Unusual Album Win.............

Hi,
Two weeks ago I saw an online auction of a Scotts International album, offered by a resale shop. The album binder was totally unusable, barely holding the pages inside. The pics told me it was a "M to P" collection from the beginning thru the mid 1960s. It also showed several glassine envelopes and many loose stamps in between pages.

As I had $65 in Paypal burning a hole in my pocket, I bid that and won the auction (free shipping). I then begin to wonder if I goofed.

The album quickly arrived, well wrapped. The binder was in two pieces, but I salvaged the metal page holders and copper retainers.
Going thru the album I found:
- well over 40 envelopes of purchased stamps
- about 1000 loose stamps - many with hinges attached. I'm wondering if they just fell off the pages.
- about another 2000 stamps attached to the pages, mostly post WWII, but several before.
- the pages were very musty, and unusable (to me), but other than that were in good condition. I think the album was in a damp area for years, and probably hadn't been touched since the late 1960s.

I only collect thru 1960, so I will have an awful lot of nice post 1960 stamps to surplus. And it is going to be a job (a fun one) to go through this thing, sorting out what I need, have, or don't want.

I really took a chance on this one, but it looks like it may come out ok. That being said, I would love to hear others experiences on album auctions............

I've not been a big "album buyer" but I did buy a US Album at the APS show in Little Rock for $75. The album itself is in poor-fair condition, but the stamps within filled some early gaps in my collection - and in a couple of instances it filled a couple of somewhat expensive holes (ID verified) in my collection. Frankly I was surprised at a couple of things left in the album by the dealers and have to assume they didn't pick over it.

I also purchased, again at a show, two Minkus Global Supreme albums for $90. Pretty loaded with stamps -the Germany is surprisingly nice. I'm debating now on whether or not to use it as the foundation for a half-hearted attempt at a worldwide collection, or to just sell it off and see if I can make a few bucks.

I've never bought an album collection off ebay, though I seem to look at quite a few of them there. The ones mentioned above are the only two I've purchased at shows. But I love looking at old albums.

I do alot of auctions but not just for stamps. Actually I only recently started collecting stamps again and bid on stamp lots only when I have some extra cash laying around. That all being said it is rare that I spend more than 10.00 on a stamp lot. Since in was so long ago that I stopped collecting, I really consider myself new at it again and have to re learn alot (not that a 8-9 year old would really know alot abou tit in the first place). My most recent win, although I don't know if there is any real value in it, was bigger than I expected. I knew there were a couple of old albums but when I picked it up, I found a number of envelopes labled and filled. I don't think there was anything newer than 1938 in the collection. There were even some old documents in the lot as well. I have linked a few of the scans/pics below. let me know what you think. I know that there are a number of them that are probably too damaged to be anything of value, however this probably represents 4-5 envelopes out of 20 and does not include anything the previous owner had in the albums. A couple of items I thought were interesting were the two documents related to the Burgess Battery Company and Professor Burgess. the opposite side of the post card is a congratulations from another person regarding some papers he published.

Hi again!
Well, I've finished going thru the album and really was able to add a lot of stamps to my "thru 1960" worldwide collection. The album was especially heavy with stamps from Poland and Portugal. Ha, I've got hundreds of them post 1960, and will probably offer them up for a trade later on.

I said there were "about 40" glassine envelopes of stamps, but I was pretty conservative as there were 65 of them. Sadly (to me), most contained stamps from the 60s, out of my collecting range.

I just won an auction for a collection of covers on ebay. (Link below, FWIW.) By rough count, there were about 150 covers, of which only 20 or so were of interest to me (the airmail covers). The winning bid was $53, so with $14 for shipping, I'm out $67 for the lot. Just counting the 20 or so that interest me, that comes out to just a bit over $3 a cover. I will try to sell the rest, and if I can get even $25 for the remaining ~130 covers, I'd be down closer to $2 bucks a cover for what really interested me. Given that these seem to be covers I don't have in my collection, I would consider $2 each a "steal."

Never done this before. And have never sold anything on ebay. But it looks like I'm about to give it try.

Link, FWIW: http://www.ebay.com/itm/37108874820....m1439.l2649 br /

Basil