Filling Spaces

Blue Skies are Here Again

2012-02-03T19:33:00.003-05:00

Blue International collectors need no longer sing the blues, at least in lament for Jim's Volume 1 checklists. The checklists are back! Now there is no excuse for you not completing that Volume 1. Well, fewer excuses. If you aren't familiar with Jim's blog, scroll down and look on the right for the link to Big Blue 1840-1940.

Random Jottings about Marginalia

2012-02-01T15:23:00.010-05:00

There are book lovers who would never consider writing notes in their books while others gleefully personalize their tomes with addenda and corrigenda. Similarly, there are stamp collectors who want to keep their albums unsullied by any emendations (unlike most postal history collectors who for some reason have never met a cover that they didn't want to scribble on). Any way, I regularly pencil "stuff" in my album and this article looks at the type of emendations I find useful. I don't claim any of the following as either necessary or the best solution, but I hope it might help someone just getting started.

Most obviously, I am penciling in the Scott catalog number for every stamp I am missing. While this isn't as necessary when your initial purchases are from other International albums, once you start buying individual stamps it is a real timesaver. Less obvious is coming up with a system for treating the blank spaces where more than one stamp will fit, not to mention multiple blank spaces where a range of stamps will fit. Examples of what I do:

69 : only Scott #69 belongs here

69,72,84 : any one of these three Scott numbers matches the cut/description and falls within the date range

8-12, 15-20 : as above, but for ranges of stamps.

When there are multiple blank spaces in a row, I write the catalog numbers for all of the blank spaces in the last space. That way, I don't cover up the catalog numbers until the last space is filled. (The disadvantage of this approach is that if I acquire the stamps out of sequence, stamps may not be in order by denomination. An alternative would be to list the missing stamps in the margin, not in a space.)

What I don't have a good solution for is complicated situations where the album has spaces for many stamps, often spread over several pages, and out-of-order to boot. There is a part of the US Cut Squares section, for example, with 6 blank spaces that any of the following items will fit: U114-115, U117-141, U143-162, U165, U167-177, U179-180, U182, U188, and U189-217!

In addition to catalog numbers, I also pencil in the value for stamps I'm missing that catalog more than $10 each. This helps me spot potential bargains on eBay when sellers post album scans. More randomly, I also pencil in catalog values of $100 or more for stamps I already own. I'm not certain why I do this!

One marginalia that has been consistently helpful is a small arrow penciled in to highlight imperfections. I.e., if there is a problem with the upper right hand corner of a stamp, I have a small arrow pointing at the naughty bit. That way, when I'm transferring stamps from a newly purchased album to my collection, I can easily see if any imperfect stamps I already own need to be replaced. This may not seem particularly useful, but the density of stamps on the Blue's pages means that I might overlook such stamps when better copies come along.

What I can't really justify is my system of using an "x" above a stamp that is in the wrong place, and by wrong place, I mean that it doesn't belong in any space in the album. So why don't I just remove the stamp when I discover it? The main reason is that when I find the mistake it often is not convenient to look up the correct identification and transfer the properly identified stamp to a stocksheet. So I leave the imposter where it is until convenient to remove. If you are more organized than me (an easy feat), then you will probably want to extricate any misplaced stamps as you discover them.

I also make notes to help me visually identify which stamps belong in the spaces so I'm not constantly having to consult the Catalog. For example, the first owner of my album didn't always successfully differentiate between the King Edward VII ("the baldies") and the King George V definitives. When I was first starting my collection, to keep me from making the same mistake I would note in the album which set belonged to which King. Another random example: I have a note that the first 3 spaces for Kiauchau are denominated in Pfennig and the remainder with Cent to keep me from accidentally mounting otherwise identical stamps in the wrong space. And the nice thing is such marginalia are easy to erase when no longer needed.

What else? I correct date headers when later research has shown that say a set that was thought to be 1911-1913 when the album was published in reality is 1911-1914. And I note errors in the album, e.g., wrong cuts or descriptions that don't match any stamps.

If you do any scribblings that you find particularly useful, please post a comment.

Warning: Don't Attempt This At Home!

Block's "Generally Speaking" columns now available for Kindle

2012-01-23T14:23:00.010-05:00

I was pleasantly surprised to see in the latest Linn's that Lawrence Block's first 25 columns on collecting the world are available as an eBook for the Kindle (or any other device that has Amazon's Kindle app). You can find out more on the author's blog. If you collect classic era stamps but don't subscribe to Linn's, or have missed some of Block's informative and entertaining columns, this is a very inexpensive ($2.99!) way to catch up. It would be interesting to learn if any non-collecting mystery lovers download the book and decide to start a collection.

Blue Volume 1 sells for $8700 on eBay 1/1/12

2012-01-07T15:17:00.006-05:00

This was covered in nice detail a week ago by Jim on his Big Blue blog (be sure to also read the comments) but I finally decided I should at least reference the sale here for the record. I have been monitoring worldwide albums on eBay since January 2008 and this album realized far more than any that I am aware of. I estimate that the volume held between 23-25,000 stamps with many key items present. My experience is that the average eBay Volume 1 has fewer than ten thousand stamps, usually much fewer. Once you hit fifteen thousand, you are talking about only one or two collections a year. There was a volume with 30,000 stamps offered in 2008 with a starting bid of $7500 which eventually sold for $4750 after several relistings. Unfortunately, I didn't save any pictures of this collection.

2012 New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-01T14:59:00.004-05:00

I have only two resolutions for 2012. The first is to try to reach the 20,000 mark in my Blue Volume 1. This resolution is only of interest to others if I use it as an excuse to take another overview of what a Volume 1 at this state of completion "looks" like: e.g., which countries do I still not have a single stamp, which are complete or largely complete, what has been the cost so far, what do I wish I had done differently, etc.

The second resolution is to finish penciling in Scott numbers directly in the album for all of the stamps I still need. Largely thanks to Jim's checklists, I am complete through French Guinea plus another dozen or so countries later in the alphabet. It may seem like this is a no brainer, but in my early days of filling the Blue knowing the numbers was more of a convenience than a necessity. After all, I was largely buying other International albums so a catalog was only necessary on occasion to puzzle out a difference of opinion as to which stamp belonged in a space. But at this point I am largely buying individual stamps and sets so knowing what I need when going through pricelists, etc., would be a real time saver. If I would devote just 30 minutes a day to this task it would be done in a month or so. But if it were easy, everybody--even Scott Publishing--would have already done it!

Thank You

2011-12-29T10:56:00.003-05:00

The recent spate of comments on a couple of my posts reminds me that I should thank all of you who have provided so much information and insight on the topics of this blog over the years. I have learned so much and really do appreciate each of you taking the time to share your knowledge. And a special thanks to Jim and Keijo for their own blogs.

BOB

Page Density for Popular Worldwide Albums

2011-12-27T17:09:00.007-05:00

In preparing my 2012 New Year's Resolutions, I made the mistake of going back to relook at the ones I posted for 2011. I say mistake, because I am chagrined to admit that I only accomplished one of the three. In fact, I had forgotten about two of them! While I have changed my mind about the value of one of these, Joe's recent comment reminded me about the remaining resolution--to look at the density of stamps per page of the major worldwide albums. So here goes.

For printed albums, the maximum number of spaces is provided by those albums that don't give individual boxes for stamps, but rather rows and columns with lines separating the illustrations. This is a layout I associate with albums from H. E. Harris, although you can find plenty of examples back into the 19th century. The illustration shows a part of a page from the 1890 Scott Challenge Postage Stamp Album by way of example.

In the H E Harris Masterworks album for Europe that I still own for some unknown reason, the maximum number of stamps that "officially" can be housed on a page is 90: i.e., no country header and 10 rows of 9 columns for definitives. If you have a mix of small and large Classic era stamps, you might expect a page to hold between 50 and 70 stamps.

Next in maximizing the number of stamps per page is Minkus. The Master and Supreme Global albums, of course, provides boxes for individual stamps. The maximum number of stamps per page looks to be 9 rows of 9 stamps each or 81 spaces. But this is highly unusual as most pages have between 6-7, or less commonly, 8 rows and fewer than 9 stamps per row.

For the Scott Blue International Volume One, I didn't find any pages with more than 7 rows; 6 or 7 rows appeared to be the most common. Eight definitives was the maximum on a row, so this gives the theoretical maximum per page of 56 stamps.

For the Browns, I only browsed the 19th Century volume. It was the same as the Blue, maximum of 7 rows with 8 stamps per row. Most pages had fewer than 8 stamps per row. I remember that this was my biggest surprise when I first saw the Brown albums. I had just assumed there would be fewer stamps on a page than in the Blues.

From what I have seen of the Stanley Gibbons Ideal album pages, the maximum number of rows is 7 and the theoretical maximum of stamps per row is 7, giving us 49 total. Note that the page size of the Ideal is smaller than all but the Steiner.

Finally, the Steiner pages available from stampalbums.com. John checked Malta and came up with an average of 13.6 stamps per page. If I may quote his message: "Sets are together and will start on a new page if they don't fit on the previous page. Each set also has a brief description at the top of the set. The pages tend to have no more than five stamps on a row (definitives) and no more than 6 rows (most pages have 5 or less). Note that the Steiner pages are on letter size paper, a bit smaller than Big Blue." To use the same maximum calculation as above, this should mean no more than 5x6 or 30 stamps per page, about one third of the Harris albums and close to half of the density of the most packed Scott pages.

Obviously, all of this is quick and dirty, but it does give some idea of the differences between albums in terms of how many stamps you can house on a page (and, by extension, whether you need to clear off a shelf in your bookcase or build an addition to your home to house your collection).

Addendum: I randomly checked a number of Scott "Green" Specialty pages and it looks like the maximum density is 7 rows with 7 small stamps per row, or 49 spaces. (I trust everyone is in awe of my impressive multiplication skills. If only there were math checkers like there are spelling checkers.) Of course, most pages have fewer stamps. I believe the Specialty albums have the least dense layout of the Scott albums.

Stamp Image Bursting Software

2011-12-25T14:12:00.010-05:00

Jason Drake is a software developer who created a program for his own use that takes an image of a group of stamps and automatically bursts--i.e., crops--them into individual images of each stamp that can be saved separately. When he discovered there was interest from other collectors in his program, Jason made it available via this link. It runs on Windows, Macintosh and Unix operating systems. The app is free although donations are appreciated.

I've been working with the software for about a week and have found it useful. The application works especially well with stamps housed on dark backgrounds, such as black stockbook pages. Unfortunately, white or cream color album pages can be problematic, although I have had some success.

Regardless, kudos to Jason for making this available and his willingness to incorporate suggestions from users. You can find a nice discussion about the program on the Stampboards website.

SG Worldwide Albums. Part 2: Images

2011-12-07T22:07:00.024-05:00

As the Ideal and Imperial albums are unfamiliar to most US based collectors, I thought it would be helpful to post some pictures. As indicated in Part 1, images of the Imperial album are not plentiful. However, a copy of the 1874 edition is available on Google Books. As a reminder, only the British Empire volumes are sold today.
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Image 1, from the Regency Stamps Website, shows the Imperial Album currently available for sale. Note on the left side of the pages are abbreviated Catalog listings for the stamps that are on the right. Incidentally, the image of the Imperial (and Ideal) album on the American distributor's site are much better than on the Stanley Gibbons website and light years better that the one SG uses on eBay.

Image 2. A closeup of what one of the Imperial's "catalog" pages looks like.

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Image 3. A page of Egypt from the Imperial.

Image 4. A page of Great Britain showing spaces for different Penny Red plates.

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Image 5. An "ancient" picture from the Imperial's Local Posts volume.

Now on to the Ideal. As a reminder, only the Foreign (i.e., non-British Empire) volumes are available for purchase today.

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Image 6, from the Regency Stamps Website, shows the Ideal Album currently available for sale.

Image 7. Preface to the 8th edition of the Ideal.

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Image 8. Preface to the 2nd edition of the Ideal by which Stanley Gibbons means the 2nd edition after the 8th. Confused?

Image 9. A warning about not coloring outside the lines from the Index to the 2nd edition. Boy, Stanley Gibbons was really strict.

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Image 10. The first page of Mauritius in the Ideal. Yes, there are, or rather, were two spaces for your copies of the "Post Office" Mauritius.

Image 11. A page of Bavaria from the Ideal.

I have several dozen images from the Ideal albums. Let me know if you are curious about a particular country and I'll see if I have any.

Part 3 of this series will compare the Ideal and Imperial with other worldwide albums.

ADDENDUM. I forgot to put in a couple of images from the Imperial Sectional album.

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Image A1. Note the high section number. As I mentioned in Part 1, there were over a 100 different sections.

Image A2. A page for Bosnia. Has the same format as the main volume so I assume we are looking here at a page for "new issues." I also assume that there was a catalog on the facing page but I can't verify that.

SG Worldwide Albums. Part 1: Overview

2011-12-01T14:01:00.010-05:00

I've been curious about the Stanley Gibbons albums that can be used to collect worldwide classic stamps ever since Tim put me on to them. What SG offers today in that regard is a combination of two different sets: the New Imperial Album for British Empire and the New Ideal Album for Foreign Stamps. Both sets stop with the end of King George V's reign (mid-1936) although the Imperial is more comprehensive than the Ideal for the countries it covers. Both contain more stamps than the current Scott International does for the same time span which is why I think they deserve investigation.

Unfortunately, I've found even less information on the Internet about the SG albums than I did on the Scott Internationals. This is partly because there are far fewer of these albums offered on eBay than the Scott Internationals. Moreover, I've never seen in person an Imperial album and only the pages for a dozen or so countries cut from an Ideal. But that's not going to stop me even though I must warn you in advance that there will be a lot of hemming and hawing. Addenda and corrigenda welcomed, as "they" say.

When you purchase the current Imperial or Ideal albums, you are buying only a subset of their original scope. That is, both albums initially covered the entire world with the Imperial being the more comprehensive of the two. What has happened over the years is that the parts of the Imperial album that were non-British Empire are no longer published. Similarly, the part of the Ideal volume that was devoted to the British Empire is no more, which is why you need both sets to cover the world according to Philately.

The Imperial album began in 1873 and I'm reasonably certain that it was still worldwide as late as the 9th edition which appeared around the turn of the last century. It is possible that the last worldwide edition was The Imperial Postage Stamp Album 10th edition for Issues to 1902. It and perhaps the 9th edition were supplemented by something called the Sectional Imperial Album. I can't decide whether the Sectional was sold by country or by year and whether it was intended to replace the non-sectional Imperial. In any event, it looks like the Sectional was discontinued around World War I. (There is a list of stamp albums in the British Library and the listings for the Sectional number a hundred or so entries between 1908 to 1919; unfortunately, there is no indication online as to what is in each section.)

The Imperial postage stamp album at its greatest extent consisted of four volumes:

Volume I, The postage stamps of the British Empire;
Volume II, The Postage Stamps of Foreign Countries;
Volume III, The local postage stamps of the world; and
Volume IV, Envelopes, wrappers, &c. of the world.

All? of the above were edited by Gordon Smith, MA (1856–1905), a director at Stanley Gibbons and a well known philatelist of the era. The volumes contained 4500 engravings and a comprehensive catalogue, as well as a series of the national arms of various countries. The spaces for stamps were on the recto sides of pages; on the opposite pages (i.e., the versos) were abbreviated catalog listings which I find a very interesting idea.

The Imperial has always been sold fastbound--i.e, you can't add or rearrange pages. One impact of this was that SG had to struggle with the problem this created for collectors using its earlier albums who would have to remount stamps when a completely new edition was published. SG originally tried to deal with this through supplemental volumes by date and later through the Sectional Imperial Album. It is a non-issue now that the album is frozen in time.

At some point, volumes 2 through 4 of the Imperial were dropped by SG leaving only the volume for the British Empire available for purchase. This remaining Imperial volume is still published today, and is according to the SG, "great for a straightforward Empire collection and includes spaces for changes of colour and watermark as well as postage dues and officials, special delivery stamps and visible plate numbers on GB stamps. Perforated, removable pages in the album allow for expansion without distortion, as your collection grows." I say "volume," but because the pages are printed on one side only, what originally took one volume now requires two with interleaving or four if the pages are printed on one side only. The two volume version splits with Volume 1 covering Great Britain and Antigua to Malta and Volume 2 for Mauritius to Zululand. I don't know how the four volume version divides.

So much for the Imperial. For the rest of the world, you need the Ideal album. The Ideal was first published around 1900 and contained then about 600 pages. According to SG, the aim of the album was to "give collectors a one-volume album with printed spaces for the whole world at a popular price." They accomplished this by confining the album to "ordinary postage stamps," and excluding Postage Dues, "Officials," etc. Note that this is why the Imperial is more comprehensive for the countries it covers because it includes Postage Dues, "Officials," etc.

By 1922 the Ideal album was in its 7th edition and had expanded into two volumes, the first for stamps issued from 1840-1914 and the second for issues after 1914. By 1933, a third volume was published 1930-1933 issues. At this point the Ideal had grown to 1424 pages for the foreign countries alone. Recognizing that the rate of new issues was only going to increase, SG decided in 1937 to stop the main volumes at mid-1936 and divided the album into two sections. Section 1 was devoted to the British Empire. Section 2 was Foreign Countries.

At its greatest extent, the Ideal was comprised of 3 volumes and contained spaces for almost 50,000 stamps:

Vol 1. British Empire with Egypt and Iraq. Spaces for over 11,000 stamps;
Vol 2. Foreign Countries Abyssinia to Jugoslavia. Spaces for over 18,500 stamps;
Vol 3. Kiautschou to Zanzibar. Spaces for over 19,250 stamps.

SG intended to publish "new issue" albums for later years but I do not know whether it did so. I do know that at some point after 1936, SG decided to drop the British Empire Volume 1 leaving only the volumes for foreign countries in print.

As with the Imperial, the Ideal was only sold fastbound. It was originally published with facing pages separated by interleaving. Today what were Volumes 2 and 3 are printed on front pages only which means it now takes up three volumes.

This ends Part 1 of my look at the Imperial and the Ideal. Part 2 will consist of images from these albums. Finally, Part 3 will compare coverage of some of the countries in the Ideal Album with the Scott Blue and Brown Internationals and similar albums.

References:

"Stamp Albums in the Printed Book Collections of the British Library" by David R Beech, FRPSL

Blue Collectors are Singing the Blues Today

2011-11-17T12:55:00.003-05:00

Jim, who authors the "Big Blue 1840-1940 Blog," has decided to discontinue his checklists for the Scott Blue International Volume 1 as he is migrating his collection to Bill Steiner's comprehensive Classic-era pages. Fortunately, Jim "will continue to do a country by country analysis of the classical era." I'm particularly keen to read the comparisons he intends to do of the coverage of the Steiner pages versus the Scott Classic Catalogue. And, I'm also interested in the logistics of using the Steiner pages. Does it work well, in practice, to print pages only as you have stamps to put on them? Just how many binders does it take to hold the 6814 Steiner pages? How many individual stamps in Steiner are worth more than all the stamps in the Blue? Inquiring minds want to know!

International Blue-per #8: An Overpriced Overprint of Mauritius

2011-11-14T21:25:00.005-05:00

I haven't been making posts on random problems in the Volume One because Jim is doing a comprehensive country-by-country analysis, but I couldn't resist commenting on an errant overprint from Mauritius that I came across the other day. As shown in the illustration, the current Blue has spaces for three overprinted stamps issued in 1891-92. So if we go to the Scott Classic Catalogue to lookup the numbers, the first stamp is Scott 89, 70¢ used; no problem there. The second is #90, $1.50 unused, again, straight forward. I'm preparing to pencil in 91 for the third stamp, but no, 91 belongs to the first of the Coats of Arms set from 1895. As I stare more closely at the album cut, I'm not even certain what I'm looking at and have to fetch the scanner to enlarge the illustration enough to identify. And the winner is not the reasonable choices of #86 or 87 from 1891 which catalog $4.50 and $3.25 respectively, but Scott #85 (SG 119) which is worth $110.00 according to my 2007 catalog.

OK, such an unnecessarily expensive stamp is irritating but there is precedent elsewhere in the album. But still curious, I dutifully haul out my trusty dusty first edition of the Blue to verify that #85 had been in the album from the very beginning. But it wasn't. In the first edition, the first two stamps are the same but the third stamp is #86 ($4.50). So what happened? Perhaps in redesigning the page at some point before 1947, the cut for #86 was lost/damaged, and the editor in a panic substituted the much more expensive #85. Perhaps the editor intended to keep the same stamp but mistakenly picked the wrong cut. Or perhaps the editor just thought it would be a fun joke to play on collectors. Unlike some of Scott's "jokes," at least you can find this one without much trouble for around $50-$60.

