Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
My name's George, I'm in my early 20s and live in Germany
Great to see there are lively online communities dedicated to the hobby where newbies can ask for advice! I find myself in a bit of a dilemma regarding acquiring an album for a collection I want to initiate. As a young child and into my early teenage years, I was fond of collecting stamps, but as time went by, I gradually lost touch with the pastime. Now, at 23, the desire to collect stamps has resurfaced over the past few months, and I feel prepared to dive back into it.
My aspiration is to start a collection of US stamps, and I've utterly fallen for the Mystic American Heirloom Album Set, primarily because it features informational boxes about the stamps on each page. This aspect is incredibly appealing to me and embodies exactly what I yearn for. To me, stamps represent miniature portals of knowledge, and this album's design is, quite frankly, a dream come true. Can't say anything about paper quality and other aspects, of course, because I've never seen one of the albums in real life.
However, I'm currently facing a significant obstacle: I reside in Germany, and finding Mystic albums in local marketplaces is an almost impossible task. Additionally, the expense of purchasing a new album and having it shipped from the US is dauntingly high for me. I find it astounding to read that the albums used to be much more affordable just a few years ago! Right now, if I wanted the 3-volume basic set without mounts, I'd have to pay more than $300 with shipping to Europe, which is, quite frankly, prohibitive. And I really want to join the hobby again, but I guess it's called the hobby of kings for many reasons, not just because it's top-tier fun!
So I've mostly given up on the idea of purchasing a Mystic album. In my younger days, I used to print individual Steiner Pages for any stamps I had, but revisiting my old album now, it seems rather lackluster, even if totally adorable. So I thought I might start again. However, I wanted to ask if any of you know of a source I can use to create my own info boxes on each stamp series for my custom pages and imitate Mystic's concept in this way. Of course, I could just fish out info from the internet on any subject I see on a stamp, but that won't include the postal history, which would be a shame. I'd be very grateful if any of you had tips for a broke university student trying to get back into stamps!
All the best!
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I have a Mystic album and one reason I switched to it was to create my own custom pages since Mystic does not provide spaces for minor varieties that I wanted adding to the collection. I used Scribus, a free open source program to replicate style for matching pages. I reproduced the left side data when I inserted pages in between two pages to keep left data. I was not adding a lot of new information. Mystic has a lot of stamp information on their website and some in the "This Day in History" section. If I was doing it today, I would likely use AlbumEasy software.
https://info.mysticstamp.com/this-day-in ...
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I use vario pages. I can intersperse pages of different sizes and there is no limit to the number or kind of stamps I can include in my collection.
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05:44:17am
Hi everyone!
My name's George, I'm in my early 20s and live in Germany Great to see there are lively online communities dedicated to the hobby where newbies can ask for advice!
I find myself in a bit of a dilemma regarding acquiring an album for a collection I want to initiate. As a young child and into my early teenage years, I was fond of collecting stamps, but as time went by, I gradually lost touch with the pastime. Now, at 23, the desire to collect stamps has resurfaced over the past few months, and I feel prepared to dive back into it.
My aspiration is to start a collection of US stamps, and I've utterly fallen for the Mystic American Heirloom Album Set, primarily because it features informational boxes about the stamps on each page. This aspect is incredibly appealing to me and embodies exactly what I yearn for. To me, stamps represent miniature portals of knowledge, and this album's design is, quite frankly, a dream come true. Can't say anything about paper quality and other aspects, of course, because I've never seen one of the albums in real life.
However, I'm currently facing a significant obstacle: I reside in Germany, and finding Mystic albums in local marketplaces is an almost impossible task. Additionally, the expense of purchasing a new album and having it shipped from the US is dauntingly high for me. I find it astounding to read that the albums used to be much more affordable just a few years ago! Right now, if I wanted the 3-volume basic set without mounts, I'd have to pay more than $300 with shipping to Europe, which is, quite frankly, prohibitive. And I really want to join the hobby again, but I guess it's called the hobby of kings for many reasons, not just because it's top-tier fun!
So I've mostly given up on the idea of purchasing a Mystic album. In my younger days, I used to print individual Steiner Pages for any stamps I had, but revisiting my old album now, it seems rather lackluster, even if totally adorable. So I thought I might start again. However, I wanted to ask if any of you know of a source I can use to create my own info boxes on each stamp series for my custom pages and imitate Mystic's concept in this way. Of course, I could just fish out info from the internet on any subject I see on a stamp, but that won't include the postal history, which would be a shame. I'd be very grateful if any of you had tips for a broke university student trying to get back into stamps!
All the best!
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re: Young collector trying to find/make an album for my US collection
I have a Mystic album and one reason I switched to it was to create my own custom pages since Mystic does not provide spaces for minor varieties that I wanted adding to the collection. I used Scribus, a free open source program to replicate style for matching pages. I reproduced the left side data when I inserted pages in between two pages to keep left data. I was not adding a lot of new information. Mystic has a lot of stamp information on their website and some in the "This Day in History" section. If I was doing it today, I would likely use AlbumEasy software.
https://info.mysticstamp.com/this-day-in ...
5 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.
re: Young collector trying to find/make an album for my US collection
I use vario pages. I can intersperse pages of different sizes and there is no limit to the number or kind of stamps I can include in my collection.
Login to Like
this post