Stock Sheets: Vario-style vs Hagner-style

Hagner

Hagner stock pages are made of card stock and have plastic strips which have been welded to the page along the bottom edge only.



Here is a complete picture of a Hagner sheet. The strips have a slight waviness in them, which I only really noticed once I started doing this comparison. (Also, I only use stock sheets for temporary storage and for scanning stamps, so the slight waviness never caught my attention.)

A closer comparison of the Vario and Vision sheets show that the Vario is of much higher manufacturing quality. The weld along the bottom edge is neat and smooth, ensuring no waviness in the pocket.



As opposed to the Vision sheet, where you can see small bumps along the weld on the bottom edge, which creates specular highlights, and waviness in the pocket, which interfere with the full enjoyment of viewing your stamps.

Conclusion:

For use as your primary album pages, I think the Vario sheets are probably most suitable, as the pockets being welded on three sides creates a little tighter fit for the stamps, holding them more securely. The Hagner sheets tend to allow the stamps to move more when handling them.

I only use stock sheets for temporary storage, and for scanning stamps for sales listings. I find the Hagner sheets far superior for my needs. The stamps are easier to insert and remove, and I don't get the annoying scanning reflections as I do with the other sheets.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

You're right about the weld coming loose, over time. I've noticed that, but figured it was just the heavy duty use it gets from me scanning so much.

I chose Hagners over all other pages decades ago. Vario strips are melted solidly to the page, while Hagners strips have a pH-neutral glue which comes completely undone if the pages are exposed to low temperatures. These strips don't hold up to rough handling very well, either. On the other hand, the all-plastic Vario pages are quite flexible. When you flex them, stamps have a tendency to pop out, a trait which I consider completely unacceptable. Cardstock Hagners are much stiffer, and so hold the stamps in way better. Hagners forever!

Ironically, I prefer Vario-type over Hagner because of the exact opposite experience that I.M. DeBear has.

To me, the Vario strips touch the stamps much better so the stamps almost never shift. The stiffness of the pages varies considerably over different manufacturers, and for sure the Varios of today are definitely much more flexible (and lighter) than in past years (some manufacturers actually offer 2 different levels of stiffness now).

The stamps in my Hagner tend to shift, but I suspect that is because I don't push them down all the way many times since they are for temporary storage.

When the sheets are accidentally stored upside-down, to me stamp movement is most noticeable. I used to be a frequent buyer of accumulations/collections, and sometimes the dealer would accidentally ship some albums upside-down. Some stamps would often completely fall out when stored in Hagner pages, but most of them in Vario-type were fine. This also holds true for me if I accidentally drop a page/binder and it hits the ground on an edge/corner. Stamps in the Hagner will fall out (again, I put them in pretty loosely), but the Varios are mostly fine unless they are well-used Varios where the strips have stretched a little from packing in too many stamps over time.

Conclusion -- I need to quit dropping things!

That's true. They were also thicker/stiffer. I remember having to use a heavy duty hole punch. The pre-punched holes were designed for much smaller rings, although many of the pre-punched holes were oval elongated along the vertical axis.

Vario is part of the Lighthouse line. Lighthouse makes other stocksheets, not just Varios.

I've also seen faked Lighthouse stocksheets roughly 30+ years ago -- the diamond-shaped Lighthouse logo is close, but clearly a fake. I believe they were manufactured in Asia, but not really sure.