Album pages common designs - 0.1 Introduction

In my search for customized stamp albums, I found many ready-to-use albums for collecting by country.
Lots of collectors have themed collections, and of course it is not that simple to create albums for such collections. First of all, because thematic collections often requires thematic catalogs - which exist, but only for limited topics (chess, cats, light houses, Disney, ...)
Secondly because most thematic collectors also add personal information, covers, ... to their collection, which makes it nearly impossible to create a tailor-made album.
Even if I would try to add such an album, it would always be too limited, or too elaborated.

There is however a group of collectors/collections, that keep the middle between a country wise collection and a thematic collection.
A good example is a collection of 'common design' stamps.
They combine stamps from different countries, but are not that excessive in the number of stamps that should be in the collection.

In this view, there are two large groups of possible collections.
The first one is the group of the joint issues.
Many countries have common issues with other countries, celebrating XX-years of diplomatic relations, famous people who lived and worked in two or more countries, international treaties between two countries, ...

Example of a joint issue between Kenya and Uganda

Those joint issues, are often collected, but not often described in catalogs.
Some joint issues, do not bare exactly the same image, which makes it also difficult to recognize them.

A second group of stamps that are in these 'country + theme collecting group', are those of the common designs.

More then a simple joint issue between two or 'few' countries, celebrating a mutual anniversary, the stamps in the 'common design' group, have identical stamps or sets of stamps, issued by a large group of countries that share a common history.

A good example here is the 1935 Silver Jubilee emission.
With the country name omitted, it can be an issue by many countries.

Common design 1935

For this group, there are a number of sub groups that I will explore.
1. The group of the CEPT issues - mainly european countries that issue(d) stamps on a common theme.
The first years they also had a common design, nowadays the topic is common, but the designs are different.
2. The group of the Portuguese and former Portuguese territories, that have issued common designs since 1898!
3. The (large) group of French and (former) French territories, who issued stamps with a common design, often with topics of local - mainly African - live and costumes.
4. The also large group of British and (former) Commonwealth of Nations issues. Here the common designs are often British royals and royal anniversaries.

Most European collectors are familiar with this first group, Portuguese, French or British collectors will be familiar with the other groups.
Scott mentions these groups in the catalog too.

In this set of articles, I like to concentrate on this second group of stamps.
And I will try to include pdf pages for collectors of these themed collections too.

to be continued...