Does anyone make a 22-ring US Letter binder?

I'm an impatient PITA. Ordered a binder, a hole punch and some A4 cream cardstock. We'll see how it goes.

The binder arrived and so did the hole punch. But the paper did not. Amazon still says it's arriving today, but it hasn't even shipped yet.

I ordered another brand of paper that should arrive tomorrow morning. We'll see how it goes.

If you look at the picture, you'll see a cream colored piece of paper.

An A4 piece of paper is 210mm×297mm in size. But the binder can safely hold a piece of paper that 235mm×297mm. This gives you an extra 25mm of page width to work with, potentially fitting more stamps on a page. I took a Scott-size page and trimmed it to 235mm to confirm.

I like this, but I'm once again wandering into the custom paper size territory, requiring a print shop to cut down pages to the proper size.

I like the 30 ring binder and I like the much smaller holes. According to my research, 30 ring binders are quite common in Japan. So I should be able to easily to get A4 size 30 ring binders from any number of Japanese stationary suppliers.

This binder says it can hold 200 pages. They make a slightly wider binder that says it will hold 250 pages.

If I could get a couple of cheap pieces of 11×17 paper, I could cut my own 235mm×297mm paper and try it out.

I have used 4 ring A4 sheet protectors for 15 years
Not come across any negatives thus far.

30 ring polypropylene sheet protectors are extremely cheap.
Unsure if they come in "clear"  most seem to have a  hazy finish.
Good Luck

Yes those 30 ring in first image are small,
with Protective covers, I doubt you will get more than 5 years to a binder.

The medium looks OK
The larger, I find the pages sag, however I am using a lighter weight page.

The Good points I find with protective sleeves are:
One can store 2 pages to one sleeve

(Using Steiner Pages) I can print and mount say GB  1998  Page #4 and pop it into the binder
There is no printing out huge volumes of blank pages
Inserting another page 2 months later is a walk in the park

As a WW collector, one has to be well organised.
I print out say one page (any page) of say Cuba  1998
Pop it into the sleeve, and use that as a store for all Cuba 1998 stamps that arrive
I only print out appropriate 1998 pages when I have enough stamps  to fill most of an album page.
 

  

madbaker

Hi Mark  
No, just pop them into a sleeve,
I am fortunate to live in a climate where , gum problems are very few.

These random scans should illustrate,
remembering, Worldwide collecting  (without limits) is a form of madness
No soul alive could  manage it without some form of  random hoarding.

What it does do however, keep all relevant material in an easily found location.
The next caretaker of my collection, will not have to "sort" the stamps.

Some random Austria scanned through protective sleeves
  

url=https://ibb.co/jr3h479][/url]

I'm not quite sure why after starting to look for 22-ring binders you ended up with 30-ring binders. It reminds me of going to the market for apples, corn, and milk and coming home with cupcakes, beer, and "what else was I supposed to get?" I also don't like the look of that enormous number of rings at all. To me, it's strangely weird. And I use a lot of 22-ring binders whose look I do like very much -- much better than American 3-ring binders which, to me, are just too odd for stamp albums because they look like school binders from when I was in junior high school, not like serious stamp albums for a mature person (the one I hope to be some day!).

The 22-ring binder is one of the standards in Europe, and although each album maker also uses their own standard number of rings to try to force collectors to stick with only their brand of annual page supplements rather than buying a competitor's brand and only their blank page, the 22-ring binder is very common. Some albums, mostly blank albums, are also available with 4 rings or even 2 rings, but the mainstream printed albums are generally either the standard 2-post style as with Davo, the album maker's own propietary ring binder with whatever number of rings they've chosen to use, or the 22-ring binder which seems a more general standard across a lot of Europe. The Italian album maker Marini uses 22-ring binders and pages. So does the French album maker Yvert et Tellier. 22-ring binders are also commonly used in Britain and made and sold by Stanley Gibbons as well as by good stamp shops like Dauwalder's and others. I think the SG classic British albums use 22 rings. Clearly, 22-rings is one of the most common types of albums in Europe. By way of contrast, I had never even heard of 30 ring binders until now, and I've looked for years at stamp albums around the world.