What's New in the 2012 Edition of the Scott Classic Catalogue

2011-11-07T13:54:00.007-05:00

The 2012 edition of the Scott Classic is being released this month and Donna Houseman, Associate Editor, gives us details in the 21 November edition of Linn's about what is new. The superiority of coverage between the Classic and Standard catalogs continues to widen--the Classic this year has 600 additional stamps not in the Standard. There are over 44,000 price changes, 12,500 for items that are only in the Classic Catalogue. A substantial number of price changes fall in three areas: 3,500 for the German States, 1000 for the Italian Offices Abroad and Aegean Islands, and almost 500 for Australia. Among the new additions to the Classic are Brazil's semiofficial airmails, which include some issued for Graf Zeppelin flights. Other countries singled out in the article for improved coverage include Denmark (Scott #2), Epirus, Fiume, and Shanghai. There are 1312 pages in the 2012 edition, compared to 1240 page in the 2011, and 877 pages in the 1995 first edition. Keep the improvements coming, Charles Snee et al, and don't forget we are waiting for the iPad version.

Vintage Reproductions Collection for Sale on eBay

2011-10-30T16:33:00.011-04:00

If you watch collections for sale on eBay, certain trends become apparent. For one, the great majority of the Volume One Blue Internationals for sale are albums printed in 1947 or before. There are sometimes collections housed in the 1955 and 1965 editions, but anything later is uncommon. For the Brown Internationals, the 19th Century volume is the one you are most likely to see, followed by 1900-1920 and 1920-1929. The volumes for the 1930s are comparatively rare, especially the last one with pages into 1938.

Also rare are unused volumes from the Vintage Reproductions copies of the Brown Internationals, although you do see them on occasion. But, I believe for the first time since I've been monitoring the International series on eBay, there is a complete (?) set of the Vintage Reproductions up for auction that were actually used to house a working collection. The set is being offered as 9 separate volumes by seller nystamps with the title "Pre-1940 Stamp Collection Scott Album...." This actually is a quite informative title from this seller as usually their International albums have titles along the lines of "Old Worldwide British German Italy Stamp Collection." If I could figure out how to stuff this collection into 3 binders (the maximum I am prepared cope with), I might even bid!

UPDATE: The albums sold for $2348.79, apparently all to the same bidder (not me!).

How Many Stamps Could a Stamp Collector Collect If....

2011-10-23T12:08:00.009-04:00

I did a count awhile back of the number of stamps issued between 1840-1940 according to Scott, but I note that two other collectors are investigating this earth shattering question. Keijo has just updated the worldwide count on his blog. He uses the Michel catalog but inexplicably continues past 1940 to the present day (do people collect stamps issued after 1940?). Click here to read his fascinating post which also includes a breakdown by stamp type and other criteria. Also, on the Stamp Community Forum there has been a nice thread about Scott International Albums. One of the posters, Philatelic Pfool, is doing two separate counts: stamps issued through 1940 and those from 1941-1952. He's up to the letter I. If you want to see what is required to house all these stamps, Floortrader, another contributor to that thread, has posted a photo of his stamp albums (Steiner pages in Scott Blue Binders). Wow!

UPDATE 10/31/2011: Philatelic Pfool just finished his count using the 2006 Scott Catalog. The results: 1840-1940 total of 83,589 stamps and 1941-1952, 31,499 stamps. You can find a more detailed breakdown and interesting discussion here.

The Evolution of the Scott Classic Catalogue Part 3

2011-10-20T13:49:00.004-04:00

Continuing on from Part 2:

2004 (tenth edition). The color imaging was now within a few percentage points of completion, with dozens of firms and individuals contributing stamps for scanning (including upgrading the quality of some previous images). More than 1750 major and minor listings were added, including 95 forerunners for Aden, additions to Lombardy-Venetia and Austrian Offices in the Turkish Empire used in Albania, 330 Albanian forerunners, 40 Great Britain stamps used in Ecuador, Portugal stamps used in Funchal, and 288 major varieties of France used in Monaco. Listings for several countries were expanded to distinguish paper and perforation varieties as well as new shade varieties. One thinks that not that much needed to be done with major countries, but Great Britain, for example, had 93 new minor numbers. Cover listings were added for ten countries not previously included. Tannu Tuva collectors were particularly well served with not only 72 minor varieties but also 103 major number. most notably for the 1934-43 issues which have never appeared in a Scott catalog. And throughout the catalog were new explanatory footnotes.

2005 (eleventh edition). Somehow I have mislaid my copy of the "Letter from the Editor" for this edition. When I find it, I'll come back and add it to this post.

2006 (twelfth edition). More than 75,000 value changes were recorded, many of which were for listings (such as covers) that do not appear in the "regular" Scott catalogs. Several hundred new minor listings were added for a variety of countries plus a handful of major numbers for countries such as St. Christopher. The Western Ukraine was thoroughly reorganized and revalued. Eritrea now included cover listings. The image-scanning project neared 99% completion with this edition.

2007 (thirteenth edition). This was the first edition to include the 1920-1928 Colombia SCADTA Consular overprints (which did not appear in the Scott US Specialized Catalog until 2012). As usual there were hundreds of minor varieties as well as a few major numbers added for countries throughout the catalog. For example, Victoria had 50 new minor numbers and there were almost as many for Sudan.

2008 (fourteenth edition). In addition to the many valuation changes that first appeared in the standard Scott catalogs, there were 12,000 changes for issues that are found only in the Classics Catalog! In addition, there were more than a thousand new numbered items in the 2008 edition. Several French areas countries received significant attention, as did Hungary and British colonies. In a number of places, items that had been mentioned only in footnotes (such as some of the French Peace and Commerce keytype stames for its colonies) now have their own numbers. French Guiana, Fiume, Hong Kong, Hungary, Dungarpur, Morocco, and Czechoslovka's Legion Post in Siberia also received attention.

2009 (fifteenth edition). This edition won a gold medal in the APS's literature competition. There were over 26,000 value changes for stamps that are only listed in the Classics Catalogue--double the number from the previous year. The main reason for the number of increases was the weak US dollar. Austria boasted the largest number of increases in valuation. Editorial enhancements added 23 pages to this edition, including first time listings for the Canadian Semi-Official Air Post stamps and the forerunners for Puerto Rico. Eight new countries received cover listings. New major numbers were added for Afghanistan, Queensland, Rhodesia and Tasmania plus many new minor numbers including some for the US.

2010 (sixteenth edition). The scanning project has evolved from its goal of simply including an image of the stamp to concentrating on images of VF condition stamps and paying more attention to color accuracy. There were also new images for surcharged and overprinted stamps. Coverage for British stamps used abroad, including pre-stamp markings, was improved and two new Indian Feudatory States joined the catalog. Additional French Railway Parcel Post stamps were added as was some additional detail for French Colonies such as Memel. All in all, there were some 2,300 new numbered listings, far more than in any previous edition. Countries with new numbers included Cilicia, Belgian Congo, Ruandi-Urundi, Fiume, Hungary, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden.

2011 (seventeenth edition). The 17th edition sold out in the first 6 months. There were more than 10,000 Classics catalog-only valuation changes. Among the nearly 1,000 new numbered listings in 2011 was Greece 47g, the 20 lepta ultramarine Hermes head from 1875 with its control number both inverted and on the front, catalog value $210,000. While most of the other additions to this edition were minor Scott numbers, there were a handful of new major numbers for Albania, German stamps used in Austria after the Anschluss, and Cyprus. New minor numbers appear in Alaouites, Bosnia and Herzegovina (248! new varieties), French Congo, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Martinique, Mauritania, New Caledonia, Ile Rouad, Rhodesia, Russia, Senegal, Somali Coast, and Syria.

2012 (eighteenth edition). To be released in November 2011.

APS Circuits

2011-09-28T14:31:00.002-04:00

I started receiving APS Circuit books in May 2010. While I always knew I would eventually want to do this, the immediate motivation was the scarcity of large worldwide albums on eBay, a situation that has gotten even worse this year. (The albums housing even ten thousand stamps are few, and the only larger albums I've seen lately have borne ridiculously high price tags--there is one now on eBay with an ask price of $29,999 which might have 15,000 stamps, probably fewer.)

Now after examining some 300 sales books, I thought it was appropriate to report whether these are a useful way for the Volume One collector to build his or her collection. (I originally posted some of this on stampcommunity.org.)

In case you aren't familiar with the circuits, the American Philatelic Society operates a Sales Division for its members which, according to the APS website, circulates some 42,000 sales books with close to $2 million in sales each year. A typical sales book contains 16 pages with 12 spaces per page. Members of the APS purchase blank sales books in which to mount the stamps they wish to sell. Cost of each stamp is set by the individual seller and can range from a few pennies to a $1,000. The APS encourages sellers to price their stamps reasonably for quick sale (but see below!).

The stamps mounted in each book are supposed to correspond to one of 165 or so categories, categories being countries, areas, or topicals. The greatest specialization is, of course, within U.S. stamps: for example, there are separate circuits for U.S. General, U.S. Fancy Cancels, U.S. Revenues, etc. Because of the popularity of the British Empire, there are also a fair amount of categories here, such as British Atlantic Islands and Australia States. In addition to individual countries, there are also more generic categories, such as Southeast Asia and Southern Europe.

APS members who wish to buy inform the Society which categories they wish to receive. The APS keeps track of who wants what and assembles circuits of ten or so books from different sellers which are sent round robin to up to 10 members who live in roughly the same geographical region. Each member has one week to decide what they want before forwarding the circuit to the next member on the list. Once the last person on the circuit returns the books to the APS mothership, another circuit is sent out and the process starts all over again.

So, to begin with, are there any categories specifically tailored to 1840-1940 collectors? Yes, a few: US 19th Century, British Empire-Victorian Era, British Pre-Elizabethan, Great Britain 19th Century, Europe (1840-1940), France 19th-Century, Germany Pre-1945, and Global (1840-1940). But, of course, there are many other single country and area choices that will contain stamps from the first 100 years of philately.

Because I collect the world 1840-1940, there are far more circuits of potential interest than I can cope with. So I tend to subscribe to some circuits for a year or two and then switch to something else for awhile. So far, at least, the APS staff have been very accommodating.

I have received 31 circuits in the past 15 months or 300+ individual books. From these I've purchased a total of 857 stamps at a cost of $692.88 which works out to about 81 cents a stamp. What is missing, of course, is how that compares to the catalog value. The majority of what I am currently buying are inexpensive stamps, i.e., under $5, and these probably average out to 40% of Scott catalog. (It usually works out a little better than this as the seller may be using a Scott catalog that is a couple of years old.)

But I have bought some more expensive stamps--perhaps a hundred--and these have typically been at a fraction of catalog value because of defects invisible from the front, usually small thins or, my favorite, "no gum, priced as used." I only kept a record of the catalog value of the first four circuits I received, but these worked out to almost $600 catalog value for a little over $100 or 17%.

Here are some advantages and disadvantages of the circuits (the fact that there are more disadvantages doesn't mean I think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages--the opposite is the case):

Advantages:
--Prices are generally pretty good, certainly better than most dealer's prices for individual stamps. Fine to Very Fine appearing expensive stamps with defects invisible from the front can be real bargains.

--You can verify the condition of stamps on the spot.

--Most stamps are priced individually allowing one to fill in short sets (although, of course, you will find complete sets offered which are either bargains or frustrations depending upon whether you already own some of the stamps).

--You can drool at your leisure over rare or expensive stamps that you might not otherwise see in person, even if you can't afford to buy them.

Disadvantages:

--If you subscribe to many circuits, especially those that have only a few other members on the circuit, you will simultaneously receive multiple mailings on occasion. My record is 5 within 3 weeks. Contrarily, the more popular the circuit, the longer it takes to make the rounds. I tend to receive circuits more often as there are only 4 or 5 of us on several of my circuits. By the way, if you know you are going on vacation, the APS can arrange for you to be skipped.

--Because I receive a lot of "general" circuits with multiple countries, I too often encounter sellers who make little effort to mount countries in alphabetical order or stamps within a country in order by catalog number. For a worldwide collector, this can be really irritating and I've cancelled two circuits that just were more trouble than they were worth. I don't mean this to be a tirade against a few mistakes but I saw one book where literally every page was random.

--It typically costs $5-$7 to mail circuits to the next recipient plus a 5% buyer fee. I still think I come out ahead as I would in any case be paying postage and perhaps tax when purchasing a similar quantity of stamps by other means.

--While most sellers price their stamps at no more than 50% or so of catalog, you will find a few books priced at less and sometimes rather more. You have to wonder why the latter bothered to take the time.

The APS has started sending a single mailing of selected circuits to members. I have requested these on a couple of occasions for countries that I don't normally see in my other circuits. So if you are "on the fence," watch the APS Journal for what is available. The APS has also started offering the possibility of purchasing complete "clearance" books, but I haven't tried this yet.

For more expensive stamps that look to be a bargain, I suggest checking out the same stamps in the APS store. For example, I was considering buying one of the Cape of Good Hope triangles recently from a sales book only to find a slightly better copy of the same stamp for $10 less on the APS store site.

The bottom line is I really think this is one of the best services offered by the APS.

A Cheatsheet for Problematic Classic Era Stamps

2011-08-21T14:51:00.006-04:00

The American Philatelic Society has a handy-dandy overview of countries whose stamps are frequently misidentified, forged, reprinted, etc., as part of its advice to sellers using their circuit books. I've known about the document for a while, and have been meaning to post a link to this three page pdf.

A few examples:

Australia, 1-76, 113-129, Misidentifications, because watermarks are not noted.

Bolivia, 1–59, Forgeries and fake overprints (40–46 oval cancels with heavy bars are suspect).

United States, Washington/Franklins, Misidentifications, perf. alterations, and regumming.

While a lot of the document is too general to be of much use by itself (for example, watch out for forgeries on the early issues of Trinidad), I still think the list is worth checking out by other general collectors.

The Evolution of the Scott Classic Catalogue Part 2

2011-08-16T14:11:00.004-04:00

Continuing on from Part 1:

2000 (sixth edition). Another 45 countries received cover listings for the first time bringing the total to 131 countries. Some other countries with cover listings in earlier editions were expanded, such as Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Monaco, Philippines and Spain. Eleven countries received listings for bisects. Canada gained 14 additional pages, largely because of the O.H.M.S. Officials, but also plate blocks, coil pairs, line pairs, and paste-up pairs, not to mention die types, etc. First or early issues of many countries received extra attention in this edition. Many of these are what could be termed Forerunners, such as those of Angra, Ascension, Cayman Islands, Cyprus and Egypt, Horta, Kiauchau, Madeira and Porta Delgada, New Zealand, Seychelles, and Strait Settlements. Fifty-five countries were given new minor listings for shades which, Scott notes, "usually reflect[s] new printings of definitive stamps."

2001 (seventh edition). The seventh edition boasted 46 more pages than the sixth. Australia and its North West Pacific Islands were one of the principal beneficiaries, both with expanded coverage of the Roos and the Perf OS Officials of Australia. In Europe, the France Occupation Stamps were beefed up and a page was added for the Balloon Montes covers. Danzig, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Netherlands also received attention. (I like the phrase that Mr. Morrissey used to describe the nearly doubling of coverage for Danzig, terming it "one of the liveliest 'dead' countries.") Germany, very much alive and issuing, received 1/3 more coverage. Fourteen countries had cover listings for the first time. Postage dues on covers were added for seven countries, and eight countries received more listings. Continuing with the addition of forerunner issues that began in 2000 were listings for "the stamps of a parent, or other country, used in a colony or other country," e.g., the stamps of Great Britain used in Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil.

2002 (eighth edition). This edition was the first with James E Koetzel writing the "Letter from the Editor." There were new or reinstated major numbers for Barbados, Bermuda, Egypt, and Somaliland Protectorate. There were additional Forerunner listings for Bangkok, British East Africa, Brunei, Cape Verdi, and South Africa. Twenty-two countries had either expanded listings or joined the Catalogue for the first time. This brought the total of countries with cover listings to more than 150. There were new valuations for never hinged stamps for 16 countries plus listings for multiples for 18 countries. Specimen stamps are included for 13 countries. There were more listings for plate and printing varieties plus many minor listings for color shades, overprint/surcharge varieties, etc. Perhaps most noticeable was the additional of high quality digitally scanned images replacing the velox prints used in earlier catalogs. These scans were from the stamps kindly loaned to Scott by an unnamed Ohio collector who we now know was Dr. Hsien-ming Meng.

2003 (ninth edition). With this edition, the percentage of color stamp images hits the ninety percent mark. More than 2300 new basic listings were added to the Catalogue, including massive new coverage of the China Treaty Ports. Coverage for the Ukraine was "revamped and expanded," including all of the early issues. World War I Occupation issues for the British Operations in German East Africa were added. Coverage for Saar was, in Kloetzel's words, "dramatically expanded," to the tune of 201 varieties. This was the first year in a multi-year project to expand Portuguese Colonies including more than a 100 new varieties. More forerunner stamps, 246 in all, were added. I should note that some (all?) of the Classic Catalogues have an Additions, Deltions and Changes page which drills down to specifics even more than the editor's letters.

To be continued....

The First Edition of the Scott International Junior

2011-07-24T13:49:00.011-04:00

I recently purchased a copy of the first edition of the Blue for dirt cheap because it was missing around 10% of its pages. Still, I thought it would be interesting to do some comparisons to see what has changed and what has stayed the same.

As a reminder, the first edition of the Blue was published in 1914. The latest stamps I saw were from the 1913 but not even through the end of that year.

First thing you notice is how much thinner the original edition was than today's Volume 1, even allowing for the missing pages in my copy. I can see that this album wouldn't have appeared terribly daunting to a beginning collector, "Hey, this is something I can fill up!"

A surprise was that the maps in the front are the same color maps with Alphonse Mucha styled titles found in the Browns. Another surprise was that many countries did not have spaces for flags, rulers or arms. I say surprise because the title page brags that these are present for all countries, and, in fact, there is a tipped in advertisement selling the labels for a buck.

Those of us with earlier editions of the Blue before 1997 regularly complain about the order the countries appear and it was interesting to note that originally the album was largely in alphabetical order. Unlike the Browns, not completely, because Scott would try to cram two or three countries on a page when there were only a few rows of stamps involved.

The illustrated cuts match up well between the 1914 and the current editions. As a general rule, I would say that there are more spaces with descriptions in the later editions and consequently more blank spaces in the 1914.

As you will see below, there are many cases where there are more stamps in the 1914 edition than on the equivalent pages in the 1943/47 editions, the most comprehensive of the Blue Volume Ones. There are a few exceptions, and these are generally for popular countries, such as Canada, where the later editions added some more expensive stamps that had originally been omitted.

Because of the pages missing from my copy of the 1914, I didn't do a lot of comparisons between the 1943/47 edition (referred to as '43 below) and the 1914, but here are some notes:
--US: my copy of the 1914 is missing most of the US pages but I see that, as in the Brown albums, Scott has placed the US envelopes, Revenues, and Telegraph stamps at the back of the album. These had moved up to the front by the '43/47 edition but the Revenues and Telegraph stamps have now been dropped from the Blue.
--US Confederate States: 8 spaces in the 1914 vs 7 in '43.
--Abyssinia: the 1914 has a row for the 1901-05 stamps missing in the '43 plus 3 additional stamps for 1909.
--Afghanistan: the 1914 allotted half a blank page (unlike the Brown which had a full blank page; early Afghanistan obviously flummoxed both the Blue and Brown editors).
--Albania: missing from the 1914 as its first stamps were't issued until December 1913.
--Angra: 13 spaces in 1914 vs 7 in '43.
--Anjoun: 8 spaces in 1914 vs 3 in '43.
--Annam & Tonkin: in 1914, missing in '43.
--Antigua: 17 spaces in 1914 vs 11 in '43.
--Austria: 41 spaces on the 1914's first page vs 38 in the '43; 1914 includes the Austrian Offices in Liechtenstein missing in the '43.
--Austria Lombardy-Venetia: 11 spaces in 1914 vs 7 in the '43.
--Azores: 1914 has 16 nineteenth century stamps that are missing the the '43. This is one of my pet peeves about the Blue: many inexpensive earlier stamps for Portuguese Colonies are missing from some colonies but not all. Also the '43 is missing Newspaper stamps present in the 1914.
--Baden: 18 spaces in the 1914 vs 7 in the '43. You may remember than in the earlier editions of the Blue, Baden, Bergdorf, Bremen and Brunswick (sounds like a law firm!) were all on the same page. In the 1914 edition, Brunswick had its own page.
--Bolivia: 59 stamps in 1914 vs 48 in '43.
--British Guiana: 35 stamps in 1914 vs 14 in the '43, the biggest percentage loss I saw between the 1914 and the '43.
--Canada: unusually, the 1914 edition only has spaces for 5 of the earliest stamps (i.e., through the Large Queens) compared to 11 in the '43.
--Cape Verde Islands: 58 spaces in 1914 vs. 35 in '43.
--China: the 1914 has a blank page for Issues of the Treaty Ports.

So, bottom line, if the state of coverage found in the first edition could have been maintained, the current Blue Volume 1 would be an improved album.

The Evolution of the Scott Classic Catalogue Part 1

2011-07-10T14:45:00.006-04:00

With the release of the 2012 Scott Classic Catalogue approaching (November), I thought it might be interesting to look at the evolution of the catalog from the 1995 first edition through the 2011 edition. As Scott has striven to improve the catalog annually, this is going to occupy some space and consequently I will be posting the overview in multiple parts. Even so, I'm leaving out smaller details and you are welcome to ask for me to check to see if there is additional information.

