Question For Big Blue Experts

Thanks 1840/1940 , sounds like the collection would be a hard sell. I have to believe that collection is going to be broken down with the better material sold separately and the auction will have a huge country collections section.

I read that thread and it mentions the world traveler collection too. I like the details in the catalog. There seems to be a common thread of merging collections together to be able to get these really complete ones.

I would love to examine that collection or learn more about it. Am I jealous that it is bigger than mine ---you bet ---I am . But you can bet I will exceed that massive collection .I like the part "The breadth of the collection is unbelievable......the stamps are simply unavailable "
Every collection once it gets over the 200,000 different stamp starts to go into the direction of specialization .If the owner only follows the album he/she is using then it gets boring working to just fill spaces .The stamp collector who build that massive collection had to buy some very large and specialized collections to reach that goal of 99.9% complete . Some where we are going to see this collection broken up and on the market in sections ,I just hope its a one catalog event ,so we get more details .

I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm usually opposed to collectables disappearing in museums, et al, but a part of me thinks it might not be a bad thing for our hobby if someone bought and donated the entire collection to the APS/National Postal Museum/British Library, or other institution, along with an endowment to add new issues and the stipulation the collection be kept accessible. I can imagine the publicity over the years: "There have been over 600K stamps issued since 1840 and someone was able to acquire 99% of them--and you can see them at...."

Of course, my real preference would be for the collection to be acquired by a collector who could afford to keep it up (and, if possible, no be so secretive).

Of course, my real preference would be for the collection to be acquired by ... ME!

Here's a more modest collection, but interesting what one can do no matter what album one chooses.

MASSIVE 11-VOLUME WORLDWIDE ESTATE STAMP COLLECTION 137,500+ STAMPS
THIS IS THE STANFORD ESTATE
H.E. HARRIS ALBUMS & PAGES – CURRENT THROUGH 2011
VERY MOTIVATED ESTATE SELLER
WE PRICE EVERYTHING TO SELL - QUICK SHIPPING

Very Simply – We are selling this massive Worldwide Collection Stanford Estate. The collector was a Rocket Scientist who did a lot of the very early work on rocket aerodynamics in the 1940's and 1950's. Apparently he channeled all of his non-working time into meticulously building a first quality stamp collection that spans 11-Volumes. Clearly he could afford to purchase quality items and this is very apparent in this enormous collection. As you would expect from a Rocket Scientist, he had excellent attention to every detail in his Stamp Collection. .


We have had a number of requests for additional photos. Simply CLICK HERE to see more than 200 additional images from this massive Estate Collection.

This is an 11-Volume collection, housed in 2-Post Harris World Stamp Albums from a non-smoking home. In the Estate Instructions left by the Collector in 2013 he stated that the pages were up-to-date including the 2011 H.E. Harris Supplements and that his last count was 137,610 stamps. We did not know if he included the 12,930 stamps in the box mentioned above, so we elected not to include these in the total of 137.610 stamps that he referenced. The winning bidder should simply look at this additional box of stamps as a Bonus. As with all Estate Collections … you should view this as buying stamps. We have no way of knowing the completeness of the albums.



Three additional items. (1) We have included representative high-resolution images from each of the albums. We selected pages that were from key countries and photographed the early stamps from that country. Some pages have more stamps than others. (2) An independent Philatelic Appraiser provides a fair valuation to the Estate Trustee who then consults with the Estate (Family) and authorizes a low price, typically a fraction of the appraisal in order to dispose of the Estate. (3) The total weight of this collection is approximately 162 lbs.



· Album-1 includes (Abu Dhabi through Bhutan)

· Album-2 includes (Bolivia through Columbia)

· Album-3 includes (Comoro Islands through Finland)

· Album-4 includes (Fiume through Greenland)

· Album-5 includes (Grenada through Jamaica)

· Album-6 includes (Japan through Mamama)

· Album-7 includes (Marshall Islands through Nigeria)

· Album-8 includes (Niue through Rio Muni)

· Album-9 includes (Romania through Slovenia)

· Album-10 includes (Solomon Islands through Uganda)

· Album-11 includes (Ukraine through Zimbabwe)

· Box of 12,930 stamps – We are told that these were the items that were collected from the Collector's Stamp Room by his Family at the time of his passing.