But can you get 22-ring paper? Yes, you can, and it's easy from any of these sources. I've purchased enormous boxes of Marini 22-hole blank paper from Italy on their website and it's gotten here just fine in a couple of weeks with no problem. I don't speak Italian in any way, but finding the blank paper was easy and their are pictures even for one-language dopes like me. I also purchased a smaller amount of Yvert 22-hole paper to compare with it, and it arrived very fast as well. Shipping charges are not cheap, but not too awful, either, a little more than U.S. shipping charges but those can be pretty high, too, so I'm not bothered much by shipping things from Europe. I've also bought lots of 22-ring binders and paper from Dauwalder's in the UK and it comes fairly fast. It's on their website. So blank 22-ring paper is pretty easy to get ahold of, but it has to come from Europe as few (maybe no) U.S. sellers have it.

What about hole punching for your own blank pages? Apparently, 22-hole punches are standard in some industrial processes -- for what, I don't know, but they are out there. This means that these 22-hole punches are sometimes for sale on Ebay. I've owned two, both made entirely of metal (not plastic), and very heavy duty, looking like they'll last my lifetime and beyond. I still have the better of them. It's a normal size hole punch that can punch a few pages at a time with no problem. I've even punched some Scott Specialty pages with 22-holes and when I do this, the existing Scott holes kind of disappear among the other holes when you do that. The result is pretty decent looking 22-hole pages. Though I haven't done it yet, I could put together and entire Scott Specialty album for some country in multiple volumes of Marini binders. I should mention I have dozens of very nice Marini 22-ring binders that I bought from Subway Stamp Shop on clearance. Marini are very nice binders and are also available from the same sellers or from European Ebay. Each holds only about 60 pages, so you'll need more than you might think. With slipcases, too.

I say this FYI and by way of comparison. I'm very much not a fan of three-ring stamp albums, though the smaller green Scott 3-ring binder is pretty decent and I have a few I plan to use. And the smaller "normal" size padded Scott 3-ring binders for computer size paper is a very nice, inexpensive binder. I use a few of them for my UN collection on White Ace pages and my Ireland collection, too. wish I liked the 8.5 x 11" pages size more than I do, but I'm slowly getting to like it -- kind of.

What size you use, be sure it's sustainable. You need to be able to buy paper that fits, and have access to additional binders as well as a hole punch for any additional pages not already punched for that many rings. This is the reason most people settle for whatever their local standard album is. It's jut easier. But it's also possible to buy from Europe as I've done many times from the UK and Italy with no problem at all. It's a global economy, so no need to limit yourself only to what's available from the U.S. And whatever you do, have fun.

I'm looking at these prices. The Sandringham binder costs US$30 plus shipping. And the paper costs US$11.40 for 25 sheets. Plus whatever shipping is going to cost from the UK to the US.

And there is no 22 hole punch available.

That's going to get very expensive very quickly.

I don't see much of an aesthetic difference between 22-ring and 30-ring binder rings. Obviously you do.

I do not and have never seen the need. I am perfectly happy with the Gibbons pages which come pre-punched.

Admittedly they are not cheap, but because most of the issuing entities I collect are fairly small, and also because I generally cut off at the end of Colonial or Pre-decimal periods, I don't have to contend with the hundreds of stamps printed in the 70's and onwards, so paper is not a huge expense for me.

To my taste, 22 rings look a lot less bulky than 30, but tastes vary, here is one of the pages which I previously posted on this forum.

Could probably whip up a quick script to ungroup everything, and one to add all the images to a layer.

I use layers on my pages in InDesign. Makes it really easy to quickly export pages with/without catalog numbers and with/without stamp images.

Andy Pastuszak ,

You should have an email from me with a link to a quick and dirty first attempt. If you don't receive it, let me know.