Illustrated albums: a new home for your stamps

A stamp album is an ideal way for a philatelist to store their collection. As a rule, the size of a collection is judged by how many albums are stored in the collection. The first such album appeared before the appearance of stamps, when in 1774, the Irish toll collector John Burke began gluing colored receipts in one of the office books.

Among the various contemporary albums, illustrated versions are particularly popular. From the outside, it usually looks like a hard cover with a theme label. However, the sheets inside contain images of stamps that need to be pasted. The illustration is slightly smaller than the stamp itself, which overlaps the drawing.

Many foreign companies continue to produce similar products, presenting albums in which the stamps need to be pasted in chronological order or by subject. The design of the album is simple: inside there are brackets for attaching the sheets. Thanks to this design, the number of sheets can be increased to a certain size, as far as the cover size allows. As a rule, every year the company that produces illustrated albums adds new sets to the range of sheets.

In addition, some publications contain text descriptions of stamps, sometimes in several languages. The disadvantage of choosing such albums is that it is not possible to place the stamps in a self-selected order. The solution to this problem can be the purchase of additional sheets without illustrations, which can be diluted with the main collection. You can also specify useful information about pasted instances on additional sheets.