Coin Albums

Nice avatar!

I'm a Whitman Classic Album person. Mainly due to having started with them a long, long time ago. Back when there was nothing else except Whitman. Now there are many, many companies making folders and albums. My experience is Littleton is to limited and fall apart easily, smaller in hight, additional pages just not available. Dansco is much better made, appear more expensive by the grained brownish finish. Also, Dansco is taller, deeper but also, addtional pages or items not easily available in all areas of the country. It appears that the East and West coast areas are deep into Dansco and the entire MidWest is into Whitman. Whitman makes a far larger variety of Albums and folders for coins. They also have numerous pages available for their Albums. It is easy to find additional pages, the plastic slides, Gold type press on numbers and letters for the blank pages.
I presently have over 100 Whitman Classic Albums. I've added pages to many of them such as making a Cent Album go from 1909 to present and still have room for another 20 or 30 years. I've put 2 sets of Mercury dimes in one Album binder and the same with Buffalo nickels, Liberty Standoing Quarters and Indian Head cents. I use the press on Gold letters/numbers on the additonal pages with some success. I've used Blank Album Covers with blank pages to create my own type of Type Set Album. I've been them for a long, long time and no problems with coins toning, corroding, tarnishing, etc.
As to where to acquire them cheaply. I go to coin shows a lot. I've found that many dealers buy entire albums from people, take all the coins out, put them in 2x2's or 1-1/2x1-1/2's sizes. This is what they display at coin shows, web sites, coin stores, etc. Usually they don't have anything to do with the used albums. Many I've been told are thrown out as garbage. A few dealers I talk to frequently saved them for me and just gave them to me free. All the Dansco's, Littleton's and other ones I just gave to other coin collectors. I keep the Whitman ones. At a coin show a few months ago one dealer gave me over 40 albums, FREE. Almost all Dansco's. Everyone I know got google eyed over them and since FREE, they were even more happy.

I use Dansco and Intercept Shield. I like the fact that the IS albums come with the slip cover. You can buy slip covers for any of the Dansco albums separately. I am working on an IS type set right now. I like their version because it does not have spaces for gold coins. The gold is a little outside of my budget and there are some other coins that are tough enough.

Thanks,

Jim