I've written about the Annual/Progressive Albums several times in the past. These were intended as yearly supplements to the Brown Internationals between publication of the cumulative volumes.
I became particularly interested in them because the last Brown issued by Scott stopped its coverage in 1938, yet the Vintage Reproductions set includes a volume for 1939-40 to complete the first 100 years of philately. Where did that come from if Scott never issued a corresponding Brown? We can now say with confidence that Vintage used pages from the 1939-40 annual.
Blog reader Dee recently sent proof with photos that Scott actually published an Annual Album for 1939-40. This is important because previously it had only been known, to me at least, from advertisements.
Dee confirms that the 1939-40 Annuals were based on the 1941 Scott catalog (see the title page below). As was the tradition, the 1941 catalog was actually published the previous year which means that it would be missing some issues from 1940. And consequently also were the 1939-40 Annual and the Vintage reprint.
So how many missing stamps are we talking about? Six hundred and fourteen. Wait, how can we possibly know that? We can thank Phil Pritchard who has undertaken a monumental project to identify stamps missing from the Vintage Reproductions pages among other improvements. Now, I must confess that the 614 isn't entirely accurate as I'm having to make inferences from Mr. Pritchard's statistics. But it gives you an idea.
Which begs the question of how many spaces would a hypothetically complete 1939-1940 Brown have contained? Four thousand three hundred and ninety. Again, wait? We know that because Scott used to publish stats in its Monthly for the number of stamps issued per year. It did strike me that 614 is a rather large number out of 4390 to be missing, but I remind myself that there are some stamps from 1939 which had been left out, and Mr. Pritchard includes stamps now in the the modern Scott Classics Catalogue that would not have been in the 1941 one.
3 comments:
Bob
Greetings, haven't talked to you in a long time. :-)
Well the suspicions that Vintage used the possible?/probable?/actually published? 1939-40 annual supplement (based on the stamps listed in Scott Catalog 1941) is confirmed now that we know the 1939-40 annual supplement actually existed.
Kudos to Bob, who has been pursuing this evidence for years, and to Dee who provided the evidence.
Very well done!
Glad to hear that a copy of the 1939-40 annual album has been unearthed to confirm the source for the Vintage Reproductions pages for the period and thanks for sharing the additional details. Paul Pritchard's work on correction/addition pages for the Brown albums is definitely worth mentioning and represents a monumental achievement!
Bob,
Thanks for persisting in your detective work, Bob, and for posting Dee's information.
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