovation are not necessarily bad things.
to reinforce Kim's comment, that's how I get ALL my daughter's sheet music.... and you can order it for voice, piano, or any other instrument. works fine
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
I found the same as true and since my small collections are intended to give to other people in the future, a large album was not the answer. I'm also a total noobie and don't have a clue about what I'm doing so I had to experiment.
I experimented with MS-Word, and MS-Publisher. Both have their advantages and both have their drawbacks.
Then I downloaded AlbumEasy (http://www.thestampweb.com/download.html). It's free but it's also command line dependent. You enter your commands into a text file and compile it. Does a good job but very cumbersome.
Finally, since I was already using EZStamp (http://ezstamp.com/), I downloaded their demo for AlbumGen (http://ezstamp.com/software/stamp-album-software/). It is a lot easier to do your layouts but lacks some of the text/photo interaction you have in Word.
Right now I'm sticking with AlbumGen to make my meager album sets but might in the future go back to Word so I can easily mix the story behind a stamp along with a picture box within which to place the stamp.
Retired Ap. Book Mod, Pres Golden Gate Stamp Club, Hi Tech Consultant 25 Apr 2016 05:36:11pm
re: Why are albums so expensive?
The book industry has gone to print on demand for small runs.
Look at Amazon business!
The Philatelic album and page makers are stuck in their old ways. They will have to change or perish!
NO VALID reason not to go electronics today!
rrr...
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"E. Rutherford: All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
Are they really print on demand, or are they produce/ship after order? There is a huge difference.
When I posted about print on demand, I meant once I pay for it, I can print it IMMEDIATELY.
The current Steiner pages are also proprietary. You aren't suppose to print them out unless you paid for them.
Basically, all print-on-demand sheet music is also proprietary as well.
The difference to me, is whether they want to be the sole producer/distributor of the printed product. The more physical product you deliver and the more control you have over actual production of the physical product, the more that can/will be charged.
There will always be collectors who want to buy a "finished/complete" product. But that pool is clearly dwindling. Will the traditional album manufacturers continue to rely on the dwindling pool and cede the print (by user) on demand market? I can only watch and see what happens. It's not my company.
The truth is within and only you can reveal it 26 Apr 2016 02:46:23am
re: Why are albums so expensive?
To the people who are worried about getting updates of Scott U.S. Nationals and any other countries. About 17 years ago when Steiner came out, I use to go down to the copy store with templates for cropping out borders and printed Steiner formats on blank (except for border) Scott Specialty pages. The actual Steiner layout is similar to Scott buy actually better because of the brief descriptions. I did this for years until I got tired of it and bought a used wide bed printer so that I could print at home. I use it for expanding first pages in my Scott Specialty albums to accommodate variations as other needed pages. Scott blank pages are quite expensive but G&K are making Scott knock off pages which are much cheaper, however they were hard to find when I last looked. Wide bed printers are fairly expensive even used but you should be able to find one for around a $150. This solves the problem for me. Most of the countries that I am expanding to late years I simply use the Steiner on 8 X 11/2 cardstock in a three ring binder.
Like Antonius, I also bought a wide bed printer for about $115 a few years ago. I also bought paper (from the PaperMill store) that was precisely the size of Scott National and almost exact thickness, color and texture. Total cost, including printer for 1000 sheets about $175. I haven't used it yet, but that's because I'm an idiot.
Collecting the world 1840 to date - one stamp at a time! 27 Apr 2016 03:56:13am
re: Why are albums so expensive?
A lot of folks here seem to desire 'digital pages' as the solution for cheaper pages, but IMHO they're not. Being a (web) business person, I'd split this into series of questions:
a) how much does it cost to produce a set of pages (from a start)?
c) how much does it cost to distribute them?
b) how much does it cost to sell them?
The answer is pretty much no matter which way you look at.
Let's assume it takes 200 working hours for the design of a single country album (if you don't trust me, try to add something like 5000 rectangles of varying sizes to any document; it will a LOT of take time). How much salary would you expect for month-and-half of labor? Now multiply that sum by factor of three, and you're looking at the expenses a company/business would have in creating album pages. Because the pages would be for sale, the worker should have good knowledge of DTP-programs, color management etc. required by print industry. They are not minimum wage folks, and north of $10K expenses would be very realistic.
Second, there's the distribution... Assuming it's all digital the cost would be a having website. Having a domain, hosting, certificates is not that expensive, the real expense comes once again from the labor. Somebody has to design, built and maintain the website so it works well, attracts folks and remains secure. Again, it's serious work and people who do it for living expect proper pay.... And let's not forget marketing neither; that is an bottomless well of costs.
And finally there's the question of sales. Add paypal fees, accounting etc. and you're once again looking for a nice pile of money gone somewhere.
The bottom line...
Doing stamps and pages as a hobby in one thing; with that you don't count hours spent.
Doing it as a business for living is something that gets pretty expensive.
Steiner did a fabulous job at combining the best of two worlds (and was early pioneers of crowd/collector sourcing), and for that I raise a hat to him. Likely nobody will never surpass his achievement.
And Palo did a very smart move by adopting/licensing Steiner pages. It's simply waste of resources to start from a scratch (but likely they are still putting some serious hours to the pages).
But going back to original question - why are (commercial) album pages so expensive? Simply because it takes a lot of professional labor to produce and provide the pages, and it does not come cheap.
Actually, my perspective is that I can understand the expense for pre-printed album pages -- yes, they do have to make a profit.
