Questions About The "Modern Stamp Album"

Hi,
I recently won an online auction for a "Modern Stamp Album" - the red one with the embossed airplane flying over skyscrapers.

It likely won't arrive until next week, the seller is not a stamp person. He did say it was copyright 1947.

Was this a Scott's album, or ???
Was it considered a beginner album, or ???
What else can you tell me about them?

I confess I was "playing" with the auction and did not expect to win it. With almost 4k of stamps, I did get my monies worth (I hope).

Thanks all!

Yes. It was Scott Publishing that sold the album.




Yes. Stamp illustrations are on two sides of each page. With a book binding, it made for a poor album if a tremendous amount of stamps were mounted in it. As a beginner album it was sufficient for the day; advanced collectors would have opted for a more comprehensive album.




Check some ebay listings and you'll see that the "Modern" album with the red binding and the skyscrapers and airplane illustration on the cover typically had copyright dates from 1937 to 1950. There were "Modern" albums before that which didn't have the skyscraper illustration, which were obviously earlier editions. There were also "Modern" albums with a blue binding that had copyright dates into the mid-1950s.

Given the vast number of these albums for sale on ebay, one has to assume that they were quite popular back in the day ... but one must remember that stamp collecting was at its height back then, too.

It sounds like you got your moneys worth with 4 thousand stamps.
Tom

Well, it was sent out parcel post, and when it arrives I will let you all know what kind of a deal I got. Over the last few years I've bought over 20 albums, and have been able to resell any that were not keepers. The ones I had bought previous to this one were all Scott internationals, so this will be a somewhat different experience.

I still remember receiving this very album as a Christmas present from my parents in the very early '50s. I don't remember how soon I replaced it, but the process was sped along by my mother ... who taught me to attach my stamps to the album pages with scotch tape. Her uncle, a precancel collector, finally clued me in to the existence of "stamp hinges". He was the only individual from either side of our family who was interested in the hobby.

Here's one I picked up Saturday at a yard sale with a 1920 copyright on it - also says seventh edition



Sure found more than $5.00 worth of stamps in it too :)

I have a special fondness for the red Modern Stamp Album, the one showing an airplane over skyscrapers.

Why? That was my father's album, the one that I leafed through as a kid and ignited my collecting interest in WW.

Hi,
The fellow that sold this one is not a collector and got it from a relative who passed on. He originally said it had about 5000 stamps and I persuaded him to do a real count, as folks tend to bid for the stamps, and not the album (especially in this case). He came back a few days later and said yes, it only has 3980 stamps. For that album, that is an awful lot of stamps. The pics show pages full of them, even outside the borders. I'm trying to be realistic about this, thinking that it is probably filled with common stamps and duplicates. BUT, there is some chance that it could be a real find, or also just a waste of money. I guess that suspense is a part of the hobby I like...

That's my favorite kind of lot.

I have a US album on the way with that kind of suspense. One pic showed to be packed with revenues and if I could read the dates right(hard to tell by the pictures), one of the stamps catalogs higher than I paid for the whole album. I love the treasure hunt aspect

Here is a scan of the 1940 bound edition of the Modern Stamp Album. Is this what you remember, Jkjblue?

Note the biplane over the city skyline...very modern, indeed!

My father ignited my collecting "fever" at age 10, in April, 1960, when he gave me his Modern album. Copyright is also 1940 and I still have it, altho it is in need of re-backing. He showed me how to soak stamps off paper. I still have the first 2 foreign stamps that he gave me on that Sunday. They came hinged into solicitations, from Catholic missions, asking for money; one is from San Marino and the other is a 1960 mask stamp from Ivory Coast.

Indeed! Thanks for the pic!

Both Jkjblue and Climber Steve kindly mentioned being introduced to stamps by their fathers. That was great to hear!

In my case, this was my mother's stamp album. She purchased it with one of her first paychecks after graduating from high school in 1940. She introduced the fun of stamp collecting to me decades later.

I agree with wt1 that the Modern Stamp Album was not designed for advanced collectors; however, there were other albums available at that time for children and teen-age beginners that had paper or pressboard covers, some of which were staple-bound.

For many collectors, like my mom, the Scott Modern Stamp Album was their first "adult" album.

Kevin

I found one of these albums several years ago in a dealer's stock. It had quite a few stamps mounted in it, and for the $25 I paid for it, I was quite pleased.
When I got the album home, I took a more detailed look at it. There was one stamp mounted in the "Baden" section which I instantly recognized as not belonging to that German state. It was actually early German empire. 9kr Imperial Eagle, Embossed. Scott 25. Not a bad haul at all!
At one point I entertained the idea of filling that album as a 'secondary' collection, just for fun. After adding a large amount of additional stamps, I noticed that the album bulged way too much for my liking. I ended up removing the stamps and keeping the album around as more of a pictorial reference. I still have it somewhere in a box.

Milehigh, you bring up a good point.
In the 20 plus albums I bought the last couple years, I've found that most of them had stamps in the wrong place - and even the wrong country. I learned early on to not "assume" when scanning the pages and check each stamp. Sometimes there is a reason for a stamp being misplaced, other times it isn't obvious.

I mentioned in an earlier post my observation of the very same thing. I'm grateful we have loose leaf punched album pages today that we can expand upon as much as we desire. I've never been a proponent of stamp albums that have printing on both sides of the album page, either. But I suppose one has to put themselves in the mindset of those collectors from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s when the "Modern" stamp album was marketed. There were less than half as many stamps available back then as compared today and in the US post-Depression era, a low price point for an album was still a major concern to many collectors. Bottom line: Times have changed...so have the stamp albums!