Unless otherwise stated, all of the information is extracted from the Editor/Publisher pages that appeared at the front of each catalog. From 1995 to 2001, the author of the "Letter" was the publisher Stuart Morrissey; from 2006 through 2011 it was the editor, James E. Kloetzel.

1995 (first edition). The Scott Classics Catalog began in 1995 and the first publisher's letter documents its genesis: Gerald Bodily, a specialist British Empire Collector, was talking to Scott Publishing Company Executive Stuart Morrisey at Philanippon, the International Stamp show held that year in Tokyo. He suggested that a catalog containing only older stamps would be very useful. My understanding is that this first edition was a repackaging of the information in the regular catalogs. Sergio and Liane Sismondo of the Classic Collector lent the stamps for the cover of the first edition and would be increasingly involved with future editions.

1996 (second edition). Even this early Scott was already planning improvements, as it would continue to make every year. To begin with, the work was renamed the Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps & Covers. The improved listings for the 1996 edition centered around 19th century cover listings, a popular specialty for Classics collectors. These included coverage for the United States and Possessions; Confederate States; Canada and Provinces; France; German States; Germany, including Offices Abroad and Colonies; Great Britain, including Offices in Morocco and the Turkish Empire; Italian States; Italy and Offices Abroad; Eritrea; San Marino; and Lombardy-Venetia. If there were changes in the 1996 listings for off-cover stamps beyond price changes, they weren't indicated.

1997 (third edition). Additional listings for covers were added for the following countries: Austria, Belgian Congo, Belgium, Brazil, France, German Colonies, German States, Germany, Germany Offices Abroad, Italian Colonies, Italian States, Italy, Italian Offices Abroad, Portugal, Portuguese Colonies, Spain, and Switzerland. 1997 was also the year that Scott switched to pricing both on- and off-cover stamps in very fine condition

1998 (fourth edition). With the 1998 edition came a surprise: coverage for British Commonwealth countries extended through the end of the reign of King George VI--i.e., 1952. Coverage of covers continued to expand with 13 additional countries appearing for the first time: Argentina (Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Corrientes), Cuba, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Iceland, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Sweden. With this edition, we started to see listings for off-cover stamps that went beyond what was in the regular catalog and appear only here. The examples cited in the Letter were Forerunner cancellations (Antigua), Shade varieties, Paper varieties, Separate listings for die types, retouches, inverted frames, quality of impression, Expanded explanatory footnotes, Overprint and surcharge varieties, Printing varieties, and Bisect/trisect cover listings.

1999 (fifth edition). There were now nearly 100 countries with cover listings, including for the first time French Colonies, Greece, Malta, and Somalia. Speaking of covers, there were new listings for bisects and/or quadrisects (no trisects?) for five countries. With this edition, Scott adopts for the first time the concept of "full margins" developed by Edwin Mueller in his Catalog of the Imperforate Classic Postal Stamps of Europe. That is, "a measurement of one half the average distance between stamps in their settings on the plate both horizontally and vertically is given for all the countries…" For example, with France Scott #1-9, full margins equals 3/4mm. This edition added British Crowned Circle postmarks on covers for more than twenty British America colonies. New grading standards were adopted for the rouletted stamps of classic Finland and Ireland. For the first time the "Letter from the Publisher" drills down to mentioning major varieties for individual stamps. (I won't go into most of these in my posts, but if anyone is curious, please ask.) A number of stamps were added representing perforation varieties, shades, surcharge and overprint varieties.

To be continued....

Pick the Cover for the 2012 Scott Classic Catalogue

2011-07-05T11:10:00.009-04:00

It's another year and another opportunity for me not to win the "pick the cover" contest Amos has been sponsoring since 2010. According to the July 2011 special monthly issue of Linn's, the three choices this year are "the 1932 Australia 5/- Sydney Harbor Bridge stamp (Scott 132), the 1929 Canadian 12¢ Quebec Bridge stamp (156), and the 1932 French Andorra 10-centime Bridge of St. Anthony stamp (27). To enter the contest, follow this link, but with the understanding, of course, that if you win, you'll let me have your prize :). This year as an added enticement, the winner's Catalog will be autographed by the Scott Editorial Staff.

Unlike previous years, all three stamps already grace my Blue so perhaps this is a good omen!

UPDATE: The winner was announced in the 17 October 2011 Linn's, the Australia Sydney Harbor Bridge stamp.

Big Blue Checklist

2011-06-07T18:32:00.013-04:00

I've been faithfully following Jim's progress on documenting the stamps in the Blue. I can't emphasize enough how helpful his blog is. Even if you don't plan to use the checklists, his blog is worth reading not only for his comments about the stamps of the individual countries, but also for his more overreaching posts on topics such as the most expensive stamps in the album.

I use Jim's blog for two purposes beyond learning more about the countries and stamps in the Big Blue: 1) notating those stamps I own or need on a copy of his checklist I've printed; and 2) using his checklists to pencil into my album the catalog numbers for stamps I still need.

I've played around with a couple of ways of printing his information to use as a checklist. I finally settled on putting the information into a MS Word document, 3 columns, using the Arial Narrow 10.5 pt font. What I was trying to do is to find a compromise format that would reduce the total number of pages to as few as possible but would still be easily readable and allow room for notes, such as the specific catalog number of the stamp in my album if there is more than one choice, or a reminder I need to return and carefully check such and such a stamp to make certain I've got the one in my album identified correctly. I also note if I own the stamp but need to replace with a better copy.

What I recommend if you are experimenting with your own formatting is not to chose one that obscures Jim's arrangement of stamps by the row they occur. That is, most of the time Jim's checklist makes clear which stamps are on a particular row in the album. I've found this very helpful in efficiently penciling in the catalog numbers for the stamps I don't own yet directly in the album.

I've also experimented with how to mark which stamps I own and which I need. After a couple of trials, I settled on marking X's through those I have and circling the numbers for those stamps I still need. When I acquire one of the circled stamps, I put an X through it. I had originally started by circling the stamps I owned and leaving the ones needed without any marking, but I was having trouble spotting the lacuna among all of Jim's helpful verbiage. Of course, your mileage may vary. I know that many collectors would want to be more thorough, indicating if their stamps were used or unused, and perhaps other details.

In addition to the penciling in the catalog numbers of missing stamps, I also make a note of the catalog value for stamps over $20 or so as a way of helping me watch out for these in collections for sale on eBay.

So to conclude, I can only hope Jim is not reading this because I need him to devote all his time to the checklist :)

UPDATE: I played around with bolding the Scott numbers so that they would stand out more and I think this worked nicely; eliminates the need for circling the stamps I still need. Although not necessary, I also underlined the year/description headings while I was at it.

Dansco Binders

2011-06-04T13:28:00.006-04:00

I think of Dansco as a producer of coin albums, but a couple of current eBay auctions reminds me that they also sold stamp-related materials. According to Thomas Moll's Guide to Vintage Coin Folders and Albums (and why hasn't someone written a similar guide for stamp albums, he asks innocently?), Dansco stands for the Daniel Stamp Company now of Venice, California. It was started in 1937 and was still making stamp supplies until at least the 1970s.

In any event, on eBay are two separate listings with binders labeled "Dansco International Junior Stamp Album." I say binders because the contents are still the Scott Blue pages with no mention of Dansco on the title pages. From the photos, Dansco at least made binders for Volumes 1 and 2. I assume there wasn't any particular arrangement with Scott Publishing. Dansco was simply manufacturing a cheaper alternative to the Scott-branded binders, much as G&K does today with its line of binders, blank pages and other accessories for the International.

Stamp Wallpaper

2011-06-01T10:58:00.014-04:00

I know that this is off-topic, but I'm sure we are all familiar with the story about the beginnings of stamp collecting, specifically the London lady who in the early 1840's took a classified ad in the London Times for stamps to paper her dressing room:

"POSTAGE STAMPS.--A young lady, being desirous of covering her dressing room with cancelled POSTAGE STAMPS, has been so far encouraged in her wish by private friends as to have succeeded in collecting 16,000: these, however, being insufficient, she will be greatly obliged if any good natured person who may have these (otherwise useless) little articles at their disposal would assist her in her whimsical project. Address to E. D., Mr. Butt's, glover, Leadenhall street: or Mr. Marshall's, jeweler. Hackney." (If you want to read more about this, there is a thread on StampChat.)

I was reminded of this from a recent thread on the Stamp Community forum concerning a British company's line of wallpaper which includes several stamp designs. So if you are thinking about refurbishing your stamp den, this might be the look you are after.

Scott Catalog coming to the iPad?

2011-05-15T14:54:00.013-04:00

Amos Publishing is scheduled to make an announcement on 4 June 2011 at NAPEX. According to posts on Richard Frajola's PhilaMercury message board, Amos will announce that the 2012 Scott catalogs will be made available as an iPad app. Hopefully, this will include the Scott Classics Catalogue but I've not read anything that suggests this is the case. And I certainly have no reason to be believe it will be an online catalog along the lines of Stanley Gibbons "My Collection," but wouldn't that be wonderful?

In April, Amos Publishing released a CoinWorld app for the iPad which seems to suggest a similar version for Linn's Stamp News could be in the offering sometime in the future.

UPDATES: The big announcement at NAPEX centered on the appointment of Charles Snee as editor. Mr. Snee seems eager to make himself accessible on a variety of social networks, most notably Twitter and Richard Frajola's discussion board. A recent post on the Virtual Stamp Club reports that the roll out of an online version of the Scott catalogs may take three years and that the intention is to keep it continuously updated--i.e., no one annual wait for changes in catalog values or editorial emendations. Still no mention to my knowledge of being able to use the catalog as a tool to inventory one's collection.

You can contact Mr. Snee directly at csnee@scottonline.com . You can see his tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/CharlesSnee .

Mr. Snee is also contributing to StampChat. In a recent message he lists the editorial staff: "My editorial team comprises your humble editor; Dave Akin and Donna Houseman, a dynamic duo of associate editors; Marty Frankevicz, indefatigable assistant editor for all new issues of the world (yes, one person handles all the new-issue listings at Scott); Steve Myers, the best valuing analyst Scott has ever had; and, of course, Jim Kloetzel, now editor emeritus of the Scott catalogs. That, my friends, is just six people."

The July 2011 special monthly issue of Linn's has an article by Charles Snee on social media. In this article he notes that this year (i.e., 2011) there will "an iPad application for the six-volume Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue." He writes that the catalog will be formatted to accommodate the iPad's display, "but the look of the listings will be the same as in print, including the images of the illustrated stamps."

To Hinge or Not To Hinge

2011-05-13T13:47:00.010-04:00

This is a subject that comes up with some frequency on stamp bulletin boards. One problem though with such threads in general venues is that most people weighing in have single country or specialized collections with emphasis on MNH or expensive stamps. Things might look different if they were trying to cope with 35,000 mostly inexpensive stamps. Or maybe not! So, for the record, here are some pros and cons of hinges and mounts for the Blue collector.

Cost. Hinges, of course, win hands-down here. I can buy a package of 1000 Prinz Stamp Hinges for around $3 which comes to a little over $100 for enough hinges to mount every stamp provided for in the Blue Volume 1. As for mounts, I've seen an estimate of 6-10 cents each for individual stamp mounts. That multiples out to $2100-$3500 for sufficient mounts to handle the entire album. A lot of money, but one way of looking at this is if you are building a Blue collection over 10 or 20 years, you're spreading this cost out quite a bit.

Protection. Clearly, mounts are the big winner here. Those little bits of glassine on the back of stamps do nothing to protect their fronts, not to mention what hinges do to any gum that has survived. And, if you are using hinges, you definitely need interleaving to keep stamps on facing pages from rubbing against each other. Even then it is not difficult to accidentally dislodge a hinged stamp when turning pages. I should note, vis-a-vis mounts, that at least one well known dealer cautions against any mount type that might leave a vertical or horizontal line down the middle of a stamp. The alternative he suggests is to use mounts that are closed on the bottom but open on the other sides.

But aside from interleaving, how much additional protection do most stamps really need? My Blue is half full and the average cost per stamp is still only 13 cents. Perhaps a compromise solution is to use hinges for most stamps and reserve mounts for your more expensive treasures. Although I'm not completely consistent, my "rules" are to use hinges unless:

1) replacement cost of the stamp is greater than $25 or so (retail, not catalog);
2) the stamp is delicate and likely to be damaged (what comes to mind are some se-tenant pairs that might detach); and
3) the stamps are Mint Never Hinged.

Although the issue of stamp gum borders on the religious, I will confess that for me the backs of stamps are unimportant except to the extent that they reveal grills, watermarks or other interesting features. I practically rub my hands in glee when I come across a note from a seller along the lines of "No gum, priced as used" next to a $100 stamp selling for $10. I recognize though that many, if not most, collectors would disagree and so I begrudgingly use mounts if a stamp appears to be MNH, even if of minimum catalog value. That way I'm not spoiling any stamps for future collectors. Nor am I doing myself any real inconvenience as my preference for used stamps means the choice rarely comes up. Even so, I can't resist a parting shot that there are those who believe that the chances of finding original, undisturbed gum on more expensive classic era stamps is much less than most collectors would like to believe--i.e., there are a lot of regummed stamps out there. Nevertheless, if it looks MNH, I use a mount.

Weight. Perhaps the most serious barrier to using mounts in the Scott International is that mounts weigh down the pages. This is exacerbated because the Blue Internationals, unlike most if not all single country albums, are printed on both sides of a page. But also, to a lesser extent, because the Internationals tend to squeeze more stamps on a page than specialty albums, which means more mounts per page. This is especially an issue for the pre-1997 editions of the Blue which are printed on thinner paper.

Aesthetics. Obviously, this is the most personal of criteria. I like the appearance of both hinged and mounted albums, although the number of stamps per page in the Blue can make using mounts more difficult.

While I like the look of the black mounts in albums in which every stamp is mounted, I do not care for black mounts intermixed with unmounted stamps. So I use clear mounts which I think blend in better with hinged stamps. From looking at many albums sold on eBay, I'm obviously in the minority on this one.

Practical matters: If you've taken up stamp collecting after a hiatus, you probably are trying to remember who marketed those great peelable hinges and where can you buy them? The hinges you are thinking of where made by Dennison and, unfortunately, are no longer manufactured although packets do show up on eBay at very inflated prices. (Note that the similarly named Dennisen hinges are not the same thing.) I personally use Prinz hinges which are not peelable in any way--but they do seem to do a good job of staying adhered to the page. Other people have other preferences but I've never come across a consensus.

The mounts I use are made by Showgard. Since I knew I wouldn't need a lot of mounts, I started out with a starter pack containing precut mounts of varying sizes. However, these packs are made for common US stamp sizes so several of the included choices aren't particularly useful. A nice alternative is the strip set. I just purchased one on eBay containing 75 clear mount strips measuring between 22mm and 52 mm. But now I am wondering if there are any stamps in the Blue that won't fit into one of these strips?

Or to ask it another way: What are the largest and smallest stamps in the album? To go right to the obvious, the largest "stamps" to be accommodated are a couple of US Souvenir Sheets (thank goodness, the White Plains is too expensive for the Blue). Scott didn't include Souvenir Sheets for other countries so these are the only trouble makers, mount-wise. Not quite so obvious, some US cut squares could have a descent vertical height depending upon how they were removed from their entires. But since cut squares don't have gum, does the MNH crowd still use mounts for them? Perhaps just to protect the expensive ones. Among actual stamps, I was first diverted by obviously large stamps such as those issued by China in 1939 (Scott 364-367) which measure 39cm high. But in leafing through my album, I settled upon the triangular Brazil 1936 Carlos Gomes stamps which measure in at about 48 cm. This might actually be too large for my 52 cm mount strips as you have to add 5 cm overhead for the mount edge seams.

As to smallest, my first thought was the bottom part of stamps of Belgium with their do not deliver on Sunday labels. But then I decided that even though I have a couple of these without the "mother" stamp, I wouldn't put the bottom part by itself in a mount that couldn't accommodate the full stamp.

What is usually advanced as the smallest stamp ever issued is the Mecklenburg-Schwerin from 1856 measuring 10mm x 10mm, but this stamp, indeed the entire country, isn't in the Blue. Neither is the other contender, the 1863 Colombian state of Bolivar. So for smallest (i.e., least tall) I'm going with the 1940 Colombia Postal Tax stamps which are 14 cm in height.

If anyone knows of smaller or larger stamps that are in the Blue, please let me know.

I can't leave this topic without shedding a tear for our poor Brown colleagues. Not only must they budget millions for stamps like the Swedish 1855 Treskilling Yellow, there are a number of items that will cost a pretty penny just to mount in their albums. I'm thinking of the British 1840 Mulready Envelopes, US 1865 Newspaper Stamps, Afghanistan 1920 Parcel Post Stamps, Madagascar 1884 British Vice-Consulate Stamps, and the China 1913-14 Special Delivery stamps, to name a few. (The Brown, incidentally, deigns to only provide a blank page for the Chinese SD stamps that reportedly measure 247mm by 65mm.) But then look at all the money these collectors saved when they mounted the Mecklenburg-Schwerin stamp.

Filling spaces (just not the right spaces)

2011-04-18T13:16:00.026-04:00

When you spend a lot of time looking at Blue Volume Ones, either in person or on the Internet, certain trends become apparent, such as which countries will usually have the most stamps and which are likely to be barren. It is also hard not to notice that certain countries and issues are frequently misidentified by collectors. Here is a look at some of the more common problems (most of which I've perpetrated myself at one time or another).

ANTIGUA & MOST BRITISH COLONIES
Most British Colonies used key types with the head of the reigning monarch. The Queen Victorias are reasonably identifiable, but collectors who aren't paying attention are likely to mistake King Edward VII for George VI or vice versa, especially where the colors and denominations are identical. On the surface of it, the "baldies" as the Edward VIIs are affectionately known should be easy to distinguish, but, of course, you often are dealing with stamps cancelled over the obvious identifying bits.

And, by the way, regular/commemorative stamps overprinted to make them function as Officials, etc. don't belong in the spaces "up front" (unless, of course, you've made the decision to let design trump use).

AFGHANISTAN
Some collectors throw up their hands at the first sight of non-Western alphabets or non-Arabic numerals. In my experience, if the collector has mis-mounted a lot of Afghanistan stamps then they probably can't be trusted with Armenia, China, the French Offices in China, the Indian Convention States, Saudi Arabia, et al.

AUSTRIA
The various profile heads of Emperor Franz Josef between 1890 (Scott 51) and 1907 present challenges depending upon whether the numerals are black, white or colored, whether the numerals are surrounded by ovals, squares or hexagons, the currency used, etc. You've got 49 spaces to get it right, wrong, or as probably in my case, somewhere in between.

BELGIUM
For the past several years I've been blithely completing a page in the Blue of Belgian Parcel Post/Railway stamps, congratulating myself as the page rapidly filled up. Imagine my chagrin to discover that many of my stamps were in the wrong place. In my last eBay purchase something or the other sent me to the Catalog to verify a stamp only to discover that practically every stamp I had mounted in the 1916-1920 spaces was wrong. So I went from having virtually every space filled for these to having only two. I'm sure there were stamps in previous album purchases that I ignored because I thought I already had them.
The top row in the album is straight forward for the stamps from 1912-14. But things go downhill for the remainder of the page. My take on this is the first two rows are intended for Q61-80 from 1916 which have the values at the bottom only. The next two rows are for Q82-102 from 1920. These have numerals at the bottom and top. They can be distinguished from the following set because their winged wheels are filled/shaded. Then the last row is for the stamps Q103-Q131 from 1920-21. These also have values at the top and bottom but have no fill in the winged wheel. (Distinguishing between the stamps with the train in all these issues is much easier than the winged wheel. As is often the case, the Minkus Global albums offer collectors more help via useful notes like "Shading on wheel-spokes" or "One head-lamp in Engine.")

An interesting survey of these stamps can be found here.

CAPE JUBY
The Blue contains several colonies like Cape Juby, Dahomey and Martinique where there are multiple pages with zero illustrations, only descriptions like "Stamps of Spanish Morocco, 1935 overprinted." Well, I suppose Scott has to sell its catalogs somehow. Anyway, the lack of illustrations is an invitation for collectors to make mistakes.

FINLAND/RUSSIA
I left this out of my original post because until now I've never taken the time to verify my own holdings. I knew there was the potential for mistakes because Finland and Russia used similar stamp types between 1891 and 1918. Turns out that I had erroneously mounted one of the Russian Ring stamps in Finland, and the original owner of my album had hinged a similar Finnish stamp underneath the correct stamp in Russia. So all in all, not too bad. It also makes me feel better because in looking for suitable illustrations, I found some misidentified stamps on other web sites.

For Finland, here is the breakdown for the stamps in the Blue Volume One:

1891-92 Scott #46-52
Denominations are in Kopecks so that doesn't help to differentiate from the Russian issues. Look for the circled dots along both sides of the ring or in the corners.

1901-03 Scott 64-68
Finnish stamps will be denominated in Pennia, not Kopecks, or, in the case of #68, 1 Markka (which, as we all remember from Elementary School, equals 100 Pennia).

