Harris Master World Supplements Coming To An End.

I heard about this over the summer and I haven't seen it discussed here yet. I used to be buy these right up to about 2012 and I suppose I'm part of the reason why they ended them. They were a great way to get yearly world supplement under $25. It looks like the 2023 supplement is the last one.

I grew up with the H.E.Harris album series . From my first album in 1956 which cost 25 cents at Woolworth's in Providence R.I. thru their STANDARD stamp album which became a 7 volume W.W. collection . They worked for me until I got married in 1976 . Sorry to see one of their series end .

My first album was a Harris as well, purchased from Johnson's Bookstore in Springfield MA around 1968. It was inevitable with the popularity of self-publishing and cost pressures but doesn't make it less sad.

The end of an era?

I picked up a new copy of the two-volume Statesman several years ago when I got back into collecting. It initially seemed like a good way to ease back into things, but ultimately contained spaces for newer issues that I wasn't sure I'd ever acquire. Eventually my goals changed (and since have changed a few more times).

I can't imagine they sold too many supplements each year. I'm sure a print on demand arrangement could have been pursued, and would have provided a means of keeping back supplements available.

Makes me wonder how much longer Amos will be able to justify continuing the International and Supreme albums.

Dale

I became a REAL stamp collector ,when my mother brought home this album for me ,cost was 25 cents .

I became a serious collector after my Dad purchased from a older boy for $1.00
this Ambassador Album which new cost $2.95 . Now I was ready to be called a Philatelist

floortrader,

Thanks for posting the old ad. Those must have been great days to be a young collector starting out. Even when I was a kid getting my first taste of collecting in the early 1980s, stamps seemed to be everywhere. Ads in comic books and magazines, Linn's available from a newspaper vending machine at the local supermarket, even a small stamp shop run by a grouchy old man about 25 minutes drive from where I lived.

Has anyone ever seen one of those old albums filled up? 10, 15, 20 thousand stamps of the relatively cheap and common type doesn't seem like much to me now. To ten year old me, though, it would have been an almost unthinkable amount.

Dale

Since we are strolling down memory lane let me take you back to the 60's and 70's in Springfield MA. There were three stamp stores you could visit along with two large department stores and a massive bookstore all of which had stamp collecting departments. You could window shop, talk to the owners and fellow collectors about stamps, handle albums, pick up stamp publications and supplies and of course purchase stamps. Suburban Stamp was the upscale shop with a weekly live auction on Saturday. Larry Bustillo owned Suburban Stamp. (Larry was subsequently famous for unknowingly purchasing an inverted Jenny in 1983 for $57,500 and had to give it up to the FBI) He still expertizes for the PF and PSE. I purchased my first Scott National from Larry, and he never made me feel anything but important even though I was a kid with no money. It was an exciting time for stamp collecting and you could not wait for Saturday to go visit the shops. The lack of instant gratification (no internet) made your stamp excursions all the more special. The department stores, bookstore and stamp shops (not sure about Suburban Stamp) are all long gone now. The memories are not though. You don't get the same sensory experiences from the internet. Looking someone in the face while conversing (learning social skills), shaking hands, seeing the goods in person, the sun shing through the front windows, picking up the latest Linn's from the rack and even the smells all make it memorable.

Great to see these old memories. I agree, there's no substitute for the in-person experience of those days. Growing up in small town northern Maine there were no stamp stores, but we had a J.J. Newberry and F.W. Woolworth store and you could get a stamp starter kit with a Harris album in both places. I can still hear the creak of the floor boards in those places and smell the food from the lunch counter.