Purchased An H. E. Harris Worldwide 300 Stamp Grab Bag At Hobby Lobby

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***
Today, I had a wild hair and picked up one of those grab bags, just for fun.
The last time I got one of those was around 1968 along with an Explorer Stamp Album. These gifts from my folks were the main spark for my stamp collecting journey!

On opening today's bag, I was honestly surprised with the mix I found. There were quite a few commemorative issues from a decent variety of countries. The mix was still kind of heavy on German and Hungarian issues, but there wasn't an over-abundance of duplicates. A pleasant bonus was the significant number of stamps on-piece that included full postmarks, which feeds the postal history penchant I possess.
An amusing side-bar: There were only one or two examples of the Belgian 'Glasses Guy' and the Spanish 'bald dude' (Gen Franco) that I remember having an over-abundance of in that old 1968 bag!
Overall, the mix was very enjoyable to paw through, and I actually added a good number of stamps to my large world-wide collection. Even though there were no big-bucks stamps, which was to be expected, it was a very entertaining mix to play with for a few hours.

Glasses Guy and Bald Dude are still showing up in these bags?

That's both sad and hilarious.

If you have the time and the energy, an E Rawolik-type overview would be interesting. For old time's sake.

I may have Golden Galleon dreams tonight...

What is the cost these days?

$9.99 !!

Can you believe it?

John

That's great news to hear that these mixtures are still out there.
I have very fond memories of sorting through dozens of:



in these mixtures when I was about 9 years old.
Nice.

This thread made me laugh. I have hundreds of that guy with glasses and that bald dude. Sometimes it takes than many to get a decent set. Those stamps are easily damaged.

Cjd,
I just might try that. Maybe not quite as in-depth as those in the past, but a general overview of what can be found in these bags.

...and, we're off to the races !!
I have to start this off with the pic of Glasses Guy and Bald Dude.
I was surprised that there is only one of each in this lot.
But, I'm still sick of 'em all the way from 1968!



OK, only 298 or so stamps left to go.....

As I mentioned in the OP, this bag o' stamps is fairly heavy on German stamps.
Here are the D.D.R. issues....

Here are the West German Buildings definitive stamps present in this lot.
I recall that a few of these issues were present in my ol' 1968 bag....




More to come.....

There it is! That pink Franco!

Here are the rest of the West German issues found in the lot:













This last pic includes some sort of a postal label that I must research.
As you can see, these are all run-of-the-mill issues, but most are on-piece with some interesting postmarks.

To round out the Germany issues, here are the 'Unified Germany' stamps:






88 German stamps in all, approximately 29% of the bag's contents.

Next stop: Hungary!

Here are the Hungarian stamps found in this Harris mix. I was surprised. During my initial run-through, I thought there were a lot more than this.
Only 29 this time.
Mostly CTO commemoratives of various Olympics with a smattering of flora/fauna themes.
Only two postally used stamps, both on piece - 1973 definitive issues.







Moving right along!

A Czech dozen....

All CTOs with 1976, 1980, 1984 Olympic themes, plus one Leopard!