A short post as I continue to recover from the hangover of the memorable two-day philatelic literature summit and auction of the “PARIS” library of Tomas Bjäringer by Heinrich Köhler held 13-15 November 2025 at Wiesbaden, Germany. It was great meeting some old and making many new friends; learning from and gossiping with them is one of my great joys in philately!
An early blog post of mine, dating back to 2019, was on Arthur Hind (Figure 1), one of the greatest stamp collectors of all time, and the dispersal of his collections in the US and UK.
In that post, I had illustrated my copies (no longer with me) of the house bound volumes of the 11 Hind auctions conducted by the British auctioneer, Henry Revell Harmer (1869-1966) in London between April 1934 and October 1935. The catalogues of the five British Empire sales were bound in red leather (morocco) while the six Foreign Countries sales were bound, in a similar fashion, in green (the card covers of the individual catalogues were discarded in the process).
I had questioned why copies could be found bound both in quarter and half leather (Figure 2).
In conclusion, I had theorised that such bindings were just a random thing.
I was wrong!
Choices Offered
Three months back, Rudolf Buschhaus of Duisburg, Germany wrote to me mentioning that in a copy of the Hind sale no. 11 he had found an advertisement which correctly answered my query. This is illustrated as Figure 3.
So, to summarise, H.R. Harmer offered to bind the individual catalogues for a price of 12s6d; the catalogues and prices realised had to be sent back to the auction house by the client.
Further, the auctioneer gave a few different options. Volumes could include:
- an index and introduction at no cost; the introduction to the British Empire volume was written by Harmer himself and that for the Foreign Countries volume by the great Fred. J. Melville (Figure 4)
- thumb indexed by sales i.e. semi-circle cut-outs on the right side of the pages to enable one to quickly get to the desired individual catalogue (see Figure 3 top), again free of any charge
- gilt top at 9d more
- half leather binding instead of quarter for 6d extra
So, depending on a client’s fancy, copies found today:
- Will have an index and introduction; I think most or all should
- May have a thumb index; one of mine had it while the other did not
- May have their top edges gilded (to stop dust from getting in); again, one of my volumes’ edges was so done
- Could either be in quarter or half leather
Logically, a person would have his two volumes bound similarly. But, over time, as the siblings got separated, current owners may possess different versions – one in quarter and one in half leather, or both in quarter leather but one with a thumb index and one without, or both in half leather and one’s top gilded and the other’s plain, and so on.