1911 Scott #77-81
Finnish stamps will be denominated in Pennia, not Kopecks.

There are more examples in this Stamp Identifier.

For Russia, just look for stamps without the circled dots or denominated in Pennia, Markka.

FRANCE/FRANCE COLONIES
The second space for France is intended for the 25 centime blue from 1849-50, Scott #6. However, what is usually in the space is the rather more common French Colonies #12. A number of early French stamps are difficult to distinguish from those intended for the French Colonies which didn't have their own stamps. While this isn't the fault of the Blue's editors, it would be nice in this and similar cases if there was some sort of caution in the album to send collectors to the Catalog. Minkus did this for France in their Master and Supreme Global albums: "For other stamps with the following designs see French Colonies--General Issues."

GREAT BRITAIN
No one reading this column is going to make this mistake, but you'd think that the Penny Black is sufficiently iconic for all collectors that the space for it would either contain the right stamp or be blank. So I'm surprised how often the wrong stamp is in the space--usually one of the Penny Reds, on occasion even perforated! If someone wanted to fill the space while waiting for the Penny Black fairy to come through, there are always the many stamp-on-stamps of the Penny Black, such as the 1990 Great Britain miniature sheet issued on its 150th anniversary.

ITALY
I've yet to see a Volume 1 that had the correct stamp for Italy in the space described as "Type of 1862, Imperforate." Assuming that it isn't blank, the stamp in the space is invariably #23 or #23a, not #22 with the head embossed from 1863. Although the description in the current Blue is technically correct, it was a little more obvious in earlier editions which had 3 earlier stamps similar to the stamp that belongs in the space. These three 1862 stamps are missing from later editions.

LATIN AMERICA
I have made no attempt in my own collection to try to weed out "the Seebecks" and probably won't until I get to the point of needing to make more expensive purchases. If you are unfamiliar with this topic, check out Keijo's blog post: http://www.stampcollectingblog.com/seebeck-reprints.php

PERSIA
The Blue I first purchased was probably 90% complete for Persia. However, I have read many times that much of the Classic Era Iran typically found in collections are counterfeits/reprints/forgeries. So I'm saving until some future date (if ever) trying to make sense out of what I have.

UNITED STATES
I'm not going to talk about the USA even though grills, secret marks, and watermarks offer much opportunity for, shall we save, creatively filling spaces. Just watch out for albums with Blue 5c "1847" Franklins!

Half way there

2011-03-30T20:52:00.010-04:00

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to fill my Scott Volume 1 to the 50% point this year or 17,500 stamps. I knew that setting such a goal was going to take me out on a limb as I was about 2000 stamps short, but an unexpected album purchase yielded an even more unexpected 1889 stamps for my collection; that put me just over the half way point when added to some smaller purchases. I intend to blog later about the purchase that made this possible because I think it has some implications for other collectors, but for the moment, I thought I would make a few observations about what a half completed Blue Volume One album "feels" like.

When I started my collection was under 10,000 stamps. In the first 200 pages there were 35 pages with no stamps on them. Now there are seven. In general, there aren't a lot of pages that feel sparse.

And some of the larger countries are approaching completion--at least aside from those pesky semi-postals and "offices." From the first part of the alphabet, Argentina, Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, France, and Germany are down to no more than a dozen or so missing regular issues/commems.

In spite of being at the halfway point there are still a bunch of countries for which I haven't a single stamp. I had blogged in May 2010 that out of 408 countries/political entities in the Blue, there were a surprising 76 staring back at me with only empty spaces. Now with the album half full, I am lacking stamps from 53 countries. I'm still not clear as to why there should be so many. For example, although my holdings of Italy were good, I was able to score 66 additional Italian stamps from my latest eBay purchase. But even though the original owner of this album obviously had a good collection of Italy, he or she didn't have a single example of Italian Occupation stamps from Calchi, Calino, Caso, et al, in spite of the fact that there are many of these that catalog under one dollar each. A similar story could be told for plenty of other countries. So this reinforces my impression that there are dozens of countries that elude most Blue collectors for reasons other that cost.

The next major milestone I guess will be 20,000, but who's counting :)

The Strange habits of eBay sellers

2011-03-13T17:41:00.005-04:00

It's already mid-March and I'm chagrined that I haven't posted anything yet for this month. In my defense, I've actually been working on my collection every day and will have a couple of posts related to this, but not for another week or two. So in the meantime I thought I would write on a generic topic, specifically about some of the stranger things perpetrated by eBay sellers of Blue Volume Ones.

Right at the top of the list are those sellers who say that the Volume Ones they are offering are "unique" and that these albums are rarely offered on eBay. Have they really not done any research? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is never a day that someone doesn't have a Volume One for sale. So are the sellers who make such claims clueless or …?

Somewhat related are sellers, almost always ones who admit being unfamiliar with stamps, who think the albums themselves are valuable for their maps, spaces for rulers and flags, etc. They lovingly photograph the bindings, title pages, and advertising materials. They go into rapturous detail about how the album is an homage to dead countries and bygone times. But about the stamps, if there are any, not so much.

And what about the sellers who go to the trouble to take photographs, but these are too blurry to show condition and sometimes even identify what stamps are being depicted? And we are not talking about one or two fuzzy-wuzzies. There are at least a couple of sellers who have on multiple occasions uploaded dozens of blurry photographs.

And then there are the sellers who have the focus thing down but only include a small portion of the album page in the photo. (I'm not talking about providing detailed photos of the valuable stamps which are always appreciated.) Perhaps there are photo-hosting sites that charge by the square inch?

I don't see it too often, but don't you love sellers whose take photos of entire pages but who upload the images randomly out of order? Like many of you, I suspect, I compare the images of prospective purchases against my own collection and there is nothing like seeing a page of Zanzibar followed by Aden followed by Switzerland followed by Belgium.

And finally there are the many approaches taken by sellers as to the number of stamps in their albums. I particularly like the sellers whose titles say something similar to "Bulging album bursting with stamps." Then when you get to the fine print of the description you see a phrase like "there are hundreds and hundreds of stamps." As the Blue contains thirty-five thousands stamps, don't they know that an album containing hundreds of stamps is 98-99% empty? Not exactly bulging. To state the obvious, even in an album containing 3500 stamps, 9 out of every 10 spaces would be blank.

And how about the sellers who not only do not give a count but go out of there way to say that "no, they won't count them, so don't ask"? (Of course, some of the most prolific sellers rarely give counts, preferring to supply hundreds of page shots instead. Thank goodness, because most of their textual descriptions are cookie-cutter and next to useless.)

No doubt you have others that could be added.

International Blue-per #7: Denmark Caravals

2011-02-27T20:01:00.007-05:00

As Jim is doing such a thorough job in his "Big Blue 1840-1940" blog going through Volume 1 country by country, I'm going to stop listing "minor" problems with the album. But in adding some stamps to Denmark, I came across a type of Blue-per that I hadn't seen before, namely a stamp cut that is completely wrong.

It is clear from the dates and descriptions that what is intended for these spaces is the 1933-40 Caravel ship definitives. But the cut is from one of the 19th century "Numeral" issues and doesn't belong here at all. And now that we are looking at this more closely, why are there spaces for the Type II Caravels from 1933-40 (Scott 283A-238J) and the 1927 Caravals on the previous page but not the Type I Caravals from 1933-34 (Scott 232-238)? I don't know that spaces for both of the types are needed, but the descriptions could have been worded so that either Type I or Type II stamps would fit.

Curiouser and curiouser is that this entire page is missing from my 1943 reference volume which stops with the 1937 series for the 25th anniversary of King Christian X's accession (i.e., the previous page in all subsequent editions). So it appears that the 1943 and 1947 editions of the Blue Volume 1 are not identical.

OMG! There is A New Blue International Volume 1 Blog

2011-02-16T15:46:00.002-05:00

Fellow collector Jim has just started a new blog with the great name "Big Blue 1840-1940" and a catchy intro: "A is for Aden and Z is for Zanzibar...Now what is between? Darn if Scott knows. Fact: Scott does not provide information for what is in Big Blue, aka Scott International Volume 1 1840-1940 But that is about to change."

Jim has set himself the ambitious task of creating a guide to the contents of the Volume One. And we're not talking about just a list of Scott numbers, but also information about the country and background on the stamps themselves.

I wish Jim the best of luck with his new endeavor which will benefit all stamp collectors with an interest in the classic era.

Here's the link: http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/

Thoughts on a Checklist for the Blue Volume 1

2011-02-15T21:48:00.006-05:00

Jim's comment a few days ago about creating a checklist for the four part version of the Blue got me to thinking about my own "experiments" with such a list awhile back--which went nowhere, I hasten to add. When I began my Scott Volume 1 collection, my fervent hope was that someone had made a checklist and put it on the Internet or donated it to a library. Unfortunately, I've never found one.

Why a checklist? When you are dealing with 35,000 stamps, it would be nice to have a convenient way to keep up with what you own, have something to take to stamp bourses or check against websites, provide documentation for insurance, etc. Also, such a list could help identify what stamps are not depicted in the album but logically should be and to generate statistics (e.g., what is a total catalog value of of a complete Blue Volume 1, what are the most expensive stamps, etc.)

Most serious collectors, I would hazard, pencil catalog numbers in their albums as their collection progresses. I have even heard of collectors taking their albums to dealers so the album itself becomes a checklist. That is too much of a bother for me, but, in any event, ones' annotated album doesn't do other collectors any good.

I know that some collectors annotate their copies of the Scott Classics Catalogue but I haven't found a good way to mark the glossy paper. Pencil doesn't show up and pen isn't mistake or update friendly. Also, even though the Classics Catalog is a single volume, it still is cumbersome to drag around, at least in comparison to a checklist. Now, I do have the 2007 version of the Classics Catalogue on my iPad which would be handy to take to stamp shows, and it is easy to highlight catalog numbers (I use the GoodReader software). If I only wanted something to show what I owned, this might be a sufficient solution. But the downside is that the highlighting can't be used in any other context. That is, I can't use the highlighted pdf to update more recent versions of the Classics Catalog. Nor can one extract the highlighted items to use for other purposes.

So compiling a checklist from scratch still seems the best solution. To that end, I played around with various formats a while back to see what issues would be involved. The basic questions seem to be:

--How do you format the listings: vertical or horizontal?
--How do you allow for indicating that you own an item without taking up too much space?
--How much information should be included (Scott catalog number, year, denomination, color, description, other publishers' catalog numbers, etc.)?
--How important is it to indicate that stamps belong to a set/series, and skips within sets?
--How to indicate that a page has blank spaces and what goes in these spaces?

Here was my first attempt at a minimal checklist format that would take up as little space as possible.

USA 1-2, 9-11-blank, 24-26-35, 63-65-68-69-73-76-78. 92-93-94-96-97-98-blank, 112-113-114-115-116-117-blank, etc.

I started with USA as Scott had already done much of the work for me. I first figured it made sense to use standard symbols such as the hyphen for stamps in a set, but it dawned on me that simply indicating a set contained say numbers 143-160 wouldn't give the collector a way to indicate which of the stamps in the set they owned. With the set numbers broken out, you can check, circle, highlight the individual stamps as required. Commas are used to separate related sets/series.

One obvious problem is how to deal with the situations where Scott has provided one or more blank spaces. Usually these are for higher values in a set but on occasion they could be for any stamp that fits and falls within the date range/description. My first format attempt simply indicated the number of blank spaces but I began to wonder if it would be of more use to list the possibilities for filling the space. Here is a variation that attempts to solve this:

USA 1-2, 9-11-blank for 5-8/10/12-etc.

Well, that didn't work out so well. I didn't come up with a good solution except where there was a contiguous series of stamps (see the China example below).

Although not shown in any of my examples, in hundreds of places in the International there is more than one possible stamp that matches the cut or description. Scott uses the word 'or' to indicate this in the US section: for example, 187 or 188. I thought about abbreviating this with187/188 but as the slash traditionally means something else in dealer/auction catalogs so that probably wouldn't be a good idea. The problem with 'or' is that in some cases you have 3 or even 4 stamps that could work. So that issue isn't resolved.

As long as you are looking for stamps from a seller that uses Scott Catalog numbers, you're all set. But once you are on sites like Delcampe where many of the sellers use other numbering systems, then you are out of luck. I think we can eliminate the possibility of identifying each stamp in the checklist by Scott, Stanley Gibbons, Michel, Y&T, etc. Even if one had the resources to make such a list, we know that Scott/Amos Publishing in particular would never allow such cross-referencing.

But regardless of seller, what most of these services have in common is that generally the year and sometimes denomination are included in the title or description. If I'm searching for a stamp that I know was issued in 1924, then I can add to that to my search string and get around not knowing the catalog number. So here is a modified version of the above with just the year:

USA 1847 1-2, 1851-56 9-11-blank, 1857-60 24-26-35, 1861-67 63-65-68-69-73-76-78, 1861-67 grills 92-93-94-96-97-98-blank, 1869 112-113-114-115-116-117-blank

One issue is whether to include a year range for sets (either from the album or the catalog) or specifically indicate the year for each individual issue. Going the latter route significantly adds to the work and I'm not certain whether it significantly improves the accuracy of search results.

Here is the sample with denominations:

USA 1847 #1 5c, #2 10c 1851-56 #9 1c, #11 3c, blank 1857-60 etc.

Actually, the "blank" seems to me to work better here. That is, my assumption would be that the word blank means you can pick any other stamp issued between 1851-56 without the checklist having to specify the actual catalog numbers.

Here is an example of a vertical format that I tried with China:

___ (10) 1885 1c
___ (11) 1885 3c
___ (16) 1894 1c
___ (18) 1894 3c
___ (78) 1897 1c on 3c
___ ( ) 1897 [1 selected from #79-85]
___ ( ) 1897 [1 selected from #79-85]

([The ___ was intended to provide a space for a checkmark, or a u for used, etc.)

Even though I think the vertical arrangement would be easier to mark up, this approach takes considerably more space. "Vertical" China requires two pages using three columns per page as opposed only part of a page horizontally:

CHINA 1885 #10 1c #11 3c 1894 #16 1c , #18 3c 1897 #78 1c on 3c, two blanks

Seems congested but I might get used to it.

A quick and dirty estimate suggests that a horizontally formatted checklist for the 35,000 stamps in the Volume One would take up 70 single sided pages, assuming 500 stamps per page. Not a big deal to carry around in a small binder.

I can always come up with excuses for why I never got around to doing more with the checklist, but I suppose the main reason is the hope that Scott will put their catalog online in a way that could be used for generating at least the raw data needed for a checklist. We know that they are in the process of creating an online catalog, just have no idea as to the details.

Any ideas and thoughts on formatting would be most appreciated.

Unsung Heroes of the Scott Catalogue and a Hint of Things to Come

2011-02-12T10:54:00.005-05:00

I've praised the Scott Classics Catalogue many times in this blog, but had little idea of who the people were behind the endeavor. An article in the February 21, 2011 Linn's helps put a face on its staff. According to the article, Bill (William A.) Jones has been the guiding force behind the catalog "to the point that where one could almost say it became his catalog." Mr. Jones has now retired and Donna Houseman has taken over many of his responsibilities. Ms. Houseman has worn several hats at Amos Publishing, including editor of the Scott Stamp Monthly. Stamp dealer and expertiser Sergio Sismondo continues to be a special consultant.

Although not specifically associated with the Classics Catalogue, Associate Editor Dave Akin is the "point man" in efforts to bring the Scott catalog online. The article promises that we will be hearing more about this project in the coming months.

The Two Part Blue International EXPOSED!

2011-01-16T12:24:00.005-05:00

I recently purchased a collection housed in Part 1A of the 1991 edition of the Blue, the last two part version before Scott/Amos began splitting the Volume 1 into four parts. My understanding from what I had read (but having never actually seen one of the 2 part Internationals) is that these came at the end of a transitional phase lasting more than two decades where some pages were dropped as the editors tried to facilitate the integration of Volume 1 pages with those for Volume 2 and beyond (i.e., every country beginning on the front of a page as well as for different kinds of stamps, such as airmails). Imagine my surprise to discover that even as late as 1991, there was practically no difference between the 1991 version and my 1969 edition:

Austria--in the 1969, the page for 1917 comes after 1919-21; this is fixed in the 1991 edition

Colombia--1991 edition missing pages for Acknowledgment of Receipt stamps, Special Delivery Stamp, Antioquia, Santander, Issued in Cucuta, and Tolima.

Costa Rica--1991 missing Postage due stamps and Official Stamps.

Cilicia--1991 missing this entire country. (It is on the same page as the missing Costa Rica issues supra.)

With the exception of switching the out of order pages in Austria, the differences in the 1991 version are the result of entire pages being cut rather than any changes within a page.

As far as I could tell, there was nothing added to the 1991 version that wasn't in the 1969.

So I've been very much mistaken. My guess now is that Scott split the Volume 1 into two parts primarily to cover increased printing costs/generating more profit and not to do any serious reediting. So the reediting we see now within the four part version didn't begin until 1994.

I suppose the good news is that if you aren't after the 1943/47 editions which are the most comprehensive or the latest four part version which is on better paper and more "user-friendly," then it really doesn't matter that much which of the editions between 1955 and 1991 you use (except that the versions issued from 1955 through 1969 will have spaces for more countries and several hundred more stamps than later editions but not as many as 1943/47).

Stamp Album scanner?

2011-01-12T13:51:00.006-05:00

I've tried a couple of times to assemble an easy contraption for photographing stamp albums without much luck. An intriguing product named the Book Saver Book Scanner has just been announced by Ion Audio at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. While I don't think the product will handle large albums like the Scott Internationals, it still is an interesting concept. The product is expected to be released in April and will cost less than $200.

Here is a blurb on it from USA today.

You can also see a video on YouTube.

Finally, here is link to Ion Audio's site.

New Years Resolutions

2011-01-05T15:50:00.005-05:00

I have three this year.

First, through the generosity of reader Mark, I have reference copies of the Brown Internationals covering 1840-1929 and will be looking for the final 1930s volumes on eBay (this may take some time). Over the coming months, I plan to do a quick and dirty estimate of the number of stamps in the Brown, identify some of the more obvious peculiarities and eccentricities (e.g., are there really no pages for US souvenir sheets?), and try to see if I can divine any overriding editorial principles governing what is included and omitted (for example, vis-a-vis watermarks or errors). Knowing Scott, I bet these changed over the years.

Second, and this is an easy one, take some sample measurements of the spaces for the various classic era albums and also look at page density—i.e., how many stamps per page on average, white space, etc. This idea was put in my head by reader Tim who was wondering whether the borders around stamps were smaller in the days before there were plastic stamp mounts.

Finally, I would like to end 2011 with 50% of the spaces in my Blue filled which comes to approximately 17,500 stamps. I currently have almost 16,000. Based on my experiences so far, I can expect to acquire no more than half from APS Circuits, if that many. So this means I'll have to experiment with other sources, such as the APS Stamp Store, Zillions of Stamps, etc. The problem is that I don't know of any particularly efficient ways of acquiring low cost stamps of which I am still missing many. For example, there are a lot of blank Latin American spaces in my album that are at or near minimum catalog value. But a recent stab at Argentina showed that there were a fair amount of stamps not available from the above sources (at least in single, used copies). On the other hand, it may be easier to find stamps for the most collected countries, such as Germany. In any event I'll try various options and post the results.

Buying Collections at Auction

2010-12-30T16:07:00.004-05:00

Before Christmas there was an interesting thread within a thread on the Virtual Stamp Club concerning collections and large lots at public auctions (as opposed to eBay). The thread began with VSC member jkoshel noting a trend of such items "going for rather high amounts as of late" and wondering if it was because "the market of breaking down such lots and then reselling on eBay is becoming more lucrative." (Message #*41975.174) There was no consensus on this issue, but Weiss111 posted that [some percentage] of auction houses purposely underestimate the value of large lots because they want to sell them to individuals who have examined them personally. He goes on to say that the primary purpose of underestimating lots is so that mail bidders will underbid persons actually in attendance who can physically examine the lots and come up with a more accurate (and higher) value. This helps prevent complaints from bidders who otherwise would buy unseen and makes the auction house look good to sellers when their holdings realize more than was estimated.

Another poster, gsquared2k, who is a regular buyer of lots, wrote that in his experience different auction houses have different practices (including some firms who try to accurately estimate their value) and that these practices can be divined with enough patience.

Another set of comments in the discussion had to do with whether valuable (i.e., $500+ retail) stamps were automatically removed by auction houses from large lots and sold separately. According to gsquared2, and I'm quoting here as my paraphrase would just be more wordy and less clear than the original: "There are some firms that will leave in better items that do not meet their individual lot criteria or are just instructed by a consignor to leave the collection intact and sell it as-consigned. Then there are other firms that have lower requirements for per-lot values and will remove the slightly higher priced items that are in better condition and lot them individually. Then you have other firms that will completely strip out all of the better material and leave collections as beginner lots." (Message *41975.191)

For what it is worth, it is my anecdotal experience that better Blue Volume 1 collections are bringing more on eBay than they did in 2008 when I started my album. A few weeks ago a collection of 16,000 stamps sold for $2300 and there have been a number of smaller Volume Ones that sold for over $1000 earlier in the year. Whether this is true for Volume 1 collections offered through public auctions I cannot say.

