Sparks Auctions May Sale To Include 94 Volume Master Global Collection

Floortrader - I am curious enough to go up there myself and take look. As you say there are many questions that need to be asked and answered. I would guess though that it is a good collection since the owner spent many thousands of dollars on just the albums.

The May sale also mentions "hundreds of country collections". I'm not that far away, so a visit to Ottawa may be in order then. Nice time of year for the city - usually tulip festival on.

Maybe he collects albums and there's no stamps.

"A collection of worldwide stamps in 93 Global albums" is what his webpage states and in 92 slip covers. Good luck to whomever wins it. Not my cup of tea.

You couldn't pay me to take these albums (the stamps within them might be another matter). These and the Harris Citation albums are the bulkiest, most unwieldy, unusable albums ever devised. "Hey, can you grab that 37-pound stamp album off the top shelf?"

I loathe them.

Does anyone know how many binders would be required to hold the original album and all the supplements? I bought a 20 volume collection from Kelleher in September and it goes to 2000, 95 volumes seems like too many to me?

PS Those flat backed binders are in demand and I sell good used ones for $45+.

bobmill - a smart buyer would either pick it up or have someone do that for them. Better and cheaper than shipping I would think.

I got to wait until the firm scans 100 or so pages of the inside of those albums . It really doesn't take a lot of scans to form a opinion of what kind of collection it is . The first two pages of about 20 countries will tell everybody a general price range .

floortrader, which 20 countries would you request for this purpose?

If I had depended on the first two pages of Countries I would have missed out on a lot of great material. I just picked up a four volume International collection that had squat for the 19th century issues of most countries but is loaded with great 1920-1930's sets. MNH commemorative sets from France, Italy etc., a PEXIP sheet, complete MNH Commonwealth Silver Wedding's and so forth. No, it all depends on the collector and their focus. You never know and that is what makes it fun.

KRelyea: Harmer-Schau had an even bigger collection in 200+ Minkus volumes some time back. That one claimed to be over 99% complete 1840-2010, absolutely massive.

Yes, you can get up to 2000 in twenty volumes or so, but if you collect imperfs (for example) it can double the number of pages for many countries. If the collector uses glassine interleaving and/or black mounts it can increase the mass of the pages enormously as well (and these albums are already very heavy when full), so it might be the books only have half or so the number of pages they could hold full. Certainly if you want to decrease the amount of wear on the binders (these binders appear in nice shape), you don't fill them full.

That's my point. Currently I'm selling a Scott Part I which has been blown out to 7 volumes with "Extras", this has added a lot of value to the collection. If the 95 volume collection contains lots of extras that changes the value significantly.

As everyone has said it completely depends on what's in the albums.

How many dry cabinets do you need to store so many albums?

To answer the question of what I would look at first ,there is a few countries that will give anybody a general idea if money was spend on the above collection . I want to be clear that a few pages would not give you a price or value to the whole collection . It just tells me what the original collector was putting in their collections .

All general collectors put more money into various areas and not other countries which can be weaker .

I would look at U.S. Great Britain ,Greece,China,Japan , Australia and a few others . These would clue me to quality and completeness.The auction house in their describtion should clue you in to where the gems or better stuff lays .

The estimate will reflect its value to an extent along with a viewing given its size. Still though, I have purchased apparently ho-hum collections that held one Country that the collector had a passion for that were spectacular. This one needs a thorough in person inspection. Given that Sparks has it in hand in December and the auction is in May they will undoubtably do a comprehensive inspection. This will be interesting to watch. I am a spectator due to its size and my willingness to preserve my marriage for the time being.