The H.E. Harris company is one of the oldest stamp companies in the United States. Henry Harris started from packet selling and stamp approvals. By 1930, Harris realized that the biggest impediment to selling stamps was that his customers had no place to put them.
In 1930 Harris produced a philatelic radio show starring Captain Tim. The show was a huge success and Harris produced over two million stamp albums that were distributed to collectors around the country. This began Harris’s career as an album producer. By the time H.E. Harris was sold to General Mills is the late 1970’s, the Harris Company was more of a publisher than a stamp dealer.
The Harris album line essentially consisted of two broad types – Foreign albums and United States albums. The foreign albums came in several formats from the Citation series to the Statesman Deluxe album to the Ambassador album. Each of these albums had spaces for anywhere between 25,000 and 75,000 stamps. One of the ironies of philately is that while there are many valuable stamps, most stamps are very cheap. The Harris foreign albums were sold mostly to children and casual collectors. Most of the collectors who bought the Harris foreign albums also bought packets of thousands of stamps to mount in these albums. Most Harris album collections, even today, have little value because the stamps that went into them had little value.
The second broad group of stamp albums that Harris produced were the specialty albums for the United States and Canada. These were designed for a more serious collector and, today, many of these albums contain fine stamp collections. If you find an old collection in a Harris albums, please contact us and we can help you ascertain its value and sell it for a top price.