Old Collection, Should I Move To New Albums?

I have my wife's father's, grandfather's and great-grandfather's stamp collection. They are in about 18 different albums (no two are alike). Is there any value to leaving them "as found" or would it be better to consolidate and move them all to a nice new album?

craigconewbie,

We need more info. Are they USA, worldwide, etc?

Jack Kelley

Both. I have US back to the first Franklin. Great Britain, Penny Black. Chinese dragons, large and small. Countries all over the world, most of the stamps are pre-WWII, a lot are pre-1900. 95% are currently hinged in multiple albums, but I see no rhyme or reason to the order. There are handwritten dates and numbers. I see some catalog values of $300-$400 (I know they won't bring that much). If pictures are needed I can take some when I get home, but I don't know if I would no which countries to take.

One of the main things we need to know is how old the albums are. Some older albums show environmental damage and that is not good for stamps

Peter

I few selected pages from two of the albums. I only wish I new what were on the places where a hinge used to be!

As you can see most of the albums are old thin three ring binders.

Any idea what some of the handwritten notes mean (besides the dates) 42/8 or 26/15?

Reasons for moving them...
1. The pages are probably not acid free and some of the stamps look a bit toned.
2. The presentation is something less than ideal.

Reasons for not moving them...
1. This represents your wife's family work and is a nice heirloom; there is something special about handling the albums and page that a family member has put their time into.
2. Quality hinges can be costly.

The above said, I would probably consider moving them, perhaps using Vario pages. But before I moved them, I would document every page with plenty of images and keep the old album/pages for future generations.
Don

I agree with Don. Take lots of photos and rehouse them in a hingeless environment (ie: Vario or Hagner pages or black page stockbooks).

You could scan the pages before moving the stamps from them.

Jack Kelley

Yes, moving is fun and you learn in the process.

Similar question: What if the stamps had been in commercially produced albums? Personally, I have a number of old albums that belongs to friends' parents, and I've struggled with whether to remove stamps from them, or leave them intact. I have removed U.S. stamps from them that I needed for my own collection. I've not touched any of the worldwide stamps. Yet.

AS to the OP: I agree with what's been said. Homemade albums, probably not archival, I'd scan the pages and removed the stamps to preserve them better.

Does anybody have an idea what some of the handwritten notes mean (besides the dates) 42/8 or 26/15?

My guess is catalog numbers and cat. nos./cat. value.

I appreciate this conversation. I decided to scan the old pages for my collection.

What are you going to move them to eventually? It looks like you have the basis of a nice worldwide collection if you wish to continue it yourself.