Miscellaneous Info on the Scott Internationals, etc.

I had a little time to visit the Wineburgh Philatelic Library at UT Dallas this weekend and tried to dig up some more information about the the history of the "Blue" International and its competitors. I'll be retroactively updating some of my earlier posts to reflect what I have found, but here is a summary.

First, I had assumed that there was a smooth transition between the two part "Blue" and the four part "Blue," but an October 1994 ad in Scott Monthly shows that a collector purchasing the set then would have bought three parts: Part 1A1 (US to Ethiopia), Part 1A2 (Falkland Islands-Latvia), and Part 1B (Lebanon-Zululand). My working supposition is that perhaps Part 1A went out of print before Part 1B. Later when Scott decided to reprint 1A, they split it into two parts. Now whether 1A1 and 1A2 represent the re-editing we find in the current 1A1 and 1A2, I do not know. Several years later, the 1998 Scott World Catalog lists 1A1, 1A2, 1B1, and 1B2, just as today.

An ad in the 1975 Scott Catalog gives a little more information on The Grand Award Album, which I assume Scott published to compete with the Minkus Master Global. Specifically, it had 1,300 pages and sold for $21.50.

I don't think I was aware that the original Brown albums in looseleaf form were printed on one side only, just like the Vintage Reproductions. (The bound volumes were double-sided.) The number of pages in the 19th Century volume was 732 and 1034 in the 20th Century Part 1 (i.e., 1900-1910).

Speaking of Vintage Reproductions, according to an ad in the 1996 Scott Classics Catalogue, their authorized copies of the Brown Internationals first included only 1840-1938 in 4540 pages. Another ad a year later shows that 1939-40 was available.

At one point in the late 1990s, Scott sold original stamp cuts from when their catalogs were still letterpress at $9.95 per cut. I wonder if these ever show up on eBay?

I confirmed from an ad that The Minkus Supreme Global did go from two to three volumes with the 1966 edition.

Although my lone hour at the Library meant that I was madly flipping through pages, I'm a little more skeptical now on how easy it is going to be to find some basic information that is still missing. I had assumed that Scott Monthly, the Scott Catalogs, and other publications would commonly have ads for the Internationals. Such ads seem to be much rarer than I had thought for significant periods of time.