StampTalk

I picked up and have been reading a copy of a book I first read more than 40 years. It's Fun And Profit In Stamp Collecting by Herman Herst, Jr., a name with which you may or may not be familiar.

In it he says, "long ago we learned that collectors do not like to buy collections intact, and that they will not pay for someone else's mounting efforts." He states, correctly, that the joy in collecting comes from putting a collection together, one a piece-at-a-time, and laments some of the beautifully designed and even hand painted album pages he had to throw into the waste basket because they were of no value to another collector.

This was undoubtedly true when stamp albums were cheap and plentiful, but today, with many of the once-popular albums gone forever, albums in good condition sell very well on eBay, with or without stamps. This is especially true of the Scott International Part I and Part II, now out-of-print, and other large out-of-print albums, especially the Minkus Supreme and Master Global albums.

I have purchased country collections from dealers on beautiful, white and clean Minkus pages, pages no longer available, boldly marked-up with catalog values. They were pages I could have used, or that another collector could have used, ready for the wastebasket.

A lot of old-time dealers still see all the value in a collection as being in the stamps. Today, as many collectors return to the hobby, some value can be found in well-cared-for albums and album collections, as well, especially on eBay.

One of the stamp discussion boards I visit had a thread involving Christmas and religion on stamps. The member starting it had a poll asking collectors if such subjects should be banned from being issued on stamps.

Many years ago, I gave up on collecting stamps. My primary reason for doing so was because all stamps are issued by governments and all governments specialize in violating the rights of their people in some manner.

Since all stamps are issued by governments, all stamps are inherently political!

But why drag politics into the stamp hobby?

It just isn't the place for it.

We either collect what is, or we don't, whether the stamps portray Hitler or Stalin or Marx or Mao or a Monarch or Christmas or a Saint.

The stamp hobby is no place for politics; it should be a refuge from politics and the things that tear at us daily. Any political charge we might get from a postage stamp is something we give it ourselves.

There is room to collect what we like and can appreciate. Those with different tastes and interests can collect the stamps they prefer.

When it comes to mounting stamps in an album, neatness counts. At least it does for me. And right now, I like nice and don't take 'space fillers,' either.

It's much easier to find flawless, mint copies than it is to sort through a lot of used ones to get what I like. The mint stamps look better too. It wasn't always that way and at one time I did prefer postally used stamps because they had done their job as postage stamps.

Today, given a choice, I'll go with a mint copy and if I find a nice used one mount it underneath, even though philosophically, collecting used stamps makes a lot of sense because a REAL stamp is a stamp that's done its job, especially when so much of what has been going out consists of CTO or cancelled to order material.

Of course, with so many more stamps being produced than are needed for the mail, and more importantly, being produced with collectors and the ulterior motive in selling to them to raise revenue in mind, you could say that even a mint stamp has completed its mission and done its job when someone mounts it in their album.

You can think of albums as shelters for unneeded stamps!

When it comes to stamps in the movies, there are two that I can remember whose plot, at least in part, involves stamps or stamp collecting.

The first is Charade, from 1963 with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Though at has been out there for 45 years and featured a memorable Henry Mancini title song, I never saw it until just a few years ago when it ran on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). In it, Grant and Hepburn get thrown together in trying to track down a missing fortune claimed to have been held by her late husband. There are some allegedly rare old stamps involved. There is also a fascinating outdoor stamp market in Paris, where the story takes place, with rows of dealers selling stamps from their tables and booths.

The other is a more recent feature, Heart and Souls with Robert Downey Jr. from 1993. In this movie about a group of people killed in a bus crash, one of the deceased has to get back a sheet of zeppelin stamps he once helped steal and return them to their rightful owner before he can move on.

These plots and scenes are probably all but forgotten by everyone except a true stamp collector.

What's the best world wide stamp album?

Of the stamp albums published in the United States over the years, which among them, especially between the Harris Citation, Minkus Supreme Global, and Scott International postage stamp albums, was and is the best?

A new article at The Modern-Vue Stamp Store titled The Best World Wide Stamp Albums looks at the albums that were issued by the major U.S. album publishers and examines them on several key points. It also comes to a conclusion about what the ultimate album for a world wide collection would be.

You might be surprised!