We have a flea market that occurs every weekend. It is held on the main floor of an old brewery here in the city. I go often, because one never knows what will turn up there.
About three weeks ago, I noticed a new merchant had set up. One of the things she had in her booth was a box containing an old H.E. Harris two volume Standard Album dating to 1977, along with an assortment of stamps, both loose in tobacco cans and in retail packages, some packages of supplements and extra loose leaf pages.
The works was priced at $80, which was a little too rich for my blood at the time, although I could possibly justify the expenditure -- I mean those Harris binders are worth somewhere around $20 each to begin with, and these ones were like brand new, and hey, I could use them in my quest to get my collection into binders that are all the same (and I already have two Standard binders).
Anyway, I went back to the flea market a week later, and the box was still there, same price. Now considering that this is Winnipeg, where no one wants to pay sticker price and will haggle over anything (I've even seen people haggling at garage sales, where the prices are cheap to begin with), I could have made an offer on them, but I figured I would wait another week.
This past weekend they were still there. I had resolved, thinking it over, to offer $60, just to see if the seller would bite. So anyway, I'm crouched down looking at the box of stuff, and I say to the lady, "$80 for the whole works...? Hmmm...", kind of feigning a small degree of interest.
"No", she says, pointing to a sign on the back wall of the booth, "this week, everything is half price..."
Sold!
So, what did I really get?
Well, first of all, there was the two-volume Standard Album. It goes up to 1977, and is in perfect shape. Some countries were worked on and put in the back of the second volume -- Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Russia, all full of stamps already, and some are noteworthy.
There are also envelopes of Harris pages -- Supplements for 1973-78, and two packages of Harris blank pages, one even unopened.
There are two kiddie albums, also in great shape -- a very small Harris Adventurer album, copyrighted 1952, and a Grossman Ideal album, which is loose leaf and copyrighted 1960; the former has seen no use, the latter is full of stamps, but nothing really interesting other than a lot of US and Canadian precancels and a few perfins, including six different Canada King George VI definitives perforated O.H.M.S.
One 1978 Stanley Gibbons "Stamps of the World" catalogue, brand new.
Six tobacco cans, three of which are filled with US and Canadian on paper, all dating from the early 70s back, one filled with Czechoslovakian, mostly CTO issues, and two of loose worldwide off paper, and two smaller plastic boxes both full of Canadian stamps, used, and off paper, including a quantity (about 30) of the Quebec City $2 definitive.
About $10 in mint Canadian stamps, mostly from the early 70s including inscription blocks, and the 1972 and 73
Canada Post Souvenir Collections, complete with wallets and original packaging.
And the following retail packs of stamps:
1977 Harris "Supplement Collection" (250 stamps), originally priced at $18.99;
25 Congo, no assembler's name, but contained flyers from Garcelon Stamps, originally $2.00;
25 Grenada, ditto;
25 Flags, ditto, but $1.00;
100 Canada, ditto, $2.00;
100 Spanish Colonies, ditto, $5.00;
150 Space, assembled by Fred Boserup, Santa Ana, California, $5.00;
Harris, 450 U.S., originally $10.00;
5000 Stamps of the World, no assembler's name, original price was $49.95 on an Eaton's tag!
I'm already thinking I got my money's worth with just the two binders, but the additional $10 in usable postage was a nice bonus. This consists of mostly 8- and 10-cent commemoratives, including David's favorite Marconi issue.
From what I have been able to determine, the collector was an adult, and started approximately 1973; they may have collected as a child, and they went about it with some degree of "doing it right" (some of the completed pages have pencilled in catalogue numbers over which they wanted to mount stamps), but quit for some reason in 1978 or 79, I'm guessing because they didn't have the time to do a lot of work on it.
It looks promising, a 30 year old accumulation -- now, if
I can only find the time to wade through it...!
Posted 12/02/2009 10:37 am
k
