Lot 48 - 2 Gigantic 1967 HE Harris Standard World Albums With Stamps

Videos of the contents:

Video 1

Video 2

Two massive 4 inch thick HE Harris Standard world albums from 1967, with a fair number of less expensive, but colourful stamps mounted within the 2 volumes. The Standard album which is no longer in production was a 2 volume set, which was purported to be 1,000 pages and contains spaces for 50,000 stamps with 30,000 illustrations. The binders are 2 post and beam, which are secured with a metal rod hidden in the spine and are 4 inches thick. The pages are a little on the flimsy side, and are double sided, so you probably would want to use hinges and add glassine interleaving pages to stop the stamps from catching on one another, though they shouldn't if you are careful. What makes this line of albums different from the less expensive and more junior Traveller, Statesman and Senior Statesman albums that Harris produced is that there are spaces for many complete sets, whereas the junior albums only have spaces for the lowest value stamps. Looking through it, the US pages are more or less complete for all the basic Scott numbers except for some of the early grills. But they give a nice, somewhat intermediate coverage of the 1861's, Pictorials, Banknotes and Washington Franklins that you wouldn't expect to see in such a large album. The British Commonwealth countries usually include up to mid pence values on the early issues, and maybe up to 1R, 2R or 5/- on the early Elizabeth sets, with the 1960's sets having spaces for the full set. The same is probably true for the other non-commonwealth countries, though I see for Germany for example, the 1951 Post Horn set has spaces for all stamps, as do the early 1950's Heuss definitives. So, this is clearly a set that is designed for a worldwide collector that is not a completeist, but is ambitious enough to attempt simplified completion on the major countries like US and a few others where the coverage is expensive, and is happy to have representative stamps of the other countries. This would be a fabulous conversation piece to have open on your coffee table at home, as it so wonderfully captures the wonder and magic that is the essence of this hobby. It will probably be more suitable to used stamps unless you wanted to collect mint hinged. You could try to put mounts in these, but I have a feeling that the album will swell to unweildy proportions and place too much strain on the covers if you do. This was stored in an attic for 4 decades, and so there is a bit of a musty smell, which some febreeze and fresh air will help to get rid of. The Harris album covers are always very fragile at the seams, which have a tendency to crack and come apart over time. These can be fixed by carefully fusing the vinyl back together with a red-hot coat hanger tip or soldering iron. The first volume is pretty good, with the front cover spine only being split about 2 inches along the bottom. The other volume is a bit more severe, with spine splitting to about half way up, so it will need to be carefully repaired. Volume covers A to G and volume 2 covers H to Z. A nice set of albums for a beginner or intermediate collector who likes busy album pages. Est. $100.

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