Problems - and price rises - caused by pre-printed albums.

I can understand the appeal of pre-printed one-country albums with pictures of all the stamps, and mounts to hold the unmounted mint stamps.  But I've never really liked the idea since I won a Sweden album in a Swedish Post Office competition, and found that there were pages for all the complete booklets as well as all the single stamps and pairs from those booklets.

That meant I had two buy two booklets to be 'complete'.  But I only collected used, so there was little chance of getting a complete booklet unless I bought it cancelled-to-order from their philatelic bureau.

A complete run of stamps in a pre-printed album looks really good, and the pre-installed mounts do save a great deal of time - but at quite a cost.  For some countries the pages for extra years cost more than the stamps they will hold.  And the range of the collection is dictated by the album publisher, sometimes also a catalogue publisher.

If the album has spaces for booklet panes as well as the single stamps, then you need two copies.  To avoid being caught out you have to develop the skill to guess what the publisher will and will not include, because the new year pages are often published in late spring, which will be after some of its contents have gone off-sale at the philatelic bureau.

I was reminded of this by two recent tips in the US Linn's Stamp News, in a column which alerts readers to fast-moving stamps.  More often highlighting moves in US stamps the last two issues have mentioned the UK's 2009 Charles Darwin and 2010 Classic Album Covers issues, specifically the stamps with conventional gum from, the prestige stamp books.  Because the 'over-the-counter' stamps were self-adhesive in both cases, the ones with 'water-activated' gum warrant separate catalogue listings, not just as complete booklets but as individual stamps and panes.

In Stanley Gibbons' Concise catalogue for 2011 (published after the Album Covers had been taken off sale) these 10 are priced at a massive £24 - just 15 months after they were issued with an original face value of £3.90.  Similarly the 2009 Darwin set (face value £3.43) is listed at £26 mint and used.

With increasing face values and number of issues, dealers are not holding large stocks of recent issues, and this - coupled with increased demand from owners of the latest album supplement - leads to increased prices.  So be alert: anticipate what will be in the supplement while the stamps are still available.  There are some that you just won't be able to get cheaper than original face value!  You won't find them in discount postage boxes.