BenFranklin1902

Tom in Exton, PA
22 May 2015
10:30:07pm

I've been reading and absorbing everything I can from the board since I joined. Since I haven't been very involved for a long time, I'm very interested in the computer generated album pages since the last page I made was on a typewriter and drafting board!

I've been reading the 'how to organize a collection' threads, and how people house and organize collections. I was at Hobby Lobby the other day and I believe I mentioned on this board, that they sell a Supersafe stock book for around $15. It's 8 pages, which is 16 sides, with 10 glassine rows per page side. There are two glassine interleaves between each page. The unfortunate part is that they only stock one at a time. The good part is that Hobby Lobby has a constant 40% off one item coupon on their website. So I have it bookmarked on my phone. All in, sales tax and all, I've been buying these books for less than $10.

The last visit I noticed they had Supersafe Stock Sheets, that go in 3 ring binders. These come 5 to a pack for $4.99. So they are a buck a page. I found they had two packs of the S2 two pocket ones that are good for covers. I recently came across my old New Jersey postmark collection, all on complete cover, so I thought I would house that in these pages. I thought, 10 pages, good for 40 covers, would be a good start... um, no.... I only got to "B".

And in my thinking, there had to be a better source, so I went to the 'bay. I found the Supersafe brand wasn't sold, but other comparable pages sold for about the same price. Then I remembered something.... I have Ultra Pro pages for my postcard collection. I use them to house the 100s of Ben Franklin's on cover.... so I went to look and YES. They make a 2 pocket page.



These are clear plastic pages. They are one sided, but you can load in covers or postcards back to back. Now here's the good part, they are cheap! I know I paid something like $22 for the box of 100 for my postcard sheets. I did that maybe six years ago and still have plenty. The box is 100 sheets, but dealers have broken them down so you can buy as few as 10 sheets. On the other end I found the best dealer selling 5 boxes for $81.50. I hesitated and saved the page to think about it. Tonight I got an email from eBay offering a 10% discount, so I pressed that Buy It Now button for $73.35 postpaid. That's less than 15 cents a sheet.

So once these arrive, the first thing I'll do is get my NJ Postmark collection out of the shoe box and into pages. I have tons of binders, so that's not an issue.

Then I'll start digging in to my US hoard from 35 years ago. These are perfect pages to devote a pocket side to each stamp issue. So I can stock everything into these... enough room for a FDC or other interesting cover, a plate block or singles in glassine, etc. good enough to organize and be able to see everything until I get to the point of making my own album pages. Yea, that's a plan.

See what you folks have done to me??

 
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re: The Great Sort Is On!

 
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BenFranklin1902

Tom in Exton, PA
23 May 2015
12:14:07pm

re: The Great Sort Is On!

Getting back on track....



Here's the Supersafe pages that cost a dollar each at Hobby Lobby. I do like the black background, but not at a dollar each. This is page one of my NJ postmark collection. I tried to get the board to show the page upright, but no matter what I did, this is what I got.



Here's the Ultra Pro pages for postcards. You get 4 to a page. The page is clear plastic, no black backing. But it works fine with the cards since they cover the entire area and are the same size when back to back.

I may print and cut a card to go behind each cover for the formal albums. I could do a typed description, then print the page and cut to size. I do have a cutting board.

 
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