Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
During the holidays, I came across an old US stamp catalog (Postal Service Guide to US stamps, 13th ed. 1986). In it, there was this photo below of FDR looking over his stamp collection; presumably it was taken before the heat of WWII occupied most of his time.
I'm just curious: would anybody here know what sort of stamps/themes he collected? And whatever happened to his collection after he died? Was it sold, put in a presidential library, or donated to a museum?
Too bad not too many heads of state are into philately nowadays. If ever they traded while in office, they probably would have used one of those official mail stamps for postage. It'd be nice to get one of those.
Bob
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Hi Bob:
To answer one of your questions, this is a quote from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum website;
"At his death, his personal stamp collection numbered over 1,200,000 stamps, 80% of which was of little value - "scrap" as the President called it. The collection was sold at public auction in accordance with his wishes and realized $228,000.00. The stamps he received officially from foreign governments were not sold, but are a part of the holdings of the Roosevelt Library."
I wondered who counted the number of stamps in his collection? 
Liz
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The FDR collection was sold by H.R. Harmer Auction Galleries of New York beginning about 1946.
As a cover dealer, I frequently come across covers from his collection. He used to get all the covers addressed to the "Secretary of State" from the various consulates around the world. An interesting point: normally the wax seals were cut out of the back "for security reasons". I guess they did not want anyone having a model of the wax seal.
Here are a couple of examples I have sold this year:
They can be identified as coming from the Roosevelt collection because Harmer's placed one of a number of different rubberstamped messages on the back, to give some provenance to what was, at the time, a very mundane cover. 
Note that the wax seal was NOT cut out of the second example.
For anyone interested, these come up regularly, and sell in the range of $12-25, depending on the country of origin. The illustrations of the covers above are reduced. They are almost always large business size envelopes. I have quite a few of them in my "Sold" database covering the last four years.
On another note, Monaco issued a stamp with Roosevelt looking at his collection -- in fact it may be from the same picture that Bob posted above. I have not had time to take a look at the catalogue.
Roy
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I don't have a copy of the Monaco stamp handy, but here is the b&w image from Scott for #C16. The stamp is actually violet:
Roy
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Liz, Roy...thanks for the info and interesting insights. If FDR indeed had more than a million stamps then obviously he would have had quite a number of albums to house that many stamps, as can be gleaned on the Monaco stamp. I wonder if the US Postal Service ever considered issuing a stamp depicting FDR as a collector? I think that would make a nice cover.
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I know that I read recently that Roosevelt, after learning about the attack on Pearl Harbor, retired to his office and spent some time working on his stamp collection. I wish I could recall the source.
Roosevelt himself is a rich source for the stamp and cover collector. He is featured on one of my web pages, "The 'Allied Nations Issue' -- The United States issues a stamp on my birthday." It's well worth taking a look at one of the links, to an editorial that appeared in a military newspaper following FDR's death.
Bob Ingraham
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I checked out the FDR presidential library website cited by Liz. In it was an original newspaper article that reported on the auction of FDR's stamp collection as mentioned by Roy. Not only were stamps and covers sold but also die proofs, photos of which are in the article. For those who wish to read it, click on http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box23/A903aa01.html
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H.R. Harmer & Co. purchased much of the scrap material and placed individual, worthless stamps, on a small white card, and stamped them on the back "from the Roosevelt collection", and sold them. I do not remember the cost, but I had several at one time. Just looked for some, but I seem to remember selling some on Ebay last year.
They do make a nice item for part of philatelic history.
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05:34:55am
Happy New Year, everyone!
During the holidays, I came across an old US stamp catalog (Postal Service Guide to US stamps, 13th ed. 1986). In it, there was this photo below of FDR looking over his stamp collection; presumably it was taken before the heat of WWII occupied most of his time.
I'm just curious: would anybody here know what sort of stamps/themes he collected? And whatever happened to his collection after he died? Was it sold, put in a presidential library, or donated to a museum?
Too bad not too many heads of state are into philately nowadays. If ever they traded while in office, they probably would have used one of those official mail stamps for postage. It'd be nice to get one of those.
Bob
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06:10:26am
re: FDR the collector
Hi Bob:
To answer one of your questions, this is a quote from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum website;
"At his death, his personal stamp collection numbered over 1,200,000 stamps, 80% of which was of little value - "scrap" as the President called it. The collection was sold at public auction in accordance with his wishes and realized $228,000.00. The stamps he received officially from foreign governments were not sold, but are a part of the holdings of the Roosevelt Library."
I wondered who counted the number of stamps in his collection?
Liz
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12:35:20pm
re: FDR the collector
The FDR collection was sold by H.R. Harmer Auction Galleries of New York beginning about 1946.
As a cover dealer, I frequently come across covers from his collection. He used to get all the covers addressed to the "Secretary of State" from the various consulates around the world. An interesting point: normally the wax seals were cut out of the back "for security reasons". I guess they did not want anyone having a model of the wax seal.
Here are a couple of examples I have sold this year:
They can be identified as coming from the Roosevelt collection because Harmer's placed one of a number of different rubberstamped messages on the back, to give some provenance to what was, at the time, a very mundane cover.
Note that the wax seal was NOT cut out of the second example.
For anyone interested, these come up regularly, and sell in the range of $12-25, depending on the country of origin. The illustrations of the covers above are reduced. They are almost always large business size envelopes. I have quite a few of them in my "Sold" database covering the last four years.
On another note, Monaco issued a stamp with Roosevelt looking at his collection -- in fact it may be from the same picture that Bob posted above. I have not had time to take a look at the catalogue.
Roy
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03:54:12pm
re: FDR the collector
I don't have a copy of the Monaco stamp handy, but here is the b&w image from Scott for #C16. The stamp is actually violet:
Roy
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07:16:02pm
re: FDR the collector
Liz, Roy...thanks for the info and interesting insights. If FDR indeed had more than a million stamps then obviously he would have had quite a number of albums to house that many stamps, as can be gleaned on the Monaco stamp. I wonder if the US Postal Service ever considered issuing a stamp depicting FDR as a collector? I think that would make a nice cover.
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07:36:33pm
re: FDR the collector
I know that I read recently that Roosevelt, after learning about the attack on Pearl Harbor, retired to his office and spent some time working on his stamp collection. I wish I could recall the source.
Roosevelt himself is a rich source for the stamp and cover collector. He is featured on one of my web pages, "The 'Allied Nations Issue' -- The United States issues a stamp on my birthday." It's well worth taking a look at one of the links, to an editorial that appeared in a military newspaper following FDR's death.
Bob Ingraham
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05:13:22am
re: FDR the collector
I checked out the FDR presidential library website cited by Liz. In it was an original newspaper article that reported on the auction of FDR's stamp collection as mentioned by Roy. Not only were stamps and covers sold but also die proofs, photos of which are in the article. For those who wish to read it, click on http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box23/A903aa01.html
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03:37:25pm
re: FDR the collector
H.R. Harmer & Co. purchased much of the scrap material and placed individual, worthless stamps, on a small white card, and stamped them on the back "from the Roosevelt collection", and sold them. I do not remember the cost, but I had several at one time. Just looked for some, but I seem to remember selling some on Ebay last year.
They do make a nice item for part of philatelic history.
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