Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Scott International Album Accessories

There is a current eBay auction for an older set of International Postage Stamp Album Title Labels. Scott describes them as “Pressure sensitive labels. Easily attached by hand. Made of the same handsome, durable binding material as Scott’s blank International binders. These labels will appear to be a permanent part of the album spine. Yet they permit the collector to arrange his International pages exactly as he desires. Handsome. Permanent. Convenient.”

As far as I can tell, you can no longer buy a prepackaged set of labels, but you can still purchase them individually. On the Amos Advantage site, there is a dropdown in the Search menu for “binder labels: international.” They correlate to a previous version, so there are only two rather than four separate labels for the Volume One.

This got me to wondering whether there were any accessories sold for the International series that aren’t available today. The only thing I can come up with are the Coats of Arms, Flags and Rulers of Countries. Perhaps you know of others. To get us started, here are the accessories I’m aware of:

Binder small blue (regular)
Binder large blue (jumbo)
Slipcase small blue
Slipcase large blue
Binder labels (currently sold for individual binders)
Blank pages with the International border
Blank quadrille lined pages with the International Border
Blue protector sheets for International binder
Glassine interleaving 2-round post International

No longer available:

Coats of Arms (96), 19th Century Series
Flags (88), 19th Century Series
Rulers (72), 19th Century Series
Binder labels (set for all currently available volumes)

Other accessories that can be used with the International but not specific to the series include:

Scott Filler strips

I thought I remembered that Amos sold Advantage Stocksheets (1-8 pockets) with the International Border, but I don’t find these on their website. I own some but they are packed up at the moment so I can’t check. [UPDATE: they come in the National and Specialty borders only.]

Subway Stamps in their G&K line sells versions of most of the above, but it is worth specifically noting:

G&K Interleaving Crystal clear film
G&K Inventory Record Pages
G&K Crystal clear page protectors (closed on 2 sides).

10 comments:

ChrisW said...

Yes, I have a package of those labels I purchased back in the 1980s. Must be 40-50 labels in the pack...I ended up only using the first two labels.

Looks like Scott never updated their labels after the split of the Part I from two to four volumes. Still can only order Part IA and Part IB, but not Part IA1, Part IA2, etc.

Bob said...

Chris, I feel like a doofus. I didn't even notice that it was Part IA and not Part IA1. Thanks for pointing this out.

Still more attractive if less useful than my handwritten labels I have on the spines of my binders ("A-France," etc.).

DrewM said...

Not quite what you're looking for, perhaps, but Subway used to sell under its G&K brand some smaller sized Big Blue binders which held fewer pages, requiring that you buy more binders.

Who would want these? I would. The size of even the standard Amos/Scott International sized binder is just too big for comfort. Drop it, and it can sustain some real damage due to the overall weight of binder and pages. Try to pick it up with one hand? Good luck with that. And the pages at the extremities of the pages front and back are so extremely curved that it's hard to mount stamps (or keep them on the page).

The smaller sized G&K didn't solve all those problems, but it made the album much more manageable in each of these areas. Unfortunately, Subway has discontinued this. I know this because I wrote them about a year ago to inquire if they still sold them or if they were willing to remanufacture them. "No" and "no," I was told.

I think it was by far the best binder for the Big Blue pages. The only thing better would some way to mount the International pages in a ring binder, preferably a European 22-ring binder (looks best), so the pages lie completely flat. No chance of that in my lifetime, I imagine.

Bob said...

Drew, exactly what I was after. Thanks.

ChrisW said...

In terms of quality, which Scott International Binder is considered better, the G&K brand from Subway or the "original" one from Amos? I know the G&K binder cost about $10 less at Subway or elsewhere, but not sure if that translates into cheaper quality.

Thanks.

Bob said...

I hope others will weigh in on this. I own both, but I've never bought the Amos ones new, only the G&K.

ChrisW said...

Just as a follow-up, I did end up buying a couple of Regular Scott INTL binders from Subway and feel the quality is just as good as, if not better than, my original Scott brand binders.

Also, purchased the first volume of the Scott Brown Vintage Reproductions and have been using them for the past couple of months. In general, I really like them, however, as noted by Jim and Bob and others, there are some quirks with them, with some “mystery” stamps (denomination and/or colors) showing up in places. But, I think I can live with that in exchange for the comprehensiveness and beauty of the albums. My original plan was to just buy the first volume covering the 19th century and keep everything else in my BigBlue, but now I’m tempted to slowly buy the additional volumes of the Browns.

Bob said...

Chris, thanks for the update on the binder quality. Now if only Scott would release the metal hinged binders available for the Specialty series for the Blues.

The "mystery" stamps in my experience correlate with the catalog in use at the time the volume was published. Which for the 19th century edition reprinted by Vintage Reproductions is 1919. But then I don't know whether Vintage Reproductions did any mixing and matching as part of their reprinting process. If they had access to the 1939-1940 pages that no one else seems to have had, perhaps they had access to corrected pages in earlier volumes.

I hope you will post what you decide to do about the remaining Brown reprints as well as your further experiences with the 19th century pages.

kingshuk said...

Bob now that you got me convinced about collecting classical stamps in the Minkus supreme global albums( Amos reprints) how about a post on Minkus album accesiorries :).There seems to be a dearth of information about the Supreme Globals. By the way I am aragon01 from stampboards

Bob said...

I do have a couple of old Minkus supply catalogs somewhere. I'll check and see what I find. You are right about the lack of information on the Globals although things are better now as collectors such as yourself post. (The Minkus country/regional albums are still terra icognita, to me, at least.) But I remember when I started "researching" the Scott Internationals, it took a long time to confirm the most basic facts, such as whether the four part version sold today is four times as comprehensive as the originals? Of course, we know now that it is just four times more expensive!