What I don't understand is the reluctance to tap into a much larger pool of collectors interested in print-on-demand. While it is true production costs of physical albums is small when spread out over large quantities, it is obviously not a trivial amount. Then factor in the design cost (significant) as mentioned. But my perspective regarding the major manufacturers is:
-- the design is already done (there is no more additional labor cost other than corrections and new issues); this is no additional cost, since it has to be done anyway for pre-print album production
-- many of them already bypass the dealers/distributors and have direct sales websites; remember all the dealer complaints when Amos started selling direct?
I agree with scb, that Palo made a smart business decision by partnering with an already-existing layout design (Steiner). It can be a lot cheaper to license something "off-the-shelf", than to try to finish designing album pages for the rest of the world. For the other major album manufacturers, they already have their own designs done.
In the early days of print sheet music, the conversion costs to digital delivery and digital-based on-demand production were significant because back then, the design/printing systems were extremely difficult to port over, there were very few websites, few people online, and few consumers had personal printing capabilities (hence, the first on-demand was using printing kiosks at the music stores).
Right now, for the major manufacturers and a significant number of consumers, that infrastructure has already been set up. To me, it is primarily a business decision whether or not to provide a lower cost alternative to a larger pool of consumers. And the choice at this time, appears to be no. And my guess is because they are more concerned about losing pre-printed album sales (which are going down anyway), rather than seeing the potential for greater sales to an overall larger pool of consumers.
I'm skeptical that most of the album companies, with the exception of maybe Palo, could afford to even attempt "print on demand" (meaning its not worth their effort). Palo maybe could because Steiner's pages are already sort-of on-demand. Ignore the web-site development effort and just consider the cost of responding to issues. They'd have to hire people, communicate with customers, and actually monitor their web-site.
Further, why would anyone want to print-on-demand something like a Davo album? The whole point is to get really high quality paper, album, slip cover and mounts with no effort.
Personally, the last thing I want is another person's page design, but I DO want their album, slipcover, paper and mount designs, so I'll settle for Davo's page design.
Perhaps Scott album pages could see more demand, given the quality of the other materials besides paper is pretty low, but Amos would still have to implement the web-site and system and possibly reformat the page files. There's either little profit in the venture or too much risk.
I happen to own the Steiner pages, which provides the only real print-on-demand option, even though I think their layout is pretty poor (also, the 8.5 x 11 format is not aesthetically pleasing). I purchased Steiner's for convenience, mainly so my children could print on demand, and would be a last resort for my own pages.
Amos and others would have to compete with Steiner's for on-demand printing. They'd have to lower their prices, and also cannibalize their own business for the hardware (binders, slipcovers etc.). Customers willing to print on-demand will use cheaper paper and go to Wal-Mart for binders.
I can see an expensive album for the classic higher value stamps...i can not see spending hundreds of dollars for an album to house modern 25 cent catalog stamps and 2 dollar sets !
"I can see an expensive album for the classic higher value stamps...i can not see spending hundreds of dollars for an album to house modern 25 cent catalog stamps and 2 dollar sets !"
The quality of the album and related hardware is a matter of collector taste, and depends to some extent on the motivation for the hobby. For a world-wide collector, or collector without any specialization, its probably less practical given the number of albums required, but if specializing in a few areas, quality is practical. I collect a few countries and in most cases only to around the 1970's, therefore, for me, a high quality album (and I don't have many) has strong advantages regardless of the value of the stamp:
* I don't like hinging any stamps, so having a hingeless album saves me the cost of buying mounts and the cost of my time to apply the mounts to the pages. What portion of the price of a deluxe Davo album can be attributed to the mounts and the time I save? At least 1/4 of the price I'd estimate. Most people wouldn't mount low value stamps, so that's no great advantage to most people.
* I want my stamps, regardless of value, to be protected from the elements, so for me, a slipcase is a necessity. Its built into the price of the album.
* I don't just collect for the enjoyment of the process, but for the satisfaction of admiring the "completed" project and "caressing" the fine quality pages and album.
The satisfaction of viewing a collection in a high quality album is worth something for entertainment value alone and that entertainment will go on for years.
* The wide pages are a necessity. Each stamp, regardless of value, is a work of art that deserves a nice frame. The cost of the pages and the printer to make your own wide pages is not that bad, but the time required is prohibitive.
* I like to upgrade my stamps as I acquire better copies. A hingeless album saves time and hassle when replacing a lower quality item (similar to a stock book). No need to remove the hinge from the old item and hinge the new one. In fact, you can pop multiple items in the top-loading mounts if you like.
Granted, for the cost of a Davo album I could buy three seasons of Game of Thrones from Amazon.com, take the family to a couple movies or buy one-half of a US #1. But, take out the cost of the pages, slipcase, album, mounts and time doing menial stamp collecting chores and consider the entertainment value versus what's left; it might be worthwhile.
I think you 'hit the nail on the head' with your comments. The choice of an album system involves multiple factors. Particularly, like you said, if you specialize in one or a few countries it would be practical to use nice hingeless albums. For me, I collect worldwide (1840-1940), which would not be practical to use those kinds of albums.
I played around with Steiner pages, but didn't like the 8..5 x 11" format and the plain modern font type. What I doing now is that I ended up buying the Vintage Reproduction of the Scott Browns, which cover 1840-1940 for all countries. Now, these fit into Scott International or Speciality album binders and would take up probably 12-15 of these binders (which is a huge expense in itself!), and most of the pages would be empty. So what I decided to do is to 3-hole punch the pages, get nice binders of my chose, but only include pages for which I have stamps for. This way, my number of binders grow as my collection grows and there are no empty pages in my collection.
I like your solution for worldwide collecting. Print-on-demand of Steiner pages or used Scott Internationals would probably be my choice. The urge to collect worldwide is there. I just don't have the time. I'll probably start via some other seductive avenue, like collecting some European country and its Colonies or South America, etc.
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