Grossman Stamp Co. Ww Albums

Hi, everyone:

Picked up a 1959 Grossman Capitol USA album at a charity shop a couple of days ago.

My Dad--an old-time collector--and I weren't aware of the Grossman albums until now. We both really liked the Capitol album.

Now, I'm rather curious about the Grossman WW offerings.

Poking around ebay, it seems that the 1957 Aristocrat was their most comprehensive WW album. Is this the case, or was there once an even bigger Grossman WW album?

Grossman sold a lot of basic loose-leaf stamp albums a few decades ago with a line that increased in size and price. They were good beginner albums with a distinctive look that had pages massively filled with stamp illustrations to the point there was no blank space. All contained spaces for common stamps but not for anything of higher value.Their largest album was the REGENT stamp album, an absolutely massive thing no kid could ever possibly hope to fill.

But I wanted one for Christmas when I was about 13 or 14 so Santa brought me one. By that time -- the early 1960s -- it had grown to two very large volumes. I poked away at it for a few years, filling maybe 2-3% of the spaces, then it managed to disappear some years later.

They still exist used, but I would not recommend Grossman albums as all Grossman albums are now very used and there is no way to get pages anymore (they're long gone as a company), their page layouts were godawful with just tons of stamps shown but very little attempt at organization other than line after line of stamps with no real effort at groupings, pages faced each other so stamps rubbed and pulled each other off the pages, and the Regent Album was so heavy you inevitably dropped it while its pages remained unfilled pretty much forever.

I'd say the best modern worldwide albums currently are the Scott International and Minkus Global, both of which are still in print and still sold new. Worth the money, I'd say, especially for the long haul. Both will cost you hundreds of dollars, though, so save your allowance.

I've never looked at the Grossman US albums, but I did pick up a used, but intact Grossman Crown WW album a couple years ago for reference. I can see why such a compact album would appeal to younger collectors (and cheapskates, which our hobby seems to have always had in abundance).

I would not trust the paper used, even if it appears white. Mine has a distinctly brownish tinge. Those old albums may be nice to look at (this coming from a collector who does not share Drew's album page aesthetic), but hinging a stamp to them feels wrong.

Dale

Thanks for the insights...

My principal collection is on Steiner pages printed on acid-free paper, and will remain so.

The use-case for the Grossman albums is for space-filling fun using my vast accumulation of low-value duplicate stamps. I won't be adding pages.

Unlike the Steiner albums, they could easily travel with me when I go visit my aging Dad--so we could more often enjoy our beloved tradition of "stamp time" together. His collection is housed in Harris Traveler and Ambassador albums from the '50s and '60s.

My last pre-printed WW album system is the 2-volume Minkus Comprehensive set purchased new in the early 1990s, and I found its page layouts to be abominable. The 1957 Aristocrat albums I've looked at on ebay feature page layouts that make a lot more sense to me.

What I probably should do is get a vintage Harris Citation and divvy up its pages into the multiple Traveler and Statesman binders I already have on hand. I've got blank pages and glassine interleaves at the ready for Harris albums, too. But, there's just something about the Aristocrat album that's calling to me...hence the inquiry about Grossman albums.

Good luck with your interesting plans!

Note that the Grossman Regent is looseleaf 2-post, but the holes are not in the same location as with Harris (which is the same as Minkus BTW), so interleaves would have to be re-punched. I recently set up a pristine vintage Citation Album with interleaves, and now it is spread across three Statesman binders (with interleaves). Much, much better than 1 huge unwieldy volume without interleaves.

I recently picked up vintage Grossman Academy worldwide album (512 pages) for a couple of bucks. The spine had already been duck-taped and I decided to try an experiment. I had a couple hundred of old glassine interleaves lying around, so I took a glue pen and used it to adhere the interleaves in between the pages. I was surprised that it did not bulge out too much when I was done...

John

The Capitol album frankly surprised me when I first opened it up--I wasn't expecting it to be of such quality.

Pages are printed on one side only, and there is an extensive back-of-the-book section. Completely filling this album would be quite an accomplishment.

I wonder if the design team was inspired by the White Ace albums.

Alas, you are correct about the paper. What a shame that these album pages weren't printed on better stock, or I'd already be at work mounting stamps on them. If only I had a scanner and printer big enough to do album pages...

Due to the probably-unsafe paper stock in the Grossman albums, the multi-binder solution with Citation pages is looking like the best option for my use case.

The US Copyright Office web portal shows that ©1983 edition was registered, but the Citation albums I've located on ebay all date from 1964, 1971, and 1973.

Has anyone noted any compelling reason to favour one particular Citation release over the others?

The only possible reason to favor a later version is that it will have more later illustrated spaces, along with (perhaps) greater capacity.

The two biggest problem areas with these vintage albums, IMHO, are #1 that the pages are incomplete and #2 that the pages have no date of issue (or range of dates) on them... Not all Harris worldwide albums have a range of issue dates on the pages...

The ebay prices are way too high for almost empty Citations. Be patient and you should be able to find a good deal. I found one a couple of weeks ago that was less than $30 including shipping (!!) This was from ebay...

John

My 2nd album was a Regent. I was excited to get it. Now that I think about it, lots of illustrations and very few blank spots is correct. Years later I got the first 6 or 7 vol. of Scott's International. At about the same time I became a dealer at age 21 and found RG Simpson wholesale packet business. I bought their 40,000 all different worldwide mounted in 40 little thin paper books. Only $700 for the "packet". I spent a couple years mounting with hinges. Lots of stamps non of which were very valuable. I gave my Regent to my son who I suppose still has it but never worked on it. I added to my Internationals which now reach up to year 2000. I decided I'll never fill in those hundreds of pages with the modern stamps and I've started to sell the blank country pages individually. And wonder why collectors don't seem to want 75 pages of St. Lucia from 1973 to year 2000. It might be fun to search for the 10s of thousands of modern foreign stamps but it sure ain't cheap. Now I specialize in only 5 or 6 countires. But still love those old world wide albums I used to dream about from Minkus and HE Harris. Just no room on the bookshelves.

The best comprehensive album is subway reproduction pages followed by scott international. The next best is palo regular/hingeless albums, followed by Minkus followed by Steiner pages on acid free and ligin free creme paper.

The best albums for look and layout is lighthouse, followed by Palo followed by Scott specialty Series and then maybe Davo. My2cents.

Steiner wins for usability and being able to custom design without losing your shirt in fees followed by Scott.

k7prz you are the first person I have read about that bought one of those 40,000 packets. I remember seeing those and wondering about them as a kid. Do you remember what was the most valuable stamp in them? I kind of miss the days when Scott, Minkus and Grossman were all in competition.