...Browns but no one does anything about it. No wait, that can't be the case. I surely mean the Blue International Volume One that only houses a subset of stamps released between 1840 and 1940, with numerous missing common stamps and mistakes galore. The Browns, and more specifically the Vintage Reproduction reprints of the Browns, are legendary among serious worldwide collectors who surely have few if any complaints about coverage or editing.
Just kidding. We have known in broad outline issues with the Browns for some years. But until now, no one has documented the depth of the problem, much less provided a solution. Enter Phil Pritchard who has painstakingly identified what needs to be done and is in the midst of a three year project to create additional or replacement pages for the Vintage Reproduction version that will rectify deficiencies in coverage.
Mr. Pritchard will be going into great depth about his project in two articles that are slated to appear in The Philatelic Literature Review (American Philatelic Research Library). Because you need to read these, I won't go into details about even the basic categories of problems he is trying to address (many of which are similar to those plaguing the Blue Volume One). But to give you a flavor of the breadth of his project, here is an example of changes he proposes to the pages for Japan that are in Volume 5 of the Vintage Reproductions reprint:
Japan 171-252 – Vintage page 369, part 1; add #171 and #175a which are 1937 stamps although listed with the start of those designs in 1922; Scott lists the “a” stamps as minor varieties but they should be majors as they represent different dies and all designs appeared first in 1922 but you would see only 2 of these then going by what is a major number, add #247 which for some unknown reason Scott left off the page although it is a part of the 1937 set, rearrange the #239- 252 set by design, remove the coils that are repeated on Vintage page 312 for 1939-40 although 3 of them are 1938 and thus belong in volume 5 (see related pages).
If you are interested in more information about this unique project, you may contact Mr. Pritchard at
philpritchard AT mindspring.com
(to make this a working email address you will need to change the 'AT' to '@' and eliminate the extra spaces).
LINKS
For some examples in this blog about problems with the Brown, see my 2015 post: https://globalstamps.blogspot.com/2015/04/brown-versus-brown.html
For a similar study prepared by Arthur Palmer done for the Blue, see https://globalstamps.blogspot.com/2008/06/scott-international-volume-i-coverage.html
If you need an overview of the Browns, see https://globalstamps.blogspot.com/2012/07/fifty-shades-of-blue-and-brown-part-2.html
If you need a refresher on the various flavors of worldwide albums including the Browns and Blues, see https://globalstamps.blogspot.com/2014/10/quick-overview-of-pros-and-cons-of.html
