1902 German Album. German Stamps Plus Other European Countries

I'll start with a couple of pages from an album with a written inscription in German that dates the album to 1902. There are three more pages, not shown, from Germany related areas: Baiern, Wurttemburg, Baden Thurn and Taxis.

Seventeen additional pages in the album have similar numbers of stamps from Italy, Great Britain, Holland, Switzerland, etc. which I can scan later if there is interest.

I searched the forums, but having no experience with stamps I didn't get very far. At this point, I just would like to know if there is anything interesting here, or should the album just be forgotten.

Interesting.

The stamps on the pages have little to do with the pages. Someone, randomly, mounted stamps on the pages. The blanks appear to have had stamps glued to it. Maybe someone used old pages from which stamps had been removed, and reused the pages for other stamps. Maybe that person did so, because the name of the country appeared on the pages.

Considering the state of the pages, you might consider removing the stamps - the second page appears, mostly, to hold cut-outs - and throw away the pages before they damage the stamps.

Thanks for your comments.

The albums were in a relative's house that I cleared out as the administrator of his estate. That relative's father, A.L. Moeldner, apparently was a prominent stamp collector in the 1930's. As reported in the New York Times, he sold a large collection in Boston in 1932 that was described as being of "exceptional importance".

I suspect that this album and a couple similar ones might have been Moeldner's childhood albums, hence the randomness of the stamps on these pages. He would have been about six years old at the album date.

I'm not an expert and can't say what the values would be, but the stamps are definitely worth saving. They appear to be fairly common, but some are very early (old) and would be of interest to a collector, I think. Some of the postmarks on the second page are also very clear, which adds to their interest.

Hi Boston,

Sometimes, the value in these things isn't necessarily with the stamps themselves but with who owned them. I'll bet there's a good stamp club in Boston (if that is indeed where you are) and you might take the album to see if any of the those folks recognize the Moeldner name or if that has any historical significance. Until you determine that, I wouldn't separate the stamps from the album. If nothing else, I would try to include whatever history you gather with the item if you decide to sell it. And in answer to your question "is it just something to be forgotten?" I would say it's definitely something worth hanging on to. If you can't find someone in the family interested in stamp collecting, see if anybody is doing family history.