"The Importance of Condition"

2010-12-19T12:20:00.008-05:00

A few days ago the website News-Antique.com posted an article from the firm of Stanley Gibbons concerning "what exactly does ‘fine’ mean, and what effect might a slight defect have upon the price?" My understanding is that the piece is from the Stanley Gibbons’ 2011 Commonwealth and British Empire Stamps 1840-1970 catalogue.

In spite of what might appear to be a narrow focus, this 7000+ word article is a mine of information about Commonwealth stamp collecting. Making it even better, most of the comments could apply to many countries. Topics covered include Gum; Margins; Perforations; Nibbled, Short or Pulled?; Wing Margins, Marginal Premium; What's the Damage?; Perfins; Fading; Cancellation Quality; Circular Datestamps; Manuscript Cancellations; Telegraphic Postmarks; Forged Cancellations; and Cancelled to Order.

Here are just some sample quotes that hopefully will send you to read the main article:

"Just as in the case of wing margins and perfins...fashions are changing in relation to cancellations. In the past, the aim was to find stamps on which the cancellation fell across just one corner of the design, leaving the major part of it clear. Today, interest in exactly where and when the stamp was cancelled, not to mention the possibility that such partial cancellations may have been forged, have made clear, centrally applied or ‘socked-on-the-nose’ cancellations much more desirable – although, again, they do need to be lightly applied."

"Fiscally used stamps are normally much cheaper than postally used examples, even with the significant increase in interest in revenue stamps which has taken place in the last decade. However, individual post offices in a number of countries have resorted to this form of cancellation from time to time and examples are sometimes even more desirable than the same stamp with a clear dated postmark."

"While on the subject of ‘drawn in by hand’, collectors in the past – including some very eminent ones – were in the habit of ‘enhancing’ slightly unclear postal markings by drawing over them in Indian ink."

"Many businesses in Asian countries, especially forwarding agents, were in the habit of cancelling their stamps with ‘chops’, while individuals frequently wrote across them in manuscript in order to discourage theft."

"As the volume of worldwide stamp issues has escalated in the last 30 years and the cost of having postally used stamps removed from envelopes, soaked, dried and sorted has risen, it is no longer practicable for the stamp trade to supply fine postally used examples of most modern issues. They are therefore supplied cancelled by the postal administration concerned at the same price as mint examples...."

You can find the entire article on the News-Antique.com website.

Overview of Stamps Missing from Later Editions of the Blue

2010-12-18T18:12:00.006-05:00

Consider the following scenario. You've purchased a used Blue Volume 1 on eBay. As you thumb through your new purchase looking for items to add to your collection, you keep coming across rows and sometimes pages for stamps that are nowhere to be found in your Blue. Do you ignore these stamps and leave them for another collector? What if you decide in the future that you want these stamps. After all, if they were once good enough for Scott, aren't they probably still of interest to you? But there aren't any spaces to mount the stamps so what are you to do with them in the interim.

As remarked on in many of my posts, Scott regularly dropped stamps that had been in earlier versions of the Blue when preparing a new edition (and, less often, vice-versa). In a few cases this was a conscious decision by Scott--for example, removing all of the US Revenue pages. But most of the time the dropping of a row or two of stamps most likely was to cut corners on costs. This leaves the Blue collector in a quandary when transferring stamps from an album bought on say eBay to their permanent collection when the editions differ. For example, the 1947 and earlier editions of the Blue have spaces for Austria Military stamps from 1915-1918 but these are missing entirely from my 1969 edition. In most cases, there are too many missing stamps to add if Scott hasn't provided a blank page at the appropriate point.

What I decided to do was to temporarily house stamps like the Austrian Military issues in a stockbook. Now when I come across "deleted" stamps in an older International I can put them in the stock book until I make a decision in the future about what to do. (I envision adding them on blank pages to my album or perhaps using Scott's stockpages that are pre-punched for the International.)

Here are the categories that Scott provides spaces for in the 1943/47 edition but are not my 1969. Your milage may vary but in general many of these are missing from all later editions. At some point I need to recheck and refine, but hopefully even in this form the list may be of some use to other collectors.

(Note that I'm not talking about the tens of thousands of stamps missing from all editions of the Blue. This is just to highlight stamps that were once in the album but are now MIA.)

∗ United States. Envelope cut squares 1925, 1925-34, 1926, 1932
∗ United States. Letter sheet 1896
∗ United States. Official Envelopes. Post Office 1873-76, 1877. Postal Savings 1911. War Department 1875.
∗ United States. Revenues 1862-1936, including Documentary, Proprietary, Future Delivery, and Stock Transfer.
∗ Algeria. Newspaper 1924-26
∗ Andorra. Postage Dues 1935
∗ Austria. Military 1915, 1916-17, 1917, 1918
∗ Austria. Military Newspaper 1916
∗ Baden (entire country)
∗ Bergedorf (entire country)
∗ Bremen (entire country)
∗ Brunswick (entire country)
∗ Basutoland. Postage Dues 1933
∗ Bechuanaland Protectorate. Postage Dues 1932
∗ Canada. Registration 1875-79
∗ Carinthia (entire country)
∗ Cayman Islands. War Tax 1917, 1918-20
∗ Central Lithuania 1920 (missing 6 imperfs)
∗ Central Lithuania 1920 (missing 6 additional imperfs)
∗ Central Lithuania 1921 (missing 6 imperfs)
∗ Central Lithuania 1921 (missing 6 additional imperfs)
∗ Central Lithuania 1921-22 (missing 6 imperfs)
∗ Central Lithuania. Semi-Postal 1921(missing "same perf")
∗ Central Lithuania 1920 Surcharges (imperf)
∗ Central Lithuania 1920 (same with inset imperf?)
∗ Ceylon. Official Stamps 1895-1904
∗ Ceylon. War Tax 1918
∗ China. Offices Abroad 1911 (Tibet)
∗ China. Offices Abroad 1929 (SinKiang)
∗ China. Offices Award 1925 (Yunnan)
∗ China. Offices Abroad 1929 (Manchuria)
∗ Colombia. Registration Stamps 1889-1917
∗ Colombia. City of Bogota 1889-1903 [more?]
∗ Colombia. Antioquia. Acknowledgment of Receipt 1902-03
∗ Colombia. Antioquia. Too Late 1899-1902
∗ Colombia. Cundinamarca 1904
∗ Colombia. Registration 1904
∗ Colombia. Bolivar 1879, 1880, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, 1891, 1903, 1904
∗ Colombia. Boyacca 1903, 1904
∗ Cuba. Newspaper 1888, 1890, 1892, 1894, 1896
∗ Cuba. Special Delivery 1936
∗ Cuba. Airpost S.D. 1936
∗ Curacao (Netherlands Antilles). Postage dues 1892-1915
∗ Czechoslovakia. Newspaper 1918-20, 1925, 1926
∗ Czechoslovakia. Special Delivery 1918-21
∗ Czechoslovakia. Bohemia & Moravia. Newspaper 1939
∗ Czechoslovakia. Bohemia & Moravia. Personal Delivery 1939
∗ Czechoslovakia. Slovakia. Semi-Postals 1939
∗ Czechoslovakia. Slovakia. Newspaper 1939
∗ Dalmatia (entire country)
∗ Eastern Rumelia (entire country)
∗ Eastern Silesia (entire country)
∗ Ecuador. Offical Stamps 1886-1887 (various issues)
∗ Falkland Islands. War Tax 1918
∗ Gabon. Surcharges 1933
∗ Germany. Newspaper 1939
∗ Gibraltar. War Tax 1918
∗ Gilbert & Elice Islands. War Tax 1918
∗ Greece. Postage Dues (extra spaces)
∗ Greece. Occupied Turkey. Postage Dues
∗ Hatay. Regular issues 1939
∗ Hatay. Postage Dues 1939
∗ Hamburg (entire country)
∗ Hanover (entire country)
∗ Heligoland (entire country)
∗ Hejaz. Regular issues 1916-18
∗ Hejaz 1917, 1925
∗ Hejaz. Postage dues 1925
∗ Honduras. Offical Stamps 1890, 1921, 1924
∗ India. Feudatory States
∗ Ireland. Postage Dues 1925
∗ Iraq. Official Stamps
∗ Iraq. On State Service 1932, 1934
∗ Italy. Official Stamps 1875
∗ Italy. Pneumatic Post 1913-28
∗ Italy. Offices in Turkish Empire 1901-20 (Albania, etc.)
∗ Italy. Occupation Stamps 1930
∗ Italy. Occupation Stamps. Aegean Islands 1932
∗ Yugoslavia. Newspaper Stamps 1919
∗ Yugoslavia. Semi-Postals 1933 (XI International Kongress 6 values)
∗ Liberia. Postage Due 1893
∗ Liberia. Registration Stamps 1903
∗ Liberia. Offical Stamps (2 pages!)
∗ Lithuania. Semi-Postal 1939
∗ Lourenço Marques. Newspaper 1895
∗ Lourenço Marques. Surcharges 1920-21
∗ Lourenço Marques. Semi-postals 1917
∗ Lubeck (entire country)
∗ Madeira. Newspaper stamps 1876
∗ Madeira. Postal Tax, Postagal Tax Due 1925
∗ Malta. War Tax 1917-18
∗ Malta. Air Mail 1928
∗ Manchuko. Regular issues 1939-40
∗ Manchuko. Air Mails 1936-37
∗ Martinique. Postage Dues 1927, 1933
∗ Martinique. Semi-postals
∗ Mauritania. Semi-Postals 1915-18, 1938
∗ Mauritania. Airpost 1940
∗ Mauritania. Postage Dues 1914
∗ Mecklenburg Schwerin (entire country)
∗ Mecklenburg Strelitz (entire country)
∗ Mexico. Porte de Mar 1875, 1879
∗ Modena (entire country)
∗ Middle Congo. Surcharges 1936
∗ Montserrat. War Tax 1917
∗ Mozambique. Postal Tax Stamps 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930
∗ New Caldonia. Semi-Postal 1915, 1917-1938
∗ New Caldonia. Postage Dues 1906, 1928
∗ Nicaragua. Official Stamps 1896-97 (red)
∗ Nicaragua. Offical Stamps 1900, 1905, 1909
∗ Nicaragua. Official Airmail Stamps 1939
∗ Nicaragua. Postal Tax 1921, 1922, 1928-29, 1928-35, 1937
∗ Nicaragua. Postage Due 1896, 1897, 1898, 1899
∗ Nicaragua. Province of Zelaya 1904-08, 1908, 1909, 1912
∗ Nicaragua. Cabo Gracias a Dios 1907, 1909
∗ Oltre Giuba. Parcel Post 1925
∗ Oltre Giuba. Postage Dues 1925
∗ Oltre Giuba. Special Delivery 1926
∗ Oldenburg (entire country)
∗ Parma (entire country)
∗ Prussia. Regular Issues 1850-60
∗ Persia. Parcel Post 1915
∗ Persia. Officials 1881
∗ Romagna (entire country)
∗ Saseno (entire country)
∗ Siberia (entire country)
∗ Straits Settlements. Postage Dues 1924-26, 1936-38
∗ Syria. Surcharges 1920
∗ Syria. Postage dues 1925, 1931
∗ Trinidad & Tobago. War Tax 1917-18
∗ Trinidad & Tobago. Semi-postals 1915-16
∗ Trinidad & Tobago. Officials 1913-16
∗ Trinidad & Tobago. Postage Dues 1923-29
∗ Turks & Caicos Islands. War Tax 1916-18
∗ Tripolitania. Regular issues 1933-34 (14 spaces)
∗ Tripolitania. Semi-postals (various years)
∗ Tripolitania. Air Special Delivery 1934
∗ Tripolitania. Semi-Postal Airs 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934-35
∗ Tunisia. Parcel Post (various)
∗ Turkey in Asia. Postage Dues 1922
∗ Turkey. Newspaper stamps (full page)
∗ Turkey. Offices in Thessaly 1898
∗ Tuscany (entire country)
∗ Two Sicilies (entire country)
∗ White Russia (entire country deliberately removed from the Scott catalog and later editions of the album)

Want a Penny Black? Try China.

2010-12-05T14:07:00.006-05:00

If that space for Great Britain Scott #1 is still unfilled in your Blue International album, you may want to add it to your Holiday wishlist. Don Schilling's The Stamp Collectors Round-Up brought to our attention a recent press release from Stanley Gibbons. SG sold all of the Penny Blacks they took to a Beijing stamp expo in November and have an order for 10,000 more. SG says that "We normally sell no more than a hundred penny blacks in any given year so this trade order creates a demand 100 times the normal market size...We might end up with most of the penny blacks in the world going to China. The Chinese are already paying twice our catalogue price to get their hands on them."

While a non-collector might assume that the world's first stamp issued 170 years ago would be rare, the reality is that more than 68 million were printed. A textbook example of supply and demand, even though the Penny Black is readily available today (at least in China!), the demand keeps the price up. Something that Stanley Gibbons, a firm that actively promotes stamps as an investment, is no doubt happy to see.

Latest Lawrence Block 'Generally Speaking" column in Linn's

2010-11-29T15:58:00.008-05:00

Mr. Block's latest column, "Stamps and their Infinite Variety" in the 29 November 2010 Linn's is of even more interest than usual to the Blue collector. For one thing, he hints at some problems with the Brown Internationals. The Browns, of course, are always referred to with hush reverence as the ne plus ultra of Classic Era worldwide albums. (As opposed to one author who called the Blues their "bastardized offspring.") But I've always wondered if the Browns had their eccentricities just like the Blue Internationals but which no one has bothered to comment on.

In terms of album scope, what Scott primarily advertised for the Brown series was that each album "Contains spaces for every major variety of Postage Stamp issued by any Government." Some advertisements were a little more specific: "Containing spaces for all varieties of watermarks, inverted pictures, etc., etc." But what does every "major variety" mean? One thing we do know is that cost or scarcity isn't a criteria for inclusion or omission.

What Mr. Block says is the Brown "doesn't bother with perforation varieties…It includes major watermark varieties, and makes room for some minor varieties and omits others, recognizes a few shades, has spaces for some errors of colors." So it appears that the Brown also may be eccentric in coverage, just perhaps less so than the Blue.

The most tantalizing bit in Block's column is that there are stamps in the Brown that he can't find in the catalog. Unfortunately, he doesn't name names.

Truth be told, I'm leaving out the charm of this particular column which focuses on whether Block should feel obligated to acquire stamps that will fill spaces for minor varieties that he might otherwise happily ignore if they weren't in the albums as well as how the margins of his albums contain "in some respects, the most interesting items in [his] collection." He goes on to discuss some of his favorites in both categories. Both issues are near and dear to the heart of the Blue collector, too.

Scott 2011 Classics Catalogue Published

2010-11-12T14:15:00.008-05:00

It is November again and that means another edition of the Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps and Covers. As usual, even though stamp coverage (of non-British Empire) ends with 1940, the editors have added more than 1000 new listings for varieties from 52 countries. To emphasize, these are new listings for stamps, not simply changes in value of which there are more than 10,000.

While most of the additions are minor Scott numbers, there are a handful of new major numbers for Albania, German stamps used in Austria after the Anschluss, and Cyprus. New minor numbers appear in Alaouites, Bosnia and Herzegovina (248! new varieties), French Congo, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Martinique, Mauritania, New Caledonia, Ile Rouad, Rhodesia, Russia, Senegal, Somali Coast, and Syria.

The most costly new listing this year is Greece 47g, one of the Large Hermes Heads with its control number both inverted and on the front. The stamp is unique and valued at $210,000.

Check out the online press release which gives more detailed information about this impressive catalog.

No doubt the editors of the Scott International album series are busy revising Volume One to reflect these changes, with their highest priority to find a place to put Greece 47g.

Trick or Treat? eBay Item Description of the Day

2010-10-30T10:55:00.003-04:00

Of course, I try to monitor all of the Blue Volume Ones that appear on eBay and enjoy reading the seller descriptions which vary from forthright to delusional, sometimes in the same listing. I particularly like this description which I saw today for a Blue Volume One: "Virtually the same as the famous Brown Books with the following differences. These album pages are printed on both sides, the very high value stamps are not shown, and the watermark and perf. Variations are not here, but hey it is a looseleaf addition so you can add pages if you like."

"Virtually the same." It's Halloween Eve so I guess I can ask: Is this a trick or a treat?

Cover chosen for 2011 Scott Classics Catalogue

2010-10-23T19:47:00.007-04:00

Although for the second year in a row I didn't win the contest to pick the cover for the upcoming Classics Catalogue, I suppose I should be a good sport and report that the winning choice was China Scott C9. According to the special October issue of Linn's, C9 "won in a landslide, garnering more votes than the other two stamps combined." Here's a picture of the winning stamp depicting a Curtis "Jenny" flying over the Great Wall of China from Dr. Cheng Chang’s website (I have the first two stamps in this set but not C9):

International Album Article in October 2010 American Philatelist

2010-10-21T17:09:00.010-04:00

The latest issue of the American Philatelic Society's journal contains an interesting and nicely illustrated article by Rick Thompson titled "Judging an Album by Its Cover" (pages 915-918). Mr. Thompson rightly notes that the type of International being offered for sale on eBay, etc. can provide clues as to the value of the collection when other details are missing.

Mr. Thompson's information largely comes from the advertisements in the back of contemporaneous Scott Catalogs. He concentrates on the period between 1939 and 1956 during which Scott transitioned the albums from the Brown Internationals to the Junior Internationals to the Blue Internationals. While he has researched a lot of interesting information, I found particularly intriguing that Scott sold the Brown Internationals through circa 1941, after which they offered them on close-out until around 1945 when only three out of five volumes were still for sale.

Mr. Thompson provides a handy dandy chart of the various bindings available for purchase between 1939 and 1956. Interestingly, the 1955 edition was still offered bound with blue cloth although by 1956 it looks like the only version available was "Loose Leaf with dark blue Fabrikoid cover," the same binders available to this day.

One characteristic I never thought to consider was heft. Mr. Thompson indicates that the full 5 volumes Brown Internationals weighed in at 43 pounds (shipping weight) versus 11 pounds for the Blue. As the author points out, even ignoring the extra bindings of five volumes versus one, the Brown appears four times more comprehensive than the Blue even though the Brown only goes through mid-1938. (I find it interesting that no one, including Scott, has estimated the number of stamps in the Brown. The Blue, of course, contains approximately 35,000 spaces.)

While the author does not specifically address this point, it appears the catalogs confirm that the Brown Internationals as published by Scott stopped their coverage with August 1938. As I have suggested in an earlier post, it is possible that collectors could have supplemented their Browns for the stamps between September 1938 and December 1939 by purchasing one of the annual albums but I have never seen one of these for sale and cannot confirm that they ever existed except in advertisements.

Kudos to Mr. Thompson for writing this fascinating article.

International Blue-per #6 : Armenia [Scott 268-277]

2010-09-28T16:21:00.013-04:00

From Wikimedia

Several stamps in the Blue fall into the category of stamps that were once in the catalog but have been delisted. I think one can argue that if they were in the catalog at the time the album was issued, then, of course, they belong there and the compulsive Blue collector needs to fill those spaces. (In every case I've discovered so far, delisted stamps like these are still readily available.) But does it become a "Blue-per" for those editions of the album that Scott has made other changes to, but "neglected" to remove stamps it no longer recognizes as officially issued?

The first case in point are the Armenian stamps printed in 1920 that are still in the International and occupy the entire second line for that country. According to my 1943 Scott Catalog, the stamps "were printed in Paris. A large quantity was lost on the way to Armenia. Before the balance was delivered the National Government had been driven out by the Bolsheviki and the use of the stamps was prohibited." The Scott Classics Catalogue prices the set at $5 and notes that you can find some of the stamps fiscally used and with specimen overprints and imperforate. Adding to the fun, the set of ten has been reprinted. Scott says that the colors of the reprints are brighter. Interestingly, these stamps are also in Yvert&Tellier (I don't know about other catalogs) as numbers 94-101 without any notes questioning their authenticity and valued at 5.50 Euro.

There is a little more information on the Web about these stamps that you can find through Google. You can also see them in the Antonius Ra Collection with a notation that they weren't issued.

So should Scott have just dropped these stamps and left a blank at row at the bottom of the page? Well no, they could have given collectors spaces for Scott 300-309, the set of ten stamps from 1922 that catalogs a whopping $6.95. Now there's something that even I can afford.

Minkus Supreme Global Back in Print!

2010-09-23T17:50:00.008-04:00

I was minding my own business, looking at the latest Linn's, when I saw a full page Amos Advantage advertisement for their Minkus and International worldwide albums. I've seen this advert often and so I wasn't prepared to pay much intention to it until, lo and behold, I noticed a price by the base version of the Minkus "Global" album which has been out-of-print for a number of years. In addition, there is a new sentence in the description, "...on-demand printing has brought some parts back."

