What Should I Do With My Grandfather's Albums?

No, this isn't the typical question this forum gets asked, its a little different.

My grandfather was a collector and he passed the hobby on to me as a young boy. He had a US, UN and Musical topical collection. He passed away just about forty years ago and I just recently "got my hands on" all the albums, except for the Musical one which is no where. I just have a box of glassine envelopes with Music stamps in them.

I have gone through them and its pretty clear he never spent any real money on the collection, so there is no Z Grill in this thing.

He made his own albums and he used what appears to be pretty ordinary paper and everything is hinged and due to the passage of time, any number of stamps are adhering to the paper. He did write his own captions in the albums and the layout is variable. Some pages are very nice and others perhaps show his age and decline.

I have a number of choices. I could chuck the whole thing, but I don't think I want to do that. I think I'd like to deal with or repair the damage. So, I can either remove the stamps of interest to me mix it in with my stuff, and send the rest off to glassine envelopes, OR I can really repair the damage and attempt to rehabilitate the albums themselves, out of sentimental attachment. That sentimental attachment will not survive me, since no one else in the family is a collector, so my daughter will eventually dispose of everything.

I'm inclining towards pulling out what I need and storing the balance, but I subscribe some sentiment to his hand lettering in the albums.

So, I am curious if any of you have been in a similar position and what you did and any thought on the choices.

Larry

Hi Larry......

Some tough choices......don't give up on someone in your family eventually getting interested.

You mention an interest in your grandfathers hand lettered pages.......If it were mine.......I would preserve the best pages or any that strike you as interesting. Rehab any of the albums that seem worth the effort.....from whatever is left, pull out any thing you'd like for your own collection. Maybe try creating a few new albums in the same style.

For stuck stamps.....sometimes stamps stuck on pages from age or pressure will pop free by bending the page after it's been frozen for a day or two.........try a few sample pages and be sure to put them in large zip-lock type baggies to keep out moisture.

In the end.......it's your collection......all decisions are yours.

My Mom got me started by giving me bits and pieces of her collection. So far, I have kept all of it, but most of it is in storage because it includes many philatelic items of no interest to me.

What I do is keep select pieces. The criteria I use is simple -- I keep in my collection, the ones that have the greatest sentimental value.

Just a suggestion -- go through the albums. Whatever evokes the strongest emotions (whether fond or bittersweet), keep those and do some protective/restorative work on those. Even though I've kept all of my Mom's collection (I'm a packrat), I only need part of the collection to bring back almost all the memories.

Just my thoughts...

k

nr-notrare,

Thanks for the idea. I never would have thought of using the freezer. I figured I was going to be sweating pages for ages. It is almost tragic, looking at the pages with singles, souvenir sheets and plate blocks that are stuck to the page. The only stuff that ain't stuck are the used stamps, other than to their hings.

-larry

khj,

Thanks. I think your approach might involve a little bit of both approaches:

1. Pull the stuff I want/need
2. Restore and retain those pages that he did that were good.

Perhaps a way to have my cake and eat it too.

Another option is to remove the stamps. Treat the pages with a acid neutralizer and remount.

thanks, but what's acid neutralizer?

Usually in a form of a spray. It neutralizes the acid in the paper. However, it does not restore any existing damage. And I believe most of the neutralizers that are packaged and sold to the general public are not acid barriers (check the specs).

Perhaps the calligraphy alone would be of interest to a hand writing collector, if there is such a beast. Scriptolatelist(?) or something of that sort? I saw a page hand written for stamps the other day on ebay and was fascinated by the hand writing and then looked at the stamps.

Puzzler,

I only wish that there was "calligraphy", its really just the careful handwriting of a CCNY graduate, class of 1913 who went on to a career in engineering working for the City Board of Ed. I doubt its really that special other than me, as a family member.

Its just when I look at the pages, I remember looking at those albums when I was a little kid and dreaming of the day I might have something as nice.

Larry

Just noticed the acid neutralizer posts. You could get that at am auto parts store. A little spray can for neutralizing battery acid, although it may be out of date now as most batteries come all sealed up. All it does is chemically change the acid into a non harmful thing by binding the acid molecules with something to turn them into non-acidic little thingies. (Not a chemist!) Must get back to mu particle physics and investigating my aliens in my special area 50. (I didn't make it to 51.

maybe what made the album(s) / pages / stamps nice to you as a kid was the care that your grandfather devoted to it / them? Someone's interest in a thing changes it in another's eyes to a thing of value or at least interest.

Here is what I would do:

(1) Color photocopiers are everywhere. Photocopy the collection intact, as it was when he left it, for a permanent record for yourself, and make another extra copy.

(2) Take anything you want in your own collection out.

(3) Take one bunch of photocopies, cut out the pictures of the stamps you've removed, and mount them where the pulled stamps were.

(4) Do whatever further restoration work you need to on the original pages.

At the end, you will have:

(1) Those stamps you want in your own collection.

(2) A permanent record of what the original collection was.

(3) The original pages, restored, with as many of the original stamps as you want.


You can have your cake and eat it too, indeed.

Great idea, Glen!!

Thanks WpgLwr for this idea. I like it, I like it.

Actually, I think I will scan each page rather than copy them and then do the printout.

What I also like about this approach is that I will probably remove the hand full of stamps that I need, some of which have a catalog value in the high two digits. I will replace them with cutouts of scans. Scans that might be mistaken for forgeries.

So, I then figure that in 30 years when I'm dead and gone, my daughter, now in possession, will be so excited with the treasure trove she's found, and will write to this very forum asking about the untold wealth she has acceded to.

Please remember to tell her why I made the scans.

Thanks for all the suggestions,

Larry

I inherited a Scott junior international album from my grandfather with mostly low value but classic age central and latin american stamps. I decided originally to add to it with classic unused but had to had paper in between the album pages because otherwise the stamps would pull on each other when opening the album-----Scott had images on both sides of a page. Eventually the size of the augmented album broke the spine and so I transferred a good portion of them to a Scott international album or a stockbook depending on value. I still have the original album with some stamps in there as a keepsake and to remind me who was responsible for sparking my interest in foreign stamps---without that I would have likely stayed strictly US.

i suggest we have a permanent post here on the forum clarifying what one should do if they inherit stamps with info from this thread