Breaking Up An Old Collection

I recently purchased two large country lots of Hungarian stamps from a well-known ebay merchant. One of the lots which was purchased at very low cost was an almost complete collection from 1913 through 1940 - a mixture of mint and used but nearly all stamps in F-VF condition.

They were hinged-mounted on grilled paper and all neatly arranged and annotated in great hand-script. It was obviously a labour of love and it almost seemed a shame to have to tear it apart and migrate it into my system. (All the stamps have been dehinged, placed in Lighthouse mounts and stored in Vario pages for now while I think about the time required to remount them.)

It has made me reflect on the history of this collection. Who assembled it and how did he or she do it? Most of the stamps, although not rare or valuable, are not ones that any of us would have easily found as young collectors, so obviously some effort and ingenuity (in the 1940s or 1950s) must have been expended to assemble it and, hopefully, a lot of pride in displaying it to other collectors.

I'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience?

I feel some sadness and reluctance when I break up an old album. As I do so, I speculate about the collector's life based on what is present and absent in the collection.

Hi to all

All things like that make me sad.
I was at a stamp show yesterday, but in fact it turned out to be a collection of older dealers trying to sell their wears. There were about 9 dealers and three stamp collectors, including me.
An older gentleman came in and wanted to sell his childhood collection. The dealer was not interested as they were not in his line. He advised the gentleman to donate them to charity.
I asked the gentleman rather than donate them to charity would he be interested in selling them to me.
There were four small albums, one stock book, and one larger stamp album, and an album with first day covers, not very interesting, but one is a flight cover.
we agreed on a nominal sum, he was happy, I was happy, and now I also have albums to break up.
What was really interesting to note, my two younger children were with me, my daughter, 6 years old and my younger son ll. They were the only children at the show.
My younger son said to me when we got home, I did not know that collecting stamps could be so interesting and fascinating. Now he wants to start collecting for himself.
So some-times some-ones lack of interest promotes a new one.
Most of the stamps are run of the mill, but there looks like some interesting items
I will post some later
Horamakhet.

Maybe he would like to start with that collection and you wouldn't have to break it up. He would always remember going to that stamp show with you too. His Dad. You could work on collecting together and . WHAT A BOND THAT WOULD BE. IT would last him a lifetime.

Hi TinMan
Break-up was probably too strong a word.
We will be working on collecting together, but I will let him choose what stamps he wants, and let him set them up in his own albums.
He already said to me yesterday that some-one has to look after the stamps when I can not.
As yes I can not think of a better bond than working together on stamp collecting.
Horamakhet

NBSTAMPER-------The same goes for award winning stamp exhibitions ,there were thousands of exhibits back in the 1940's were did they go ? ,then another thousands of well written exhibits with thousands of hours of research and write ups.then came the 1960's ,then the 1970's and then 1980's and then the 1990's.At this point were now talking 50,000 nice worked up and displayed collections........welll .....please ......can someone tell me where are all those impressive collections ........not trying to insult anybody but please can you post something about were are those 50,000 display collections are today.Are we throwing in the garbage hundreds if not thousands of hours of work each generation of exhibitors work into the trash and selling off just the stamps and covers .

Hi,
Yes, I can surely relate........ I've recently gotten back into worldwide collecting (1840-1950) and picked up some scott albums off of ebay, and am consolidating them into a "keeper" collection.

A couple of the albums came from the heirs of the original collector. One was owned by two sisters who got the Scotts big blue as a Christmas present back in the early 1950s. The stamps were nicely attached and there are several knowledgeable penciled notes in margins. This is such a neat feeling, knowing that their efforts will continue to live on as I add to and preserve their collection.

Have to say, buying collections from stamp dealers just doesn't have the emotion to is as buying from the individual.

Mobilman44

Horamkhet, that your son wants/needs to look after your stamps is wonderful. You must be a really proud dad!

floortrader, you have a great question. I suppose the APS or the local stamp clubs may have the answer to the exhibits. I'm sure that a lot went to the trash man.

NBSTAMPER, I understand your thoughts on the collection, the history of it and the love put into it. Dan

I can relate to the sadness element. I bought a used Canada collection a while back at an auction (3 old binders with home-made pages). It was well organized and had some very nice used (with CDS cancels) Canadian stamps.
Then I noticed that there was a hand-written inscription indicating that the collection had been given to the collector's daughter.

Somewhere along the line, someone had sent it to auction where I bought all that time/effort and love for a relative pittance.

I decided to keep it together and have added to it in order to make it more complete. I hope to give it to one of my kids some day, though none of them are really interested in collecting stamps at this point in their lives. In the meantime I will keep it as-is just because of the work that went into it before I received it.

I enjoy looking through it every now and then.

Not only did some go into the trash but a lot of Big Time buyers scoffed collections up from estates like Mystic, Kenmore, Golden Valley and others at 5% of the value and then break up the collections and sell the stamps at inflated prices to new collectors or collectors that money doesn't matter so they just pay the asking price.

I just purchased a collection from the collellectors Sister. The original collector (Her husband passed away) and she gave it to her brother and he has passed away. It was kind of strange tearing apart something that someone obviously put a lot of their time into, but most will be getting a very good home.