Payment is always expected within 48 hours of auction closing. Shipping is FREE via Surface Mail. Should you prefer USPS Priority Mail we can ship it for $292.00. We always ship ASAP and we do not use shipping/handling as a profit-center, so you can always expect reasonable shipping/handling costs from me. International shipping is not available on this item due to size and weight. You can buy with confidence. I will only accept PayPal for payment and will only ship to the Verified PayPal address. Please do not hesitate to ask any questions whatsoever

Let me breakdown that collection for you ----------The first thing to notice is that owner did not want to spend money on a decent set of binders . Second nothing says these are complete set of pages ,most likely a hodge-podge of pages of all types ,making the albums worthless . Third, Harris pages are very poor on any pre-1940 stamps ,they show very little complete sets or long sets ,so most likely forget about pre-1940 . Fourth nothing is said about complete sets and high value stamps ,the Harris pages are not made for them .Fifth the scans would show all the better stuff and you can bet he did not miss anything of value for scanning . Sixth, Notice it says 137,500 stamps not 137,500 ALL DIFFERENT STAMPS ,big big difference .
Now lets put a value on what I said ........137,500 stamps should be the lowest possible stamps worldwide so a value of two or three cents each ......about $2500.00 to $3000.00 ---interested on how you read and value this collection ?

I agree that there probably isn't much in the way of pre-1940 items. Harris did a really poor job of the first 100 years. I have found interesting stamps in these in the later years. Good catch on not mentioning "all different" that would mean a lot. I would have liked to see how he fit 10,000 stamps per binder. I am amazed how neat some of these Harris collections are. Tons of stamps in a nice neat row. Let's say that it is truly a 137K different collection. It should be worth 2-3K, but how many people would shell out that much? Alas, it would sell better as parts or maybe the whole binders. I will see if I saved the result of this one.

I'd agree with your assessment of this collection, the mixed binders are a tip off to a lack of attention. I bought a similar collection with 140,000 stamps for $3200 at auction. It was neatly done but I don't think there was a stamp cataloging over $10. On the other hand Rasdale Sale 422 lot 1223 was similar to this collection and sold for $7000 against a suggested bid of $2300, I was surprised.

Thanks for the link... At least there is a clue that there was some value in the Rosedale collection. Having a Penny Black to me means one of two things: the collection was very old and put together a long time ago or the collector went beyond the nickel box.

Grand attempt at a pre 1985 foreign collection. Comprised of 42 Harris world binders on a mixture of Harris pages and blank Harris pages. Somewhere between 105,000 and 150,000 different stamps crammed into this weak format. Focus is on mint with plenty of complete and short sets filling each page. Every country has plenty of collectible stamps (includes a penny black) all waiting to be rediscovered in this extensive holding. Five cartons make up the main collection while the duplicates and others bulk out two more. A long look is necessary to receive the full impact of this massive holding.

I bought an old Harris Citation once and the stamps in in were mounted perfectly. Every single stamp was perfectly centered square within its allotted box.I was impressed that someone could get them that perfect once, much less a few thousand times (the album was far from full). Thing is, the stamps are so crowded in those albums, you almost have to mount them perfectly or it'll just end up looking like a discombobulated mess.

I was going through the December Cwiakala auction calendar (http://www.cwiakala.com/auctioncalendar.html) and came across a 42 volume Blue International collection being offered by Schuyler J. Rumsey, Sale 58, Lots 3369 to 3403 (http://www.rumseyauctions.com/pdfs/Sale58.pdf).

A typical volume description reads "Anguilla To Australia, 1860-1990's, predominately used housed in a Scott International, with much hand-selected for neat unobtrusive cancels; countries including Anjouan and Annam & Tokin, Antigua from useful early issues to later runs and sets, Argentina with early issues including complete 1864-65 Rivadavia perf'd issues, back-of-the-book including a nice section of Officials and revenues, useful Ascension, Australia with good to better early issues including 1913 first issue Roos complete to the2 sh, 1915 issue missing only the 2d low value (cat $761), following Roo issues with good higher values and near completion from1930's to early 1980's, back-of-the-book with dues, officials and A.A.T.issues; condition varies mostly confined to early issues."

The catalog includes a few scans of pages for those interested in seeing how a collector mounted stamps for which there were no spaces.

I saw this collection and considered buying 1 or 2 volumes, so I wrote and asked for more information. They responded that the entire 40 volume collection was composed of about 20,000 stamps. I replied that this would be only 500 stamps per album, essentially empty? They responded that they were a long way from full. From looking at the pictures it's obvious that this is not a 20,000 stamp collection, but Rumsey specializes in covers so I didn't bother them anymore. I will probably bid on a couple lots but the last lot is a "Take it all" lot so my efforts will probably be fruitless.

That is absolutely incredible. I got the impression that many countries were close to complete. You were so smart to email them.

I think the fellow that responded wasn't used to looking at stamp collection, but I'm just guessing.