The relevant parts of the ad are:
Item Retail AA*
MGLV1A 1840-1952 $224.99 $199.99
MGLV1B 1840-1952 $224.99 $199.99
MGLV2A 1953-1963 $150.00 $120.00
MGLV2B 1953-1963 $150.00 $120.00

I immediately emailed Customer Service at Amos Publishing to find out more details. According to their answer, the 1840-1952 parts are for the more comprehensive Supreme Global, not the Master Global. And they will be printed on 80-lb stock (as opposed to 60-lb for the Scott International and who knows what lesser weight for the originals).

If these are indeed the Supreme Global pages (see below), this is great news for worldwide collectors. I don't know how long the complete Supreme Global has been out of print, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was sometime in the 1980s. The Supreme Global represents what IMO is a reasonable compromise between the coverage in the Blue Internationals and the Browns. You have most of the stamps that a collector will acquire without unfillable spaces for the great rarities. You also have the convenience of the pages fitting in 2-3 binders versus 8-10 for the Vintage Reproductions of the Browns.

Now why do I qualify my enthusiasm as to whether these are indeed the Supreme Global pages when Amos has told me as much. Well, the problem is that I am reasonably certain that the Supreme Global wasn't published until the year 1954 when it appears in the US Copyright Register for that year (the Supreme Global is not in the Register for 1952; unfortunately, I don't have access to 1953). The Master Global on the other hand does indeed date from 1952. But there certainly is confusion about the history of these albums, so I could easily be wrong.

One thing the reprinting has encouraged me to do is to deduce how many stamps are in the Supreme Global versus the equivalent Blue Internationals. This is easiest to estimate for 1955 editions of these two albums. The 1955 Supreme Global contains spaces for 76,000 stamps where the equivalent albums in the Blue International contains 66,000 spaces.

I must say I'm somewhat surprised that there is only a difference of 10,000 stamps between Scott and Minkus for this year range--about 15%. Is ten thousand sufficient spaces to cover the more common stamps that the Scott is missing and do these mostly fall between 1840 and 1940?

Then again, Timothy P. Holls "totaled the number of pages in his Minkus Supreme Global albums through the 1999 supplement. There were 22,014 pages, with spaces for 354,310 stamps (more or less)." (Quoted from http://www.asis.com/users/edenson/wwhome.html). As of 2008, Scott says that the Blue Internationals only number some 16,000 pages and 220,000 stamps. That is a difference of a whopping 48%.

As I own a copy of a "real" Supreme Global from 1840-1955 for countries A-J, I need to make some more detailed comparisons of the coverage in the Minkus. In the meantime, if anyone finds anything more about these pages, please let me know.

Regardless, thank you Scott/Amos Publishing. First you bring back the Scott Part 1, now (what I hope is) the Minkus Supreme Global. Together with your excellent Classics Catalogue, this shows a real commitment to the hobby.

UPDATE 2/2/2011: There is a Buy-It-Now on eBay for a 2 Volume Set 1952 Minkus SUPREME GLOBAL STAMP ALBUM. The seller says that there are "Spaces for 93,255 Stamps. 2,688 pages." So this proves that the Supreme Global was indeed first published in 1952 (as was the Master Global). What is especially interesting is that the number of spaces and pages is greater than that of the later 1955 edition. Is it possible that Minkus cut back after the initial edition? The seller doesn't reproduce the title page so we can only assume they've gotten the details right.

O' Canada

2010-09-16T18:47:00.005-04:00

As you may know, the American Philatelic Society frequently offers its members "one-time direct circuits" of a particular country or area during a specific month. I decided to take advantage of September's offer of Canada. Most of the circuits I regularly receive contain multiple countries (e.g., France and Colonies) so it was nice for a change to be able to sit down with my album opened to a single place instead of constantly having to thumb through the books, especially fun for those countries that Scott helpfully didn't put where they belong in the alphabet.

Since an APS circuit contains well over 1000 stamps, some of which exist in multiple copies mounted in several different books, I modified the wantlist worksheet I keep in Excel to help me track which books contained the stamps I needed with the best price.

You can see the top part of my tracking sheet below. The left column is the Scott catalog number ("1/4/12" indicates that there are three different Scott numbers that would work in the space provided). I use the second column to compare the price of more expensive stamps in the circuit books, usually $20+, with the same stamps in the APS Stampstore. The third and subsequent columns correspond to individual circuit books.

On several occasions I've thought that a stamp in a circuit was a good value only to find a better price elsewhere. Of course, if we're only talking about a small difference in price, I would rather purchase a stamp that I can examine in person. But as you can see from the second item, the StampStore has a acceptable copy of Canada #17 for almost half of the one in the circuit book.

Before this circuit, I lacked 54 Canadian stamps. I now need 33. Unfortunately, that includes most of the Large Queens and some other pricey stamps, including that perennial favorite, the "Blue Nose." Actually, Canada has several lovely 1840-1940 ship stamps of which I have two:

International Blue-per #5: Australia, Austria, Austria Lombardy-Venetia, etc., etc.

2010-08-27T11:13:00.004-04:00

The Lombardy-Venetia 3 shilling 1863, Scott #16, catalogs a rather dear $100. While there are stamps in the "Blue" cataloging more than this, $100 still is rather out of keeping with the rest of the album. For that matter, it is out of line with the preceding five stamps from Lombardy-Venetia which all catalog between $6 and $20. Is there a good reason that the editors included a $100 stamp? Well, no. Lombardy-Venetia #21, the same design and colored stamp issued one year later but with a different watermark/perforation, catalogs almost two thirds less: $37.50. Similarly, while #16's sister issue from 1863, the 5s Rose, #17, catalogs a not too expensive $27.50, the even more affordable 5s Rose #22 from 1864 goes for a wallet-friendly $6. Again, the only difference is watermark and perforation gauge.

I checked and the 1863 date in the album for these two stamps goes back at least to the 1943 edition so these stamps were probably in the album from the beginning. So does the "Blue" collector cheat and change the date above these two stamps from 1863 to 1863-64 so that #21-22 work, or does he or she buck it up and pay the premium for the two more expensive stamps?

There are other stamps that raise similar issues. For example, Scott includes a space for the 1863 Austria 2kr Coat of Arms which must be Scott 17 because of the date shown in the album. Used catalog value (2007) was $95. Scott #22, the same color and design but issued in 1864 with a different perforation (and perhaps watermark), catalogs for $11.50. Again, changing Scott's date header from 1863 to 1863-64 will save a mess o' money. To be clear, this is not the case of Scott providing spaces for the 1863 stamps and the 1864 stamps. No, the less expensive 1864 stamps are not represented in the album at all.

And one last example. Scott provides spaces for six Australian postage dues from 1909, total catalog value of around $90. But if you change the dates to 1909-1936 (again, same face just differences in perfs/watermarks), the catalog drops to around $23.

But is this cheating? Nah! If I owned one of the Brown Internationals or Scott Specialties, I would expect to fill a space with the described stamp or leave it blank. If Scott calls for British Guiana #13, the 1856 1c magenta, then by golly that's what needs to go in there (if you have this stamp, may I suggest you use a nice mount rather than a hinge!). But unlike the Brown or Green albums, the Blue was intended for collectors to fill with readily acquired, face different stamps.

My thought when I first started my Volume 1 collection was that part of the fun would be the challenge of finding the exact stamps that Scott chose to include. Rather like a scavenger hunt, not that I couldn't scavenge additional stamps over and beyond those described. This is part of the appeal for the Blue collector. We know that it is possible to complete the album, something our Brown or Green colleagues can never hope to do (not that they care).

However, the more I discover about the editing of the Blue Volume 1, the more I realize there were some poor editorial decisions about what to include/omit that cry out to be ignored as they clearly violate the intended scope of the album. I do intend to pencil in notes for the stamps I substitute and I will do so with a clear conscience. OK, now that this earth-shattering decision is out of the way...

The Worldwide Album Shootout: Mozambique Company

2010-08-18T16:24:00.008-04:00

I have a real fondness for many of the Colonial African pictorials which I still remember from my childhood collection. Not surprisingly, several of the APS Circuits I receive are for such colonies.

While going through the latest circuit for Portuguese Colonies, I had the impression that the pages for the Mozambique Company in the Scott International were a real mess, i.e., a noticeable number of stamps in the circuit books didn't seem to be in the album. So many that I didn't bother to check the Scott Classics Catalogue and just made a mental note to do a thorough comparison at a convenient time in the future.

Last night was that convenient time but I can only conclude that I was under some stamp-induced hypnosis when going through the circuit books. In other words, the International's editor(s) did a good job.

While the Mozambique Company's issues are quite affordable, there still are some stamps that are more difficult to obtain than others. Scott has omitted a few high denominations--not that these are particularly expensive--as well as most of the overprints other than the "Republica" ones. Many of these overprints don't seem to be readily available from the "usual" sources I normally check so that may have been a good editorial decision.

This almost leads me to wonder if I'm remembering wrong and it was another Portuguese Colony that had so many missing stamps. But until the next Portuguese Circuit arrives and I hopefully pay more attention, it's Scott 1, Me 0.

For an overview of this country, see http://www.filatelia.fi/articles/mozambique.html. You can also view many of these stamps on Antonios Ra's collection website: http://mitch.seymourfamily.com/mward/collection/africa/mozambiqueco/mozambique.html.

One interesting piece of "Blue" trivia: the Mozambique Company quit issuing stamps in 1941 so Scott decided to include them in Volume 1 even though the album's coverage normally ends at 1940.

Are Stamps Stuff?

2010-07-31T16:08:00.006-04:00

One of my favorite quotes about collecting is that it is "an obsession organized." Some of you may know about a new book titled Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Dr. Randy Frost and Dr. Gail Steketee. While the book focuses on compulsive hoarding, the chapter "We are what we own: Owning, Collecting, and Hoarding" does have some interesting bits relevant to stamp collecting.

So, why do we collect? It may be instinctual or cultural or both. The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm "suggested that acquiring things is one way that people relate to the world around them." But regardless of the motivation, collectors exist in practically every culture.

What constitutes a collection? Collections must contain multiple objects and "the items must be related in some way--they must have some kind of cohesive theme." Even that doesn't get completely encompass the essence of collecting. To riff on one of the author's analogies, a handful of stamps in your desk drawer intended for postage doesn't constitute a collection. But put them in an Blue International Volume 1 and voila.

In our country alone, perhaps one third of adults collect something. But collecting is practically universal among children, "sometimes beginning as early as age three. Not coincidentally, it is at that time that children begin to understand possessive pronouns such as 'mine' and 'yours.'"

In what reminded me of the Kübler-Ross 5 steps of grieving, some scholars find collectors follow a typical pattern:

1) deciding what items to collect;
2) planning how to acquire the item(s);
3) fantasizing about the item(s);
4) hunting for the item(s);
5) cataloging new acquisition(s); and
6) displaying them.

The authors provide some interesting insights on these steps. During the planning stages, "the fantasies increase the object's subjective value and give it a magical quality, and soon the value of the object outstrips and becomes disconnected from any functional utility it may have. Next comes the hunt, frequently the most pleasurable part of collecting. Many collectors shift from a self-focused state to what some have described as a 'flow state,' a mental state in which the person is so absorbed in the activity that he or she is unaware of his or her surrounds."

"When the acquisition occurs, it is accompanied by a wave of euphoria and appreciation of the object's features, which become part of the 'story' of the acquisition. Finally, the excited collector catalogs the object and adds it to the collection, arranging for its display. Often subtle rituals accompany newly acquired objects. For instance, Freud used to place new acquisitions on his dining room table so that he could admire them while he ate." I, myself, about as normal a person as you will find who writes a blog on filling spaces in a Blue International Album, has been known to leaf purposely through specific pages in my album to admire the "Penny Black" and other stamps I have looked forward to acquiring.

Some scholars believe that "collecting is a way of managing fears about death by creating a form of immortality" whereby our collections "can live on after we die." Others suggest a compensation theory is at work where "people who question their self-worth" need the objects in their collection to boost self-esteem.

If all of this has you worried about whether stamp collecting is pathological, the authors offer this reassurance: "It hardly matters how much stuff anyone owns as long as it doesn't interfere with his or her health or happiness or that of others." Well, that's a relief.

UPDATE 8/20/10: Normally, Lawrence Block's "Generally Speaking" column in Linn's consists of topics that I wish I had thought of first, even if I could never treat them as well as he does. But his column in the 23 August 2010 Linn's titled "Philately and the 'H' Word" is about hoarding--the topic of this blog entry. Of course, he brings in some aspects that I had never considered, namely do you do any of these:

1) save stamps that you receive in the mail without intending to add them to your collection?
2) save the glassines that you receive stamps in from others?
3) save stock cards that you receive stamps in from others?
4) save auction catalogs or pricelists?
4) save old stamp catalogs?
5) save back issues of stamp periodicals?

I have to plead guilty to all but the last two. I only keep catalogs that I use in my collecting and every month or two I tear out the articles I'm interested in from newspapers, newsletters, and magazines and recycle the rest. So there may be hope for me yet.

APS Circuits

2010-07-28T16:32:00.013-04:00

[This post is really part 2 of "Some Preliminary Observations on the Cost of Building a Volume I Collection" that appeared earlier this month.]

I'm currently building my collection largely through American Philatelic Society Sales Circuits. I've subscribed to these several times in the past with previous collections, and know they can be a good way of acquiring stamps at a reasonable percentage of catalog value.

If you aren't familiar with circuits, the APS website provides a succinct overview: The Sales Division acts as an agent for members who wish to sell some of their philatelic material using blank sales books (see below for a page from one of these books). The 42,000 sales books generate more than $1.8 million in sales annually. Books are divided into 165+ categories. "Items priced from one cent to $1,000 -- Majority in $1 to $40 range."

Typically, one receives 3-4 mailings (circuits) in each category during a given year. Circuits typically contain ten sales books each. You keep the circuits for up to 1 week before forwarding to the next person on the list.

I subscribed to six categories a couple of months ago: US Cut Squares, British Pre-Elizabeth, France & Colonies, Global 1840-1940, Italian Colonies, and Portuguese Colonies. (I've just added China.) I chose Cut Squares because this is the weakest US area in my album. Obviously, Global 1840-1940 and Pre-Elizabeth British were added because they match (more or less) the years contained in the Volume 1. France, Italy, and Portugal were selected more for hoping to add to my holdings of their colonies than for the mother country.

Here is a sample page from a recent World 1840-1940 circuit. (Not shown here is that when you buy an item, you use a personalized rubber stamp to mark the now empty space.)

My thought is that I would subscribe to a category for a year or two and when I'm not finding many new stamps to purchase, I will cancel and move on to another.

One thing I particularly like about the circuits is that they encourage you to spend more time studying the stamps. For example, I found that it wasn't obvious where some of the overprinted 19th Cuba stamps in a Circuit book belonged in my Blue, so I took the time to fire up the Scott Catalog (on my iPad!) and write in the numbers for each space in my album. This is something I rarely made the effort to do when I was adding hundreds of stamps at one time from an eBay album purchase. I generally add catalog numbers for at least a couple of countries per Circuit.

You could compare buying albums versus sales circuits to flying in an airplane versus a car trip. The plane takes you to your destination faster but you don't have nearly as good a feel for the journey. And I think every stamp collector would agree that it is the journey rather than the destination that matters to us.

Another bonus benefit is the chance to examine interesting stamps that you might normally not see up close. For example, there have been three of the Cape of Good Hope triangles, even though none of them were inexpensive enough for me to take the plunge. I was sorely tempted by a Suez Canal Company 1868 Blue Local. But these locals aren't in the Blue International so I gave it a by.

So far, the sales circuits are meeting my expectation. As you can see from the table below, I've been able to pick up stamps at no more than 1/3 catalog. Admittedly, this is somewhat skewed because I have control over what I purchase and can always pad my purchases with a few high catalog items that are listed as a fraction of catalog value, usually because of minor faults. So, for example, I picked up a F-VF appearing Great Britain, Scott #96, for $7, catalog $140, because it had a minor hinge thin on the back.

So far I've received circuits in four of the seven categories, one of them twice. Here's a summary of my purchases.

Category	# of stamps	Cat Value	Purchase Price	% of Cat	Avg cost per stamp
World 1840-1940	46	$118.24	$28.18	24%	$0.58
France & Colonies	23	$181.90	$26.46	15%	$1.10
Portugal & Colonies	55	$41.55	$15.00	36%	$0.26
Pre-Elizabethan British	56	$352.50	$53.75	15%	$0.91

For this group, I paid an average of 79 cents a stamp or 26% of 2007 Scott catalog value.

A goal I've set for myself is to add 2000 stamps a year for the next few years. It will be interesting to see if I can keep this up through APS circuits alone. I would like to bring the cost down though or these 2000 stamps will run me about $1500 annually. Maybe buying another big album wouldn't be such a bad deal! But then there's a big difference in spending this figure over twelve months as opposed to in one fell swoop.

More on the Cost of Building a Volume I Collection

2010-07-15T21:53:00.018-04:00

You may have heard about the recent craze where (mostly) teenage girls upload "Haul" videos of their fashion purchases to YouTube and similar venues. Surely it is just a matter of time before stamp collectors start to do the same. Well, maybe not.

Over the past 6 weeks, I've added about 500 stamps to my Blue. My collection is now large enough that buying large albums is getting to be prohibitive, so I've begun to search for other cost effective and efficient ways to fill in the remaining spaces. One possibility is to look for sellers who have broken up an International, Minkus Global or comparable album into individual countries. Another is American Philatelic Society Circuit Salesbooks. I'm currently exploring both.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the cost of acquisition of each of these methods, recognizing that my experiences so far may be so limited as to be misleading. But I'll keep records and refine this over the coming years.

Vis-a-vis the first option, there were perhaps three dozen countries from a Blue offered recently on eBay. I managed to win 11 of these. Now a prudent collector in deciding what to bid would no doubt have guesstimated the approximate catalog value of the stamps that weren't in his or her album. But I couldn't get enthusiastic about the time required to do that, knowing that I wouldn't win everything I bid on. Instead, I did a rough count of the number of stamps shown in the eBay images that were missing from my album and based my bid on that. So how did I do? I spent $181.11 to add 489 stamps, paying 35% of catalog or 42 cents per stamp.

In the following table (also known as a Haul Matrix), 'Cost' is what I paid on eBay. 'Catalog' is the 2007 Scott Catalog value of the stamps I actually added to my album. 'Avg' is the average cost per stamp I added. '% Cat' is the percentage of the 2007 catalog value I paid. '# to Sell' are the stamps I didn't need for my Blue.

Country	Cost	Catalog	Avg	% Cat	# to Sell
Allenstein	$12.05	$45.75	$0.46	26%	4
Argentina	$13.00	$40.00	$0.35	33%	131
Cameroun	$7.55	$35.55	$0.20	21%	27
Dahomey	$10.50	$35.80	$0.29	29%	18
Ivory Coast	$14.50	$26.50	$0.44	55%	18
Lebanon	$7.01	$28.20	$0.18	25%	20
Lithuania	$20.50	$43.95	$0.26	47%	32
Middle Congo	$28.12	$57.85	$0.54	49%	39
New Caledonia	$7.83	$35.05	$0.20	22%	26
St. Pierre & Miquelon	$22.05	$52.56	$0.31	47%	34
St. Thomas & Prince	$19.00	$64.00	$0.90	30%	34
Tripolitania	$19.00	$64.00	$0.90	30%	17
	$181.11	$529.21	$0.42	35%	400

Looks like I overbid on the Ivory Coast and probably Lithuania, Middle Congo, and St. Pierre & Miquelon. Ah well.

How does the cost of acquisition for these individual countries compare to buying entire albums? I don't know the catalog value of the stamps in the albums I've purchased, but I do know my cost figures to 8 cents or so a stamp. So my brief foray with buying individual countries has so far come out to more than five times that of buying entire albums. That doesn't sound good. However, my actual cost will drop some as I'm preparing to sell the stamps I don't need through the APS. I have 400 stamps to sell and assuming I can get as much as $100 total when all is said and done, that will drop my actual cost per stamp from individual country pages down closer to twice what I've been paying for stamps from the whole albums. That sounds better.

Next week I'll post my early experience with buying stamps from the APS Sales Circuits.

Yvert & Tellier Updates Classics Catalog

2010-06-26T13:31:00.010-04:00

I just noticed that there is a 2010 edition of the Classiques du Monde: 1840-1940, the first new edition since 2005. Unlike the Scott Classics catalog which details how their coverage expands each year, Yvert is mum on improvements. The number of pages in the new edition is 1116 which compares to 1078 pages in the 2005 edition. So, I wonder what is on the 38 new pages?

In trying to dig up some info on the Yvert, I just came across the Klassische Philatelie site of Dr. Christoph Ozdoba that compares the 2005 Yvert catalog, the equivalent Scott, and a volume I didn't know existed, Michel's Klassik-Katalog Europa 1840–1900. Note that unlike the Scott and the Yvert, Michel's catalog is more restricted, both by date (1840-1900) and by region (Europe).

The rest of Dr. Ozboda's Classical Philately site is worth the visit. I look forward to exploring it.

Update 7/9/10: There is a short thread on StampChat about the Yvert catalog with a couple of page scans from the 2005 edition.

2011 Classic Specialized Catalogue Cover Contest

2010-06-21T21:05:00.009-04:00

For the second year, Scott is asking stamp collectors to pick the cover for the upcoming edition of the Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps and Covers of the World 1840-1940. This year there are three choices each matching the theme chosen for all of the 2011 catalogs, UNESCO World Heritage sites:

Bohemia and Moravia Scott 29, the 60-haleru View of St. Barbara's Church in Kutna Hora stamp of 1939
China Scott C9, the 60-cent Curtiss "Jenny" over the Great Wall of China stamp of 1929
Greece Scott C2, the 3-drachma Flying Boat over the Acropolis stamp of 1926.

Spaces for all three of these are in the Blue International. I own the Czech stamp, two of the lower denominations of the China, but nothing from the Greek set. Does anyone reading this have all three?

According to the August 2010 Scott Stamp Monthly, the contest began last year because the editors couldn't decide between two of their favorites. More than 1700 votes were cast with the Falkland Islands' Penguin stamp winning by a 2-1 margin.

To vote, click here. The deadline for voting is 31 August 2010. The Catalogue will be issued in November.

The Worldwide Album Shootout: Portuguese Colonies

2010-06-12T22:18:00.009-04:00

If you mainly add to your "Blue" collection from other International albums, you are only rarely jolted into reality by stamps that don't match the spaces in your own album. But once you start using other sources to build your collection, missing spaces become more apparent. I recently received a circuit of sales books for Portugal and its Colonies from the American Philatelic Society. One thing that stood out were some affordable stamps from the 19th century (i.e., under $5) that were missing from the album. But not from all of the colonies. I'll say up front that what I initially thought was going to be some major lacuna in 19th century coverage of these colonies in the "Blue" turned out to be less than I had feared.

While I'm sure everyone but me has these memorized, for the record, here are the Portuguese Colonies in the Scott Catalog: Angola, Angra, Azores, Cape Verde, Funchal, Horta, Inhambane, Kionga, Lourenco Marques, Macao, Madeira, Mozambique, Mozambique Company, Nyassa, Ponta Delgada, Portuguese Africa, Portuguese Congo, Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese India, Quelimane, St. Thomas & Prince Islands, Tete, Timor, and Zambezia.

In the "Blue" International Volume One, most of the above colonies include at least a space or two for stamps like the following:

The differentiating point is the 1898 King Carlos set, an example from which is to the right of the white line. The Colonies that Scott supplies spaces for stamps issued before this set are: Cape Verdi (7 spaces for stamps before 1898), Funchal (3 stamps), Horta (2 stamps), Lourenco Marques (3), Macao (23 stamps), Madeira (9 stamps), Mozambique (12 stamps), Mozambique Company (11 stamps), Nyassa (7 stamps), Ponta Delgada (4 stamps), Portuguese Africa (5 stamps), Portuguese Congo (3 stamps), Portuguese Guinea (14 stamps), Portuguese India (19 stamps), St. Thomas & Prince Islands (14 stamps), Timor (19 stamps), Zambezia (4 stamps).

The exceptions are Angola, Angra, Azores, Inhambane, and Kionga. (Scott is off the hook with Kionga as its issues don't begin until 1916.) The other four colonies start with the 1898 King Carlos issues, ignoring anything earlier even though similar stamps are represented in the majority of the album's other Portuguese Colonies. What seems particularly strange is that Scott devotes 3 pages to Angola, 5 to the Azores and even 1 full page to Inhambane. In all fairness, the earlier stamps of Inhambane are expensive and don't belong in the "Blue." But that doesn't explain why they are missing for Angola or the Azores which have multi-page coverage.

The Minkus Supreme Global provides 29 spaces for Angola before the 1898 issues; 3 spaces for Angra; 21 spaces for the Azores, but none for Inhambane (where the first stamps are expensive). The Master Global also omits the earlier stamps for the Azores and Inhambane, but includes examples for Angola and Angra.

The corresponding coverage for the Scott Brown is: Angola (37 stamps before the 1898 issues), Angra (12 stamps), and the Azores (98! stamps). Interestingly, I cannot find Inhambane in my copy of the 19th Century Scott Brown (c1930).

Finally, the counts for Steiner's album pages are: Angola (37 stamps), Angra (12 stamps), the Azores (94 stamps), and Inhambane (14 stamps).

I was surprised that the Scott Brown had more stamps for the Azores than Bill Steiner's album pages as, in my previous comparisons, the coverage of Steiner's pages has always been equal or greater. The difference is Scott 16-19A, four stamps which are no longer in the Scott Catalog but were when the Scott Brown was created.

For a quick overview of the Portuguese Colonies, see this Refresher Course on the Linn's website.

Scott's Commemorative Stamp Album

2010-06-10T13:00:00.006-04:00

Fellow worldwide collector Tim recently sent me an interesting email. Tim has given me permission to quote his comments on a Scott album that I had not seen before as well as his general remarks on collecting that I think you will enjoy reading:

"I would like to share with you a Scott album I purchased on ebay recently that is one of the most novel albums I’ve yet to acquire and, I think, one of the rarest of Scott album publications. It is “The Commemorative Stamp Album”, labeled inside, “The Specialty Album for Commemorative Postage Stamps of the World”, copyright 1934. There also is a book that describes all the stamps listed in the album. I have the bound version and a loose leaf, 2 volume version was produced. I’ve attached a scan of the front (I’ll send better) and a scan of an advertisement from a Scott 1936 catalog (colleague did a horrible job!).

I collect classic airmail to 1940 (though I cheat and purchase sets after that time) as I hold a pilot’s license... I collect for that reason and also I can approach a very high percent of completion. Problem is, I can’t decide whether to go loose or have the bound rebound and use that.

I’ve discovered that the WW commemorative album includes commemoratives, semi-postal’s and airmails. There is overlap with the classic airmail, and of course, overlap with the commemoratives with the Blue.

I enjoy collecting. It allows me to detox.... It also gives me some sense that, eventually; through time and MONEY, I will get close to filling the album. There is a certain sense of personal intellectual accomplishment in completing a specialized collection while also knowing that you acquired the best specimens you could afford (M/MLH/MH). As they say in the trade, “Better material usually increases in value”. That being said, this “Green” album presents an opportunity to accomplish the same in the commemorative area.

One subject I would like to research, and I don’t think it would take too much time, is to calculate the total CATALOG cost to fill each album would be. Before I got this album, I would have put my money on the Air Post album. Now, I think the Green would cost far, far more. Recently a set of Greece 1st Olympic stamps in MLH?MH were sold on ebay for well over $800!!! I’ll be more than happy to pass on my findings when completed."

Aden versus Allenstein Redux

2010-05-30T14:57:00.012-04:00

After several years of avoiding it, I have finally begun making a wantlist using the countries for which I have no stamps as a start. Motivating me out of my lethargy was a desire to investigate if there were obvious reasons why my album doesn't have a single stamp from 70+ countries: what makes them different? While I've only gotten as far as the letter C with my wantlist, I was pleased that with one (aberrant) exception, the total catalog value (2007) for the A-B countries isn't too bad. Of course, the "Blue" collector knows that low catalog value doesn't translate into low retail, or, perhaps more important, into easy availability for purchase.

Here is a summary of the A-B countries missing from my collection:

Aguera: 7 stamps in the "Blue" album, $7.70 total 2007 Scott catalog value
Alaouites: 25 stamps, $86.75
Allenstein: 28 stamps, $48.50
Anjouan: 7 stamps, $7.95
Austria Lombardy-Venetia: 7 stamps, $182.00 (or maybe under $100--I'll explain in a future post)
Barbuda: 5 stamps, $8.30
Benin: 7 stamps, $15.65
British Central Africa: 7 stamps, $19.05

Well, total catalog value obviously doesn't explain it. I mean, what's up with Aguera or Anjouan and their 7 stamps cataloging not much more than a $1 each? To see if these countries are an example of stamps more difficult to find than the catalog values suggest, I checked my nascent wantlist with three sources: the APS Stamp Store, Poppe-Stamps, and Zillions of Stamps. I was pleasantly surprised that at least 75% of my wantlist was available from one or more of these sources for all of the countries except Aguera. Stamps from La Aguera weren't available from any source I checked, including eBay.

In my earlier post I wondered why I have a country like Aden complete, for example, and what was different about it vis-a-vis Allenstein or, to choose one of the other countries for which I have no stamps, Aguera? Scott provides spaces for 19 Aden stamps at a catalog value of around $37.50 (I say around because there are several blank spaces to be filled at the collector's discretion). Aguera is represented by 7 stamps with a total catalog value of $7.70. On the surface, doesn't it seem like my collection should be the other way around? Just brainstorming, I wonder if the reasons are:

1) Popularity. Aden is a former member of the British Commonwealth and this remains a popular area with American collectors.

2) Stamp Types. Aden in the "Blue" is all pictorials and commemoratives, including the popular 1937 Coronation set. The stamps of Aguera are what some dealers derisively call "little nothing stamps."

3) Each of Aguera's stamps catalogs $1.10. While Aden has stamps cataloging more than the $1.10 there are still 7 Aden stamps that can be acquired at well under $1 each. I might imagine that the stamps most likely to make their way into Junior collector's albums were those valued at or near the base catalog (which, for many years, was 2 cents).

I'll post something in the future about the "deal" with Austria Lombardy-Venetia (hint, it involves a Blue-per).

Status Check (Or why Aden and not Allenstein?)

2010-05-23T16:56:00.015-04:00

As I blogged a few months ago, I've pretty much given up on being able to afford another "Blue" Volume 1 on eBay large enough to add a substantial number of stamps--i.e., at least a 1000--to my collection. Such an album would probably need to contain 10K plus stamps at a minimum and these have been selling recently for more than I want to pay. So future additions to my collection are likely to come from worldwide albums that have been split into individual countries, single country collections, the APS Stamp Store, APS circuits, etc.

That being the case, I thought I thought this would be a good point to look back at how my collection made it to this stage. The nucleus of my collection was a 1969 "Blue" with about 10,000 stamps (it contained several thousand additional stamps, but these were "outside the spaces" stamps and aren't included in my counts). The cost of this album was $625 or a little more than 6 cents apiece. At the time I was buying, 3 to 6 cents a stamp seemed like a reasonable way of judging whether an album on eBay was a bargain.

I added to my original purchase with three other "Blue" albums. The first contained a little more than 9000 stamps, i.e., about the size of my original album, but I was happy that it still yielded a couple of thousand additional stamps for my collection at minimal cost. The next album was only countries A-E but it contained a lot of stamps within this range. This album boosted my collection by another 1500 stamp. Finally, I purchased an album with only 7000 or so stamps based on photographs showing a number of better issues not usually found in the typical eBay Volume 1. This yielded 700 new stamps.

The total cost of all the albums including the starter collection was around $1475. Because I didn't want the hassle of selling the other albums after having removed the stamps I needed for my collection, I consigned them to a local dealer. That brought in $450 after commission. (Someone who had been willing to sell the stamps themselves might have gotten $700-800, not including eBay fees, postage, etc.) In any event, the net cost of my collection so far is a little over $1000 which, of course, includes the pages themselves and two binders. I currently have 14,575 stamps which works out to 7 cents per stamp. Needless to say, future additions will never average nearly that low!

Its not uncommon when you read descriptions of "Blue" albums for sale to see the phrase "includes the usual suspects." That is, the countries represented by a lot of stamps are the ones most commonly found in collections of this time period, such as Germany, Austria, and Hungary. I have a 100 plus stamps each for 44 countries, many of which fall into the usual suspects category.

And there are countries that seem obscure but are almost always well represented, such as Azerbaijan. I assume this is because they were widely available in packets or on approval at little cost. (Interestingly, the common countries may or may not include the United States--I've been surprised at the number of world albums for sale that are missing the U.S. Now whether this is because the collector didn't collect our country or had a separate album for American stamps, I don't have a clue.)

Just as there are countries frequently found in abundance, I soon learned that certain countries were often empty because of average cost for their issues, even though they issued enough stamps to be represented in the "Blue" by multiple pages. Cyrenaica and Tripolitania come to mind. But it may also be due to happen chance. Why is Aden complete in my "Blue" and yet none of the albums I purchased had a single stamp from Allenstein, even though the entire country is frequently available complete for under $50?

At this stage in my collecting, the number of countries for which I have zero stamps stands at a pretty amazing (embarrassing?) seventy-six. Five of these, Alaouites, Cape Juby, Columbia Santander, Italian Colonies, and Spanish Sahara are allocated at least two pages in the "Blue;" the rest one page or less. The complete list of the countries for which I have no stamps as of yet are: Aguera, Alaouites, Allenstein, Anjouan, Austria Lombardy-Venetia, Barbuda, Benin, British Central Africa, Cape Juby, Caroline Islands, Castellorizo, Cochin China, Colombia Santander, Colombia Santander Cucuta, Colombia Tolima, Danish West Indies, Elobey, Annoleon & Corisco, Far Eastern Republic, France Offices in Crete, French Offices in Turkish Empire Cavalle, French Offices in Turkish Empire Dedeach, French Offices in Turkish Empire Port Lago, French Offices in Turkish Empire Vathy, French Offices in Zanzibar, German New Guinea, German South West Africa, Germany Offices in Turkish Empire, Germany Polish Occupation, Grand Comoro, Great Britain Offices in China, Guam, Hatay, India Feudatory States Kishengarh, India Feudatory States Sirmoor, Italian Colonies, Italy Occupation Stamps, Italy Offices in China, Italy Offices in the Turkish Empire, Japan Offices in China, Japan Offices in Korea, Karelia, Kiauchau, Kionga, Kuwait, Madeira, Maldive Islands, Marienwerder, Marshall Islands, Mesopotamia, Moheli, Nevis, North Ingermanland, North West Pacific Islands, Northern Nigeria, Nossi Be, Obock, Penrhyn Island, Poland Occupation Stamps, Poland Offices in Danzig, Poland Offices in the Turkish Empire, Poland Official Stamps Issued under German Occupation, Rio de Oro, Russia Offices in China, Sarawak, Senegambia & Niger, Somaliland Protectorate, South Russia, Spanish Sahara, Ste. Marie de Madagascar, Tahiti, Tibet, Tobago, Transcaucasian Federated Republics, Uganda, Western Ukrainia, and Zululand.

Obviously the list contains a lot of Offices and Occupations, but still there are rather more than a handful of complete countries missing. I'm surprised that there are still that many political entities where I don't have a single stamp yet--76 out of 408 possible or 19%. It will be interesting as my collection progresses to learn if the lack of stamps from these countries can eventually be attributed to cost, scarcity, or just luck of the draw.

How Many Stamps Were Issued Between 1840 and 1940? Part 3

2010-05-05T15:27:00.011-04:00

When collectors have made counts of how many stamps have been issued, the sensible ones have limited themselves to totaling Regular Issues and Commemoratives. Using that approach, I come up with a little more than 60,000 regulars and commems released between 1840 and 1940. But when making my count, I had the bright idea of including everything in the 2007 Scott Classics Catalogue even though that added multiple layers of complexity as well as increased the opportunity for counting mistakes. With that in mind, when looking at all issues, I found that regular issues/commems account for about two-thirds of the stamps in the Catalogue. The other one-third are Back-of-the-Book (BOB).

Below is a table of my counts for the various stamp categories in the Scott catalog according to Scott's prefixes. These are sorted from the most stamps in a particular category to the least. Again, I caution you in placing too much faith in the exactness of the counts.

COUNT PREFIX DESCRIPTION
60,107 [No prefix] Regular issues, Commemoratives
5778 O/OX Officials, Post Office Seals
5248 J/JX Unpaid Postage
4885 C/CE/CO Airmail
4035 B/BK Semi-postals
3001 A*, AR Mandates, Plebescites, Provisionals, Postal-fiscal
1139 N Mandates
1113 R/RA/RAJ Revenues
1056 #L Local stamps
739 Q Parcel post, special handling
682 P Newspapers, periodicals
670 1N Occupation issues
614 U Envelopes
408 M Military
371 L Local
321 #X Provisionals (e.g., US or Confederate Postmaster Provisionals)
277 E Special Delivery
136 F Registration, Certified
62 Carrier Carrier
45 H Acknowledgment of Receipt
33 I Late Fee
32 G/GY Insured Letter, Marine Insurance
28 S Franchise stamps
18 D Pneumatic Post
18 K Offices Abroad
5 Y Revolutionary
90,821 TOTAL

When I started, I listed every prefix separately: for example, I initially separated Airmails from Airmail Special Deliveries, etc. This quickly became tiresome and so I went back and subsumed these all under a single prefix letter, in this case, C. Unfortunately, I shouldn't have done this for all categories. Mixing the various prefixes where A is the first letter intermixes the AR category which is cut from a different cloth than the others. I should have left that separate.

It should also note that the prefixes K, L, M, N, and Y can be used with any category. Consider the Military Stamps of Austria. There are regular Military issues, Military Semi-Postals, and Military Newspaper stamps. In my count all of these are included in the M count, not with the B or N counts.

Finally, some categories are deceptive. There are hundreds of Offices Abroad listed throughout the Catalogue but the only stamps assigned with the "official" K prefix are for UNITED STATES OFFICES IN CHINA Shanghai.

The last table breaks down the percentage for the most numerous prefixes. The most common type of BOB stamps are Officials--they constitute almost 19% of BOB issues. (Note that this is 19% of the thirty thousand BOB stamps, NOT 19% of the ninety thousand total stamps issued between 1840-1940.)

18.81% O/OX Officials, Post Office Seals
17.09% J/JX Unpaid Postage
15.90% C/CE/CO Airmail
13.14% B/BK Semi-postals
9.77% A*, AR Mandates, Plebescites, Provisionals, Postal-fiscal
3.71% N Mandates
3.62% R/RA/RAJ Revenues
3.44% #L Local stamps
2.41% Q Parcel post, special handling
2.22% P Newspapers, periodicals
2.18% 1N Occupation issues
2.00% U Envelopes
1.33% M Military
1.21% L Local
1.05% #X Provisionals (e.g., US or Confederate Postmaster Provisionals)

For the first two posts in this thread see: Part 1, Part 2.

The iPad and Stamp Collecting

2010-05-04T13:20:00.012-04:00

I am an unabashed gadget geek. One example of this is that I have owned an iPad since the first day it was available for purchase. Since then I've found a couple of good uses for the iPad with my "Blue" collection which I would like to share.

I spend a lot of my time with my albums sitting on the couch rather than at a desk. This means I'm usually trying to balance an album, catalog, and laptop at the same time. Turns out for a couple of tasks, the iPad provides a viable alternative for the laptop, the catalog or both!

Off and on I will select a country that is largely complete and see what it would take to fill the remaining spaces. I usually start with the APS Stamp Store. I was happy to find that the iPad's screen size is fine for viewing this site in the Safari browser and it is easy to go back and forth between listings and zoomed views of the stamps. Most important is that the size and weight of the iPad vis-a-vis a laptop made this task much more convenient. I would expect other websites such as Zillions of Stamps to work equally well unless they use Flash to serve up their content or shopping carts.

I own the last DVD version of the Scott Classics Catalogue. As you may know, the DVD contains the catalog in Adobe PDF format. I transferred the PDFs over to the iPad and viewed them using the GoodReader software. Although it is little bothersome to find the exact page you want, the overall convenience is hard to beat. It is especially nice if you find yourself refering between the website and the catalog.

Incidentally, this post was typed on the iPad but I had to add the images "manually."

Miscellaneous Info on the Scott Internationals, etc.

2010-04-27T15:13:00.002-04:00

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.

How Many Stamps Were Issued Between 1840 and 1940? Part 2

2010-04-20T15:46:00.005-04:00

When I was making my count of stamps in the 2007 Scott Classics catalog, I kept the totals in an Excel spreadsheet. Not to let this go to waste, I'm doing some sorts on the data that may be of interest.

Here are the top 25 countries ordered by number of stamps issued between 1840 and 1940. This count includes all of the various types of stamps in the Scott catalog, regardless of whether they are represented in the "Blue" International. Please do not place too much trust in the totals--for reasons outlined in the Part 1 of this post, I would expect these counts to be off by a percentage point or two.

2523 UNITED STATES
1656 COLOMBIA
1464 NICARAGUA
1409 HUNGARY
1296 TURKEY
1238 SPAIN
1197 MEXICO
1126 SALVADOR, EL
1034 IRAN
1027 AUSTRIA
996 RUSSIA
982 BELGIUM
957 ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
937 GERMANY
924 ROMANIA
865 URUGUAY
843 ITALY
817 ECUADOR
783 ALBANIA
764 BRAZIL
720 PORTUGAL
681 FRANCE
674 PARAGUAY
660 SWITZERLAND
636 GREECE

You may be surprised that Colombia ranks number 2 but remember all the hundreds of SCADTA airmails. To see whether there were any other "anomalies," I decided to run the sort again looking at only Regular Issues/Commemoratives. But while the rankings changed, most of the first group of countries were still in the second sort, just in a different order. Perhaps the surprise in the second list is the addition of Portuguese India with some 450 regular/commems.

