The Collecting And Use Of Obsolete Vintage Stamp Albums Thread

Just in case I am not the only one with this affliction,
I thought I would start a thread about collecting and using
obsolete/vintage stamp albums.

My latest purchase is an unused 1960 Harris New Diplomat worldwide stamp album.
Over 400 pages and spaces for 24,000 stamps. It retailed for a whopping
$3.95 back in 1960. This is a bound album, but much smaller than a Scott
International Junior, for example. Like a Junior, it is printed double-sided.

I intend to fill it with duplicates. I have many thousands of duplicates.

It is supposed to be fun, and challenging. It brings me back to those happy
times when I was a youth, on the hunt and filling spaces.

To indicate how serious my affliction is, I bought two of them (unused)!

Does anyone else do this sort of thing? Are there enough of us to start a
support group in this thread?

John

The two-sidedness worries me


Peter

I find old albums interesting, in a curiosity sort of way. Former states, old names, trying to figure out why some stamps were chosen to be in the album and others not, etc. They have a certain charm.
But I'd never use one; ultimately, I think the aesthetic of old albums is obsolete and the execution is usually poor.

Classic, I think you said it better than I did!


Peter

Collect and preserve old albums? Yes.
They are fascinating link to the past.

Would I use old albums? No.
I would not mount stamps in vintage albums like this one for three major reasons.
1. the pages are almost certainly non-archival.
2. the stamps will catch on each other and damage each other with the face-to-face mounting.
3. Bound albums bulge as they fill up with stamps.

That said, each collector is free to collect in a way which satisfies them.

I will add some vintage album pics here shortly.

I appreciate the feedback!

Believe me, I know the cons to using a bound album like this. My primary collections have proper paper and interleaving, are one sided, mounted in clear mounts, and etc. This is just meant to be a fun side project. One of them is for my vintage album collection, and one of them is intended to be filled with duplicates.

This particular album contains mostly issues that your average collector would accumulate from stamp packets during this time period. Anything above a few dollars will get a clear mount from me.

I once bought a Scott International Junior that was about 25% full. The thing that made it different was that each stamp was mounted using a clear mount. The bulge was noticeable, but not excessive. I would imagine that if 50-75% full, the bulge would have perhaps approached doubling in size. I'm not sure about that guess, though.

I wonder how all those millions of collectors managed to get by using albums like this all of those years?

John

<<<<<I wonder how all those millions of collectors managed to get by using albums like this all of those years?gt;>>>>

With millions of damaged stamps.


Peter

It is a miracle that there are any stamps left for us, then!

John

Hi John,
Great thread and topic.

Please be cautious about the paper quality in many of these older albums. Not only did they tend to use 'less than ideal' paper but they also have the disadvantage of already aging for decades.
Don

"The aesthetics of old albums is obsolete"? How true. Now we have the clinical drabness of Davo and Steiner.

I've used old albums from time to time. Some have had better quality paper than toned albums I've acquired from the 1980s.

I love old stamp albums, and casually collect them. One project I've always wanted to do (I'll do it someday!), is take an old children's/beginner album and actually fill every space as it was intended. A couple albums which I've had my eye for this are the Captain Tim album (a Harris album which was done in conjunction with Ivory soap promotion, and radio program about stamp collecting) as well as an album called "5 Star General" by a company called Dansco, also an album (I forget the name) which has that plastic comb binding. These albums both only have about 10,000 spaces and 1-2 pages per country.

However, if I did a project like this, I would not use the actual original album but reproduce it on better quality paper (i.e. scan it and print it out on better paper), and put it in a good binder with dust case. This also solves the interleaving and bulging issues. The Captain Tim album is very low quality (like newsprint) and totally unsuitable for actually putting stamps, but I really do like the layout, and the concept of completing an album.

BTW, does anybody know what copyright status is on old albums? I think copyright is 100 years now, so legal to pass around PDF of album from 1923 or before, but not newer albums?

I also recently acquired the world's first stamp album--1862 Justin Lallier. Really interesting album, it was produced during American Civil War, so there are separate sections for USA and CSA and plenty of other historical curiosities. However, it has spaces for very expensive stamps so not feasible to actually fill.

I've suffered the same malady all the way back to my childhood collecting days when I grew up in England and would occasionally purchase small collections to break up. Many of these are simple affairs in terms of size, many holding no more pages than a thick magazine would, some with pages that come only with the country name printed and no stamp illustrations. What primarily attracted me (in addition to the stamps themselves) was the artistry found in the designs of their covers. I also got hold of an old Scaubeck album (pre-1900) that was filled with cut squares that makes for a terrific reference resource (see scan).
My latest acquisition was a bound Scott Brown International album that covers from 1840-1900. I'm using this one for 'socked on the nose' and fancy cancels, although I am concerned about the album's paper quality, so any stamps added are placed in mounts in the hope these will offer some protection.

Indeed. The contents are often gone beyond recovery, but many of the covers are wonderful. Schaubek made some terrific albums.

Here are some pre-WWII beginner albums:

1. Title page of Scott's "Philatelist's Album", 1893. (The cover is embossed black and not easy to image.


2. Mekeel's "Popular Stamp Album", cover and title page, 1899.



3. Scott's "Best Postage Stamp Album", c1901.


4. The H. E. Harris "Adventurer" album, a larger album at 128 pages (compared to #8, below), copyright 1933:


5. Cover and title pages of Captain Tim's Ivory Stamp Club Album, copyright 1933, showing the "Adventurer" remaining as part of the title page. The contents are the same as album #4. A gold foil label has been added to the title page reading in part: "Supplied for the Ivory Stamp Club by H. E. Harris. ..."



6. Title page of a later printing of album #5 headed now as "The Ivory Album ...", copyright 1934.


7. Cover of the next edition of Captain Tim's Ivory Stamp Club Album", also based off the Adventurer album, 128 pages. Copyright 1935.


8. The H. E. Harris "Discoverer Album" a smaller album at 64 pages, copyright 1934.


9. The "Discover Album" was reworked slightly to become this third major variety of the Ivory Stamp Club album, copyright 1934.


There are several additional threads on Captain Tim including:
http://goscf.com/t/46898

10. Cover and title page of a small world album published by the Stamp & Album Company of America, copyright 1935.



11. Cover and title page of the "Universal Postage Stamp Album", published by G. S. Co., Inc., copyright 1935.



12. Cover and title page of the "Worldwide Junior Stamp Album" published by John W. Nicklin, copyright 1937. The sailing ship mimics the one used by H.E. Harris a few years earlier.



13. (Cream) cover and title page of the "United States Stamp Album", published by the Stamp and Album Company of America, copyright 1942.



14. Same album as album #13, but with a black cover.

John,



An awesome group of vintage albums!

John

One of my more recent items, circa late 1947/early 1948.
Format is a saddle-stitched booklet. It is an album, buy list, and catalog.

I am intrigued by items like this.

John