A First Stamp Album for Beginners: Revised Edition (Dover Children's Activity Books) Paperback – November 18, 2004

This book worked out great for my 8-year-old grandson, however none of the stamps that I ordered to go with it (100 vintage US Stamps) are pictured in the book. There are plenty of blank spaces to put the stamps in, however. Fortunately, I have an old collection and we are using it to fill in the spaces. If you want stamps that match the stamp pictures in the book, it might be a good idea to get the book early, look at the pictures and order stamps accordingly.

My great grandson was so thrilled to receive this book to begin his journey of stamp collecting. My children spent many years collecting stamps and I thought this would be a good time for Andrew to begin his journey. It is a fascinating way to learn about our world. Andrew is 8 years old.

Nice for a kids starter album.

This album is a fine "Starter." Our veterans group provides starter stamp collecting kits to youngsters at Fisher House facilities around the country at no charge, in hope of enticing them to become full time collectors. To this end, these albums cost 3 times what we expected to pay; about $2.50.We estimate we will need 20 - 25 albums each year but, the cost of these will likely have us seeking alternatives.Fisher House is akin to Ronald McDonald House facilities except, strictly for military & veterans' family members....

I want to use the pages for collage art and this is perfect.

Great

Even though I read the negative reviews prior to purchasing, it was still a disappointment.Here is what this item is.It is a simple soft cover 70 page black and white book.- First 2 pages are a generic introduction to stamp collection- Next 2 pages are about how to use this book which mostly amounts to "read the country's name from the stamp and then find it in the Index and go to that page and stick it there".- Next comes 2 page "Stamp Identifier Index" which is nothing but a list of 195 country names.- Rest of the book is country wise. Each country gets some arbitrary amount of page space, anywhere from tenth of a page to several pages. This space contains a few black and white pictures of stamps from that country interspersed with random sized empty rectangles where you are supposed to put in your own collection.- Last 5 pages are randomly sized empty rectangles.That's it!How is one supposed to organize their own collection into this book? What if I have more stamps from a country that they have provided only 3 empty spaces for? I guess then I have to use those last 5 pages with empty rectangles which means unorganized !I'd have preferred an Album where in I am able to store my stamps in a more organized fashion and the book allowed me a more flexible arrangement rather than forcing one specific arbitrary arrangement.If I was able to "look inside" this book like most of the others sold on Amazon, I wouldn't have bought it.Instead of this book, you could give your young hobbyist just a nicely bound book of blank pages. Ask them to write name of country of their collection at the top of each page and then just stick the stamps in there. As a bonus exercise ask them to maintain an index of their countries with corresponding page numbers.

While this may be a great starter book for some stamp collectors it wasn’t what we were expecting. There is only so much room to place particular stamps and it doesn’t focus on newer stamps from the US. We are going to keep looking for something a little more akin to what we were looking for in the first place.