Well they really weren't lost, just hidden away. About 30 years or more ago, I had this habit of buying old, partial albums at stamp shows. These albums had been searched by dealers themselves, but I had lower expectations at that time than they did. So for a small sum, I would take home an old treasure book and enjoy going through and taking stamps I did not have and then having this remaindered albums. I thought about putting this on ebay, but decided to look through it first. The album So all the stamps were in my collecting period of pre-1940 classics. The former owner had inserted many clippings interleaved fro his/her local newspaper stamp column, which I don't know how many exist in current non-philatelic papers. Just to illustrate the stamps quality here is a page inserted but not album's since the stamps of Fiume were only from 1918-24 and thus later than publication. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_of_Fiume Close up. If you go to a stamp show or even see stamps advertised on Craigslist , at least check through some pages. Always surprises , good and bad Jim
A nice find Jim. I sometimes wished I had done what you did, buying the old remainder albums at stamp shows. In years back they were much more prevalent. Now I suppose most of that stuff goes up on Ebay and other sites. A good tip about keeping an open eye on those sort of offers. You never know when you will find a "diamond in the rough".
I started collecting all the various Scott albums before 1945. They put some out every year for different levels of collectors. I call them the browns and the blues. The browns were for the "serious" collectors and only came out every 5 to 10 years or so and the powder blue ones were call the juniors and they came out every year. I probably have about 40 of them. I just found a different one at a stamp show on the kids table. It is "The Imperial Stamp Album" by Scott and only about 10 x 7 x 1/2. It has almost no stamps and a broken binder but it is the only one like it I have ever seen.
I've picked up a fair few of these old albums over the years and I really enjoy the sense of history they provide. Often they are inscribed with the owner's name and other oddments throughout that can really add to the charm.
Very interesting! I take it that you're a history buff. I always believe it is good to have a permanent reminder of history. We must never forget. I couldn't stop looking at the Fiume ones.