UNITED STATES
IRAN
TURKEY
RUSSIA
MEXICO
SPAIN
NICARAGUA
PORTUGAL
SALVADOR, EL
HUNGARY
ROMANIA
URUGUAY
BRAZIL
GERMANY
COLOMBIA
ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
PHILIPPINES
PORTUGUESE INDIA
CHINA
GREECE
FRANCE
ECUADOR
ITALY
ARMENIA
AUSTRIA

It is harder to do a meaningful bottom group because most of the entries are along the lines of Yugoslavia's Carthinia Plebiscite. Nevertheless, here are the countries (as opposed to occupied areas, states, etc.) with the fewest stamps issued between 1840 and 1940:

3 IONIAN ISLANDS
4 FAROE ISLANDS
4 KIONGA
5 COCHIN-CHINA
6 STELLALAND
8 PITCAIRN ISLANDS
8 SASENO
9 ANNAM AND TONGKING
11 BARBUDA
11 NEW BRUNSWICK
11 PORTUGUESE AFRICA

For my next post, I'll look at whether there have been more postage dues than newspaper stamps and similar burning stamp collecting questions. I'm thinking that Pneumatic Post Stamps are going to rank pretty high. What about you?

How Many Stamps Were Issued Between 1840 and 1940? Part 1

2010-04-17T19:39:00.008-04:00

Seems like a reasonable question concerning this popular collecting area. And yet, as far as I can find on the Internet, no one has posted a count. Interestingly, there are estimates of the total number of stamps issued from 1840 until the present day. Michael Weatherford made a reasoned estimate of 600,000 or so by the end of the last century. But the total number of stamps issued is a perpetually moving target--surely, it should be easier to come up with a more exact number for the first one hundred years of philately? Well, yes and no. I've spent the last four months working on this off and on and here's what I've found.

To cut to the chase, there is not likely ever to be a definitive number. I don't know that this is a big deal as an approximate figure is probably good enough for most of us. But here is a list of the problems I've encountered in trying to count classic era stamps.

First, the catalog you pick will dictate the total. That is, every catalog, whether it is Scott, Gibbons, Yvert, et al, will list some stamps not in the others. I assume we aren't talking about a difference of many thousands for 1840-1940, but is still something to be aware of. For my count, I used the 2007 Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps & Covers. Even after choosing a catalog, the publishing date will make a difference. Scott has added hundreds of stamps in subsequent editions, although how many of them would have figured in my count is unclear.

Second, it is surprisingly difficult for some countries to obtain an accurate count at a glance, even for Regular/Commemorative stamps. For example, the numbering for country X may start at 1 and end at 100, but that doesn't mean there are 100 stamps. Catalogs are renumbered and some numbers previously used may be dropped. Or conversely, an issue might be given an intermediary designation to avoid a wholesale renumbering, so you could have both a 21 and 21A. Now, a careful person would compensate for all these anomalies, but I didn't take the time to do it. So there may be 100 stamps, or there could be 98 or 103. My hope is over the 500+ political entities involved that such differences will average out.

Third, some categories of stamps are not in a single numerical sequence. Here are a few examples of issues which required manual counts of a 100+ stamps: Confederate Postmaster Provisionals, Colombia SCADATA airmails, Ukraine Regional Issues (I did not count these), Stamps of Germany used in Cameroun, Canadian perforated Official Stamps, and United States Private Carriers--check these out and you'll see that one can't simply take the ending numbers but rather must do manual counts.

Fourth, for the British Commonwealth in particular, Scott includes issues to 1952. Where an individual stamp or set are clearly dated after 1940, these are easy to spot. But sometimes, stamps that don't belong in our count are intermixed within a set that contains some stamps issued in or before 1940 plus a few after. I didn't take the time to ferret out those few stamps that were issued after 1940 if the majority of the set was issued before. So my number for most British Commonwealth countries is likely overestimated by a few stamps.

So, what final count did I come up with? 91,000 stamps more or less. This means that the "Blue" contains about 40% of the stamps issued in the Classic Era and that are cataloged by Scott.

In Part 2 of this thread, I'll look at some interesting statistics, e.g., which countries issued the most stamps between 1840 and 1940 and what are the most common types of BOB stamps--i.e., were there more airmails or official stamps issued during this period?

UPDATE 6/2011: When I wrote this post I had not found any estimates for the number of classic era stamps. Today I came across the following on the website for the William J. Uihlein Collection: "Estimates vary, but one source declared that from 1840 to 1928 the world's governments had released about 57,000 regular issues of stamps, not counting minor varieties or revenue stamps." I have no idea what that source is but the number certainly seems plausible.

Differences between the Scott International Junior and the Current "Blue"

2010-04-09T17:13:00.007-04:00

A reader emailed me the other day asking about the differences between the "Blue" Volume 1 that Scott currently sells in four parts and the International Junior, which I took to mean one of the earlier single part editions. This is a question that much interests me and I thought I might try to summarize what I've found out so far.

By way of introduction, the editions of the "Blue" between 1943 and 1969 were sold in one part. Beginning in the 1970s, Scott split Volume 1 into two parts and most recently into four.

Number of Countries
There are more countries in the 1943 or 1947 editions than in any of the later volumes. The two part "Blue" editions are missing the most countries. Some of those countries in the 1943/47 editions were restored in the four part version but not all. For a complete list, click here.

Number of Stamps
The 1943/47 editions have spaces for the most stamps. Hundreds of stamps were unceremoniously dropped when Scott created the two part version which offers the worst coverage. However, there are stamps in the later versions that weren't in the 1943/47 editions.

Compatibility
The single part volumes are the least compatible with later volumes in the International series, the four part, the most. The single part volumes will have some countries that begin on the reverse of pages as well as multiple countries on a single page, making it impossible to seamlessly integrate the pages in Volume 1 with those in Volume 2 and later. This also means that countries are in a single alphabetical sequence in the latest editions.

Expandability
As in the "compatibility" category, the four part edition is the most expandable. In the four part version, all countries are their own units and the different classes of stamps (i.e., regular issues/commems, airmails, etc.) within a country are graced with their own pages. This arrangement makes it easier for collectors to create their own pages within or at the end of a country. Two byproducts of the four part arrangement are 1) there are many blank back (verso) pages in the four part version that can be used for mounting additional stamps, and 2) there also tends to be fewer stamps on many pages, leaving the collector room to make his or her own additions--perhaps those that were dropped from earlier editions--without necessarily having to add new pages.

Paper
The four part version is on thicker paper than any of the one part editions (I haven't physically examined a two part "Blue") and I suspect the paper may be of more archival quality. There is some variation in the paper thickness in the one part editions I've seen, but as albums can sometimes have collector-added replacement pages from other editions, I don't feel certain as to the state each edition was originally published.

Miscellanea
While probably not a big deal for most collectors, the earlier editions of the "Blue" had spaces at the top of the page for a portrait of the ruler and coats of arms as well as some gazetteer information. (Actually, I wish the latter were still in there.)

Cost
The single volume versions, usually the 1943 or 1947 editions, appear weekly on eBay and you might be able to score one with few or any stamps for as little as $50 or so. New copies of the four part version will set you back $400+ from Amos Advantage or another dealer. Now whether it is worth the $400 to have some of the advantages of the four-parter is up to the individual collector. If you do buy an earlier volume, note that these may not be complete (not infrequently the US pages are missing), there may be hinge remnants, tears, etc., and you probably want to make certain the edition is loose-leaf rather than hard bound.

Have I left anything out?

Lawrence Block on "The Abiding Patience of Stamps"

2010-03-21T15:52:00.002-04:00

As usual, the latest Lawrence Block column in the 3/22/10 Linn's resonates. This time he is discussing how actively one has to be engaged to enjoy stamp collecting.

You will sometimes see the statement, "Sharks Need to Continuously Swim to Live" applied to stamp collecting. In other words, if your collection isn't growing, what's the point?

What the analogy misses, and Block's column documents in a variety of ways, is that stamp collecting doesn't demand daily involvement to still be a satisfying hobby. It is possible not to feed your collection for days, months, or perhaps even years at a time, knowing that it will still be there when you are ready. For some reason, I'm reminded of the "Nike" commercial from the movie What Women Want. The commercial within the film was about running, but if we switch to a collecting motif, then you might have

"And you can call on the [collection] whenever you feel like it...The only thing the [collection] cares about, is that you pay it a visit once in a while."

There have been several recent threads in discussion groups from collectors thinking about cutting back. The reasons vary but often include that all of the items still missing from their collection are too expensive to acquire. This is not a problem I expect to have with a Classic Era collection built around the "Blue" International. I own in another album what is likely the most expensive stamp in Volume 1 and I've already found the stamp that supposedly is the most difficult to acquire. So I can forge ahead, confident there is a reasonable chance that the last stamp I hinge in the album could come in at under a dollar.

(For accuracy, I should add that the need to continuously swim is only true for some varieties of shark.)

The Worldwide Album Shootout: Afghanistan

2010-03-11T21:57:00.005-05:00

I've pillaged a half-a-dozen or so Worldwide collections in the past year and have repeatedly noted that Afghanistan seems to cause International collectors a lot of problems. Everyone seems to be able to identify stamps belonging to the country without difficulty; we just have problems getting the right stamp in the right space. It doesn't help that the Blue Volume One illustrates only about 10% of the stamps that were issued.

The big loser this time in the Shootout is, incredibly, the Brown International. At least, in the 1897 edition which is the only one I have access to. Scott supplied only World Almanac style information for this country--not a single dedicated space for an actual stamp. I'd like to think this was corrected in later editions but I don't have a clue if Scott made editorial changes in the Brown volumes over the years as they did with the Blue. If anyone can confirm one way or the other, please let me know.

The winner from the standpoint of comprehensiveness, not a surprise here, is the computer generated album. It takes Steiner thirty pages to cover the issues from the early 1871 Tiger's Heads through 1939. Unusual for Steiner's pages, there are actual illustrations for many issues, not just descriptions.

The Scott Green Specialty Album for Afghanistan allots about 24 pages for the pre-1940 issues. One interesting difference between the Steiner and the Green album is that the earliest Tiger's Heads are displayed on the diagonal in the Specialty series--i.e., maintaining the Tiger's Heads in the up position rather than at a 45 degree angle.

The Minkus Master Global provides spaces on a page and a half for some 40 Classic Era Afghanistan stamps out of an approximate universe of 375 (which also counts BOB). The Supreme Global has room for 100 or so stamps on four pages.

The Blue International provides spaces for 36 stamps on two pages, ignoring everything before Scott #205. In spite of this low number, Scott omits fewer than ten face different stamps cataloging under $1, although there are many missing in the $1-$5 range. Scott begins with the 1909 regulars but might have included a couple of earlier issues that catalog only a few dollars. Having said that, a check of the standard Internet retailers (stamps.org, et al) showed practically no stamps before Scott 205 for sale (and the few available were the more expensive values).

The Scott Catalogue lists air post stamps, registration stamps, parcel post stamps, and postal tax stamps, none of which are in the International although the 1936 postal tax stamps were in the 1947 edition of the International. I am surprised that at least one of the stamps from the first airmail set (1939) has never been in the Blue albums.

I’ve always been intrigued that early Afghan issues were canceled by tearing or cutting so will certainly look for an example of this to add to my collection, even if the Blue provides no spaces for issues contemporary with this practice.

From Wikipedia

International Blue-per #4: Korea Scott # 3-5

2010-03-09T20:06:00.002-05:00

Korea issued its first stamps, a set of 5, in November 1884 but the postal service came to a grinding halt during the December uprising of that year. The "Blue" has spaces for the 25 mon, 50 mon, and 100 mon values from this set. Scott subsequently withdrew the previously assigned numbers for 3-5, and notes that "these [3] stamps were never placed in use." In spite of their non-official status, Scott does suggest values so an argument can be made that the stamps still belong in the "Blue," even if they've been orphaned by recent Scott catalogs.

The Worldwide Album Shootout: Great Britain, Pt 2

2010-02-22T16:09:00.004-05:00

Click this link to read Part 1.

3) The Minkus Supreme Global

I've been anxious for some time to see if the Supreme Global bridges the gap between the "Blue" and the Scott "Brown"/"Green" series. By bridge I mean does the Supreme Global provide additional coverage without leaving the collector with perpetually blank spaces for the great rarities found in the Scott albums?

The Supreme takes not quite four pages, front and back, to cover Scott 1-173 in comparison to two in the "Blue," although the Minkus also includes several sets of Officials and Postage Dues.

The Supreme Global houses 136 regular stamps between Scott #1 and 173 or 82% of the major Scott numbered issues. This compares with 49% in the Scott "Blue." The majority of missing stamps are expensive, cataloging up to $29,000. However, there are three missing early engraved Queen Victorias cataloging under $100 which perhaps Minkus considered minor varieties.

Later editions of both the Master and Supreme Global albums include catalog numbers, although, of course, these are Minkus numbers not Scott. Minkus provides more illustrations, Scott more descriptions and blank spaces. Specifically,

"Blue" - 23% of the spaces in the entire album have illustrations
Master Global - 43% have illustrations
Supreme Global - 53% have illustrations.

I do not know the corresponding percentages for the "Brown" and "Green" series.

Surprisingly, I sometimes find myself prefering, within a set, to have text for the colors and values as the illustrations are not always as helpful as text. One place where I think the "Blue" is superior is that its cuts are larger than in the Minkus albums.

I do like how the Supreme Global typically provides the collector with more information than does the "Blue." For example, the Supreme Global describes watermarks, both with text captions and small cuts as well as sometimes as a large "stamp size" cut. The album also sometimes uses small arrows to point out identifying features between similar issues as well as gives useful descriptions, such as "Small White Letters in Corners." The Master Global doesn't offer as much help in this regard as the Supreme Global but still more than the "Blue."

Here are examples of these different approaches:

One thing I dislike is the Supreme Global gives fewer dates. For example, all of the stamps on page 1 for Great Britain in the Supreme Global are subsumed under the heading 1840-80. Similarly, page 2 is 1880-1901.

My initial impression, for Great Britain at least, is that the Supreme Global is a worthy alternative to the "Blue." What will be more telling is comparisons for other countries where the "Blue" is known to be weak with certain common issues that should have been included.

4) The Scott "Brown" International 19th Century Edition

I don't own any of the "Brown" Internationals but a scan of the 1902 version is available via Google Books and that is what I used for this comparison. As the Brown was in print until the 1940s, it is possible that Scott made revisions over the years. Can anyone verify if there were changes?

As I only looked at the 19th Century volume, the last stamp included is Scott 126. Out of the 119 major numbers in the Catalog between #1-126, the "Brown" contains 111. Actually 112, because the first space is for O1, the black Queen Victoria with V R in the upper corners. Most of the missing numbers are from the 1854-57 types of 1840 and 1841 with different perforations (e.g., a single space that can contain either #8 or 11).

The "Brown" finishes out the Great Britain pages with Offices in the Levant, Officials, and the 1p and 2p Mulready envelopes.

One of the attributes I find I like about the "Browns," the 19th Century volume at least, is the number of stamps per page. The Harris approach much too crowded for my taste and the Scott Specialty albums too generous with space. (I realize this is a consequence of logically relegating related sets to their own pages and I further suspect that most single country collectors like the uncrowded appearance of the Specialty pages to better show off their treasures.) I had expected the "Brown" pages to be sparsely populated like the Specialty series, but this is not the case at least with this album.

5) The computer generated pages from William Steiner's Stamp Albums site

This wonderful website provides affordable computer generated album pages for almost every stamp listed in the Scott Catalogs. Although his pages go up to the present day, Mr. Steiner very helpfully provides pages specifically for the Classic collector. Steiner takes 11 pages to present #1-173. Of the 166 possible stamps in this range, Steiner provides spaces for 171 of them. Now how is that possible? Because he includes some stamps like 158A and 158B that I rightly or wrongly ignored as subvarieties when doing my count.

Steiner's pages are 8.5 x 11 inches as opposed to approximately 10x11.5 inches for the "Browns" and 9 x 12 inches for the others.

Steiner doesn't include any cuts of stamps although some pages have illustrations of overprints. (He may consistently do this--I haven't checked.)

Of all the publications, Steiner's was the easiest to match spaces with the Scott catalog number. Those few items "out of sequence" are usually because the catalog conflates sets of regular issues issued at different times into one denomination sequence whereas Steiner may separate them. (For example, the 1883-84 regular series is split between two lines depending upon whether the stamps were issued in 1883 or 1884.)

So how much is the catalog value for all of the stamps on these 11 pages? Almost $120,000 compared to $3200 for the "Blue"!

6) The H.E. Harris Masterwork Deluxe Album Album (Volume II: Europe)

I picked up this album years ago at a garage sale and I still see worldwide Harris albums on eBay periodically, but the appeal of these to the worldwide collector would have to be the coverage of post-1940 issues, not the Classic Era. In the case of the stamps between Scott #1 and 173, Harris contains 30 of them or 18%. It takes about 2/3's of a page for Harris to get to Scott 172. Harris provides 5 blank spaces. With the exception of what I assume is the Penny Blank, all of the included stamps catalog under $25 and are reasonable choices for inclusion. However, there are almost as many stamps cataloging under $25 that are NOT included.

Although I will glance at the Harris pages when I look at other countries, I won't bother posting the comparison in the future unless their coverage is closer to the others.

7) The Scott Specialty Album for Great Britain

While I don't own it, you can see pages from this album on Dr. Cheng Chang's website.

The Specialty album takes 14 pages to display Scott 1-173, compared with Steiner's 11 pages, confirming my impression that the "Green" albums have fewer stamps per page than the other albums. Of the 166 possible stamps in this range, the "Green" provides spaces for 171 of them--the same as Steiner. Unlike Steiner, the "Green" includes illustrations for many of the stamps as well as Scott numbers. The "Blue" only provides Scott numbers for the U.S. Later editions of both the Minkus Master and Supreme Global albums have catalog numbers but, as noted above, these are Minkus. Harris never had numbers and Steiner can't include Scott numbers because they aren't licensed to do so.

The only other Scott worldwide album to include numbers that I am aware of was the short lived Grand Award album which I believe was intended to compete with the Master Global.

I will do more country comparisons in the coming months. If anyone has other albums they would like to scan so I can post on this site (or link to) for comparison purposes, I would be most happy to do so.

The Worldwide Album Shootout: Great Britain, Pt 1

2010-02-22T15:59:00.004-05:00

I've long been intrigued with how the major worldwide albums covering the Classic Era compare even if this smacks of second guessing the choice of the "Blue" International for my own collection. Having finally acquired part of a Minkus Supreme Global, I want to have a go at comparing the coverage of some sample countries in the albums that I either own or have access to:

1) The "Blue" International Volume 1 (1943, 1947, 1969, and part 1 of 1997 editions)
2) The Minkus Master Global
3) The Minkus Supreme Global (I have A-J countries only)
4) The Scott "Brown" International 19th Century Edition (c1902, from the Internet)
5) The computer generated pages from William Steiner's Stamp Albums site
6) The H.E. Harris Masterwork Deluxe Album (Volume II: Europe, 1987 edition)
7) Scott "Green" Specialty albums (other people's online websites)

I've decided to start with early Great Britain because this is a popular country that should receive extra editorial attention in any album. While no doubt I should thoroughly think the process through and perform a number of these comparisons before posting anything, I know this would bog me down and I would never finish. So, let's get started even if a few months from now I wish I had done things differently.

My working method will be to use the "Blue" as the baseline and look at corresponding pages in the other albums as well as the Scott Classics Catalogue. I suspect I won't normally be making detailed comparisons against the catalog, but I'm going to make an exception with Great Britain and tally which specific stamps have been included.

1) Scott International "Blue" Album, 1840-1940 [Volume 1]
For this part of the great album shootout, I'm starting with the first two pages of the "Blue" which takes us from Scott #1 issued in 1840 through Scott #173 from 1912-13. My assumption is that for later, less expensive Great Britain issues the "Blue" is comprehensive so I should concentrate on differences in the early issues.

I've checked my 1943/47 albums against the 1969 edition and there is only a minor difference between the two: the 1969 edition has a blank space within the 1862-65 years and the 1943/47 editions has the blank space in the 1880-81 years. The cuts and descriptions for all of the remaining stamps are the same.

If my math is correct (and what are the chances of that?), we're looking at a possible 166 major varieties during this period according to Scott (the more specialized Stanley Gibbons, of course, would give a different count). Interestingly, the total is 166 rather than 173. Scott, even for Great Britain, has apparently eliminated some major numbers it had assigned to this country in the past.

Of these 166 potential candidates for inclusion, the "Blue" contains spaces for 81 stamps, of which two are "fill in the blank." This translates to the "Blue" containing 49% or about half of the possible major varieties of Great Britain during this time span. (All of these counts should be considered a little squishy as a single space might properly be filled with two or more stamps that match the cut.)

But that of course ignores that "Blue" collectors, unlike their overly ambitious "Brown" and "Green" colleagues, neither expect or want spaces for the most valuable stamps in their album. Thus the more proper question to ask is whether there are inexpensive stamps we're likely to acquire that Scott has omitted? Now that begs the question as to what constitues inexpensive. At least initially, I'm going to arbitrarily set $10 as a figure that shouldn't give