Stock book

Stock books are bound books with pocket strips for stamp storage and/or display, permanent or temporary. They are a supplement to printed stamp albums or even an alternative.

There are small-size ones to large size one, with various number of pages. The covers can be printed card to padded covers. The strips can be either clear acetate or translucent glassine.

Stock books can be used for organizing stamps that are yet to go into an album. For example, until you have more than a few stamps of a country to justify making an album page, those stamps will be safely stored and can be alphabetically or date ordered in a stock book (or two). With acetate strips, stock books can be albums by themselves if you don't have a large collection. That way, it's perfect for a something like a small topical sideline collection, and MNH stamps remain MNH.

It is strongly recommended to stick to stockbooks made by the usual stamp supply manufacturers. Strips of either type are attached with a rubber cement-type adhesive and for off-brands, ancient stock books and souvenir books made with pockets, the adhesive can migrate into stamps. The small pocketbook-size Chinese-made stock books that souvenir collections come in are beautiful, but may or may not be fatal in the long run for your stamps. Since the pages are double-sided, you will want stock books with interleaving. The pages in commercially made stock books stay flat also. Absolutely avoid "magic" photo albums since they use wax that will soak and stain stamps.

Acetate strips are great for display but with repeated use, tend to stretch and loosen slightly over time. So for constantly swapping stamps in and out of a stockbook, the ones with glassine strips are preferred.

You should always be using stamp tongs to insert and remove stamps. Pull the pocket slightly open with it, keep holding it open with a toothpick or small bit of paper, then insert or remove the stamp. Sliding stamps in may be quick, but just wait until you slice a stamp in half by not using tongs.

Used stock books are available but you will want to make sure the adhesive hasn't bled or that too many pockets haven't separated from their pages. So, that also means you need to store stock books the same way as albums, in a cool, dry place without direct sunlight.

A more flexible alternative is to use stock pages that can be housed in ring binders, and they are infinitely expandable. 



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