If you are a user of 30 pocket pages for your collection and are used to the Cowens brand, here's one of the reasons why the new pages you bought seem to split their seams most of the time.

I use 30 pocket pages to hold my chips; no individual plastic flips or cardboard holder, I just slip the chip into the page. I've done it this way for 20+ years and am generally happy with the method. I noticed a few years ago that new pages look and feel different from the classic Cowens that I had used in the past. I thought it must just be I got a bad lot, or maybe I was storing them in the basement where it's colder.

Last week, I needed more pages and found a coin dealer in Calif that was closing his business and was selling the pages at half price. I called him to see if he might have some old stock and he said yes, he had about 25 of the old ones in a pink box and the rest of his stock was newer in blue boxes. I asked to buy all the old ones, and a box of 100 of the new stock.

I had previously found that the old pages had a small hole in the bound edge; same side that has the three holes for the binder rings, but smaller holes, apparently something to do with the tooling as they didn't seem to have any function.

I compared the new/old I got in the mail this week and sure enough, the old had the small tooling holes and the new stock didn't. I also noticed the old stock had oblong holes while the new stock had a round center hold and oblong outer holes.

The old stock seemed to have more transparent plastic stock than the newer ones which had a bit of a pattern that kept them from being crystal clear.

The big difference I noticed is something that had not been apparent to me before. The new stock is slightly smaller! About 1/4 inch smaller in height and 1/8 inch smaller in width. This obviously means a little less room in each pocket and is probably the main reason it's so hard to get the chips in now. The plastic in the old stock also sems much more pliable and can stretch to fit the chip. The new plastic is stiff and tends to break rather than stretch when you try to put a brand new chip with sharp edges into the pocket.

The reason for this post is to suggest that you ask your dealer if he has any of the original design the next time you buy. Look for the tiny tooling hole in the margin and three oblong holes. If you can find those, you'll see they are also larger and will give better results holding your naked chips.

I have found one thing that make the new stock easier to load if that's all you can get. Warm up the page before inserting chips! I put my oven on the lowest setting (about 170 degrees) then turn if off for a few minutes. That gives me an oven of about 100-120 degrees. I put the plastic pages one at a time in the oven and they now stretch and accommodate the chip, pretty much as the old design pages did. Haven't had one break a seam yet! They do cool off in 3-4 minutes so you have to load fast. I'm going to experiment with using a heating pad under the page, which should keep it continuously warm and more pliable. This should work better for putting more chips in a page already partially full.

By the way, if you are ordering pages in bulk and having them shipped to you, be sure the dealer uses a USPS flat rate box. He was going to charge me $30 to ship 125 pages; with the flat rate Priority Mail box, the shipment went for about $13!