Hello Phil? collecting WW or some countries can be extremely expensive these days. IE the UK 2016 Year Book "Issue Date: 8 November 2016 - Catalogue code: AY115 now costs £140.00 ($187.38 - €158.89) If I was still living in the UK I could buy Mint stamps on the day of issue for a little less but I would still have to buy albums for them. Collecting themes placates the collecting "bug" and is less hard on the budget. I am in my eleventh year of retirement and with the world economies and exchange rates I have to tighten the belt a little. Daily living is more important these days. Regards, James.
James, I'm still at the point where a $50 World Wide lot from Ebay fills up many spaces in my albums. Come to think of it, I still have numerous lots I've accumulated (a nice way to say I'm a stamp hoarder) over the last couple of years I'm still going through so I don't feel like I need to purchase anything extravagant for my collection. The occasional "gem" I come come across stills keeps my interest. But as far as albums go - have you considered Bill Steiner's Printable Stamp Albums? I think they are a very viable alternative to the expensive albums. I've also started making a couple of pages for a set or 2 myself. Maybe I'll share them here one day and see what everyone thinks.
Hello Phil, 90% of my stamp purchases are from EBay or auctions. They are regularly scanned to fill the gaps in my collections. The other 10% from the post office philatelic departments [UK & Thai] I also trade with other collectors. Yesterday I exchanged numbers with a newfound collector. I have also been printing my own pages since age 12, I was involved with printing and type compositing + linocut images for my school magazine for 3 years. I wanted to join “The Print” when I left school, but there was a great deal of nepotism in the trade so I ended up as an apprentice to an electrical engineer instead. In the pharmaceutical industry we upgraded from ladder logic systems [PLC] to computer systems in 1974. I built my first computer in 1978-9 and progressed from there. My new album pages started when I got a copy of DB2 in 1984?, followed by Lotus1-2-3, I now use Excel 2013. Regards, James.
