Harris Album With Additions.....need A New System And Need Advice

I haven't actively collected since I was young...but inherited a Harris 'New Enlarged Discoverer Album' from my aunt when I was a kid. Because we added a great many things to my collection when I was young, we unbound the Harris pages and 3 hole punched them to fit in binders with other pages.

My 2 binders are now plastic wise getting very old and dare I say almost sticky feeling....

I have fond memories of even looking at the stamps in the Harris that I -didn't- have....so I am not sure I just want to unmount everything and start from scratch completely.....but who knows....I want whats best for the stamps too.

I am not sure how actively I will add to the collection, but would at least like to do my old hobby and collection justice in storage.

thoughts, ideas, am I crazy?

Welcome to the community.

What you decide is definetly a personal thing.

As for the binders, the plastic is breaking down, so get the pages out of them and put them temporarily in other 3 ring binder. You can also put them temporariily in a stockbook until you decide what direction to take. Keep that oily film away from stamps as it will stain them.

Certainly you can get new binders for your existing pages.

A decent pre-printed album for a worldwide collection will cost some money. You might want to, instead, use some nice new stockbooks or cards, in addition to your existing album, to organize your collection for now, at least until you have enough stamps that you think a new album would be a worthwhile purchase. (Harris Discoverer albums have only a few thousand spaces IIRC, so even if you've filled it with stamps, you might be disappointed with how the collection would look re-mounted in a much larger, more comprehensive album. And if you aren't gung-ho about WW collecting, it'll take a long, long time to get near completion. Why spend the $$$ on a better album unless you're sure you'll like it better?)

Stockbooks also provide many advantages to pre-printed albums: it's much easier to rearrange stamps on the page, for example, and you get to dictate the layout. You can display your stamps the way you see fit. The dark background of many stockbooks make the stamps on each page 'pop' and can be very visually appealing.

You might also decide to focus on one or more country, and so go into the market for superior albums for them instead.

Alas, there is no good single-volume worldwide album to go out and buy (it's a contradiction in terms: there are simply too many stamps, even abridged to the cheaper issues and with a cutoff date!) If you do want a better illustrated multi-volume worldwide album, though, Scott International and Minkus Globals are the two most commonly used ones, at least in North America; you can get a mostly empty A-to-Z set lightly-used with spaces up to at least the 1970s or 1980s for a few hundred dollars at auction (buying them new from the manufacturer is also possible, but will cost several times more), and they're a pleasant challenge to fill. The Minkus albums have better coverage (i.e. spaces for more stamps), but the pages are also more crowded. (Coming from a Harris album, which are the most crowded of all, you might like that, though.)

There are also comprehensive album pages that you can download from the Internet and print for any or all countries that you're interested in (Steiner pages), though those pages are not illustrated, so perhaps not as pleasing as the pre-printed ones.

Excellent advice offered above. Your fondness for the Discoverer album is understandable. If you like the idea of using an album for housing your world wide collection, consider the options. You can try to collect as many stamps as you can which implies you will need a large multi-volume album to house them. Another way to do it on a much more modest scale is to look for an older Harris Statesman or Minkus Worldwide Comprehensive album with a publication date up to 1970 or earlier. Then simply collect to the album. In other words collect only the stamps illustrated in the album. If there are blank spaces, collect only stamps that were issued up to the copyright date of the album. I have done this with a 1963 Harris Statesman that was found on ebay in excellent condition. I now have several "complete" countries with every space filled. It doesn't take a fortune to do this since most spaces show easily found common stamps worth just a few cents each. Specialized country collectors might find this an enjoyable way to keep their hand in worldwide collecting on a very modest scale. It might also bring back fond memories of their youthful years when they first started collecting.

Thank you all for all the ideas on how to go with this.

So what I did so far is order a Mystic album for the years ( 1957-1987) that most of my added US collection are from, since those are just on blank paper anyhow and can be moved into their own place.

I got a stockbook for keeping of randomness that isn't in the Harris but also wont move into the Mystic.

That should give me a good first 'project' without going too nuts on things until I finish the US stuff.

I have a lot of added world stamps too (my aunt lived in Turkey and the middle east..) so things like complete sets of the Turkish City scenes in both denominations....and so forth...

but its a re-start!

Nee,

Good move on the Mystic. As regards your Discoverer, check out ebay for acquiring Discoverer binders in better shape than what you have on hand. They are there. For updated pages, consider buying the Harris Statesman Album and pages from IHOBB. You can also buy just the binders.

Jack Kelley