How to create stamp album pages with your computer

By William F. Sharpe

There are three ways to obtain or create album pages with your computer.

The easiest approach is to download completed album pages.

You also can use album page creation programs that are specifically designed for stamp collectors.

Finally, you can use commercial programs, such as Word, Publisher or Powerpoint modules from Microsoft Office; the Draw module from LibreOffice; Scribus; InDesign; or PrintMaster. This is just a small sampling; there are many other commercial programs that will let you create your own album pages.

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William Steiner’s website provides the most complete set of album pages. You can download some sample pages free from this site, or you can purchase a $30 annual license to download any and all of the available pages.

Steiner keeps his pages up to date. Annual update pages for United States stamps can be downloaded even after your annual license expires.

A Google search revealed additional album pages. I found a source from France, Timbres Mondial Album (World Stamp Album) that provides multiple country pages at no cost.

While the album pages from many of the countries display French descriptions, others, including those of the United States, Canada, Israel, and Vatican City, are in English. Most of the album pages extend through 2008 stamp issues.

The American Philatelic Society offers many album pages right here.

In addition, the American Topical Association offers youth album pages for a variety of themes. These pages are quadrille ruled with the topic name printed at the top of the page with one or more related stamps illustrated beside it. It’s easy enough to place your stamps on the already-ruled page.

Anyone interested in classic United States issues from the 1800s can find a multitude of album pages at Tom Kendall’s Mostly Classics site. 

This site includes a basic stamp album, plus specialized pages covering most stamp types and colors, as well as pages for individual issues in all the various forms.

Kendall also offers Iceland album pages covering the years 1873 to 1944.

Dedicated stamp inventory programs include Stamp Album Studio, AlbumEasy, Stamp Album Pro, and StampCreator.

Free Stamp Album and Fresh Stamp album offers to create album pages for you online. The online form is shown above. After you have completed this form, you can download the result as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file.

You can pay $15 to eliminate the site’s tagline in the lower right-hand corner of your pages, according to information on the site’s help page. You also can find a list of other album page sites on the help page.

In the Computers and Stamps column in the July 4 Linn’s, I described how to create an album page with the latest version of Word, the word-processing component of Microsoft Office.

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I also have written columns about other album page programs.

Linn’s subscribers who register their subscriptions online can find my articles by clicking on the calendar icon next to the Linn’s Stamp News logo at the top of the current issue. You will see the most recent 30 issues of Linn’s there.

Click on “Go to the Archives” near the top of the page to see issues of Linn’s back to January 2014. Next, click on the search box at the top of the archive page, then enter “Computers and Stamps” in the “This EXACT word or phrase” box. Be sure to search all issues.

I’d suggest that you sort the results by newest or oldest first. You should then see all my columns published since January 2014. Click on the result of interest to read the column.