For a few years, through stamp clubs and ebay, I have obtained, from what I can tell, all the pages for the Harris worldwide albums. That's from the early Citations up to 2017 supplement. All with glassine interleaving and about five blank pages after each country.
I felt overwhelmed by it all, having so many pages with so little amount of stamps on the pages. So I thought, let me concentrate on the early issues and bought Scott International, Part 1. I didn't expect huge coverage, but am amazed at how much is not noted. Especially, when they leave so much room on many pages, with spaces for two or three stamps per page. Now, I feel underwhelmed, with the International part one purchase.
I was transferring stamps from the Harris to the Scotts and am starting to feel like the Harris may give you more spaces than the Scotts. This includes early issues too.
So, now I'm at a standstill, not knowing in what direction I should follow. Should it be Harris or Scott or neither. If I could start all over again, I think I would concentrate on one or two countries only and use Steiner pages. However, what about all the stamps I have. Sorry for sounding so neurotic. No matter what, nothing seems to really feel right. Any thoughts on this?
I purchased a copy of the 2010 Harris Statesman Deluxe a couple years ago with the intention of collecting to the album. It didn’t take long to determine that my accumulation contained many stamps that would not find a space.
I ended up purchasing a subscription to Steiner’s pages. I’d rather have spaces waiting to be filled than stamps with no home.
That's the problem with Scott International Parts 1 through 5. Most omissions occur with Part 1. Like you, I can't understand why they leave a stamp or two out of a set on a page when there is plenty of room to have the spaces printed.
My solution, if I use such a page, is to simply put the missing stamps where they would have gone if the spaces were printed.
Scott will never fix this problem until I buy Scott.
I wish there were a perfect solution....the old brown scott internationals had the beautiful engravings of the early stamps..the Steiner pages have lots of vertical and horizontal boxes.
I am quite fortunate in that I attend my local auction houses in Montrose and Dundee. I also attend a stamp auction in Edinburgh 80 miles away, once every couple of months.
I normally buy mixed box lots that may contain one country printed stamp albums, along with loose stamps, stockbooks, presentation packs, First day covers etc etc
Doing this I have accquired over a period of time printed albums of :-
Australia,
New Zealand,
Canada,
Great Britain,
Isle of Man,
Jersey,
Guernsey,
France,
Germany,
Berlin,
Czechoslovakia,
Hungary.
They have all come with many many spaces already filled with stamps. I just need to fill in the empty spaces!!!!
In fact there is a box up for auction on 1st June with a set of six Davo printed albums of Portugal with many stamps. The estimate is $40 to $70.
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Thanks for all the input on the questions that I asked. I guess many of us end up in the same situation and choose what works best. There are so many ways to go, however most of all, I'm leaning toward the Steiner pages and spending more time with one country at a time.
After a long break from collecting for quite a few years, I think I jumped into too many avenues at the same time. Like they say, you learn from your mistakes.
Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy.. 28 May 2019 06:05:29pm
re: H.E. Harris & Scott Internationals
In the sixties I started with a Harris Citation and began transferring stamps from my parent's Scott International. By the time I had added enough pages to need a second Citation I found a set of Minkus Supreme and Master Globals, devoid of stamps. So I retransferred everything from Citation to Jacques Minkus' pride and joy. Eventually I moved some favored countries to separate three ring binders.
Now as the Minkus binders have gotten older and complain a lot about hard usage and old age, I am planning to break the Minkus binders into two or three reasonably matched three rings and re-integrate the favored countries pages into good new binders. Eventually I could transfer the sets all onto blank pages, if I live that long.
It really never ends.
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".... You may think you understood what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you think you heard is not what I thought I meant. .... "
Charlie, i have been using the 2 inch Staples "better binders" with the fabric,they cost about 15 bucks and they come in enough colors to color code the areas...Netherlands, Dutch Indies, etc: .
Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy.. 29 May 2019 01:51:44am
re: H.E. Harris & Scott Internationals
That may be a choice although I was thinking "White" with external sleeve where I can slide in decorations.
Next week I am buying a cutting board with guillotine to trim slightly toned edges. That way the edges will be the same sized and it will look nice.
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".... You may think you understood what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you think you heard is not what I thought I meant. .... "
I don’t know how much this will help, but I just dropped an overstuffed International on my foot and it hurts like hell. If I still had been using my childhood
Ambassador album(1969 version), it probably wouldn’t have hurt as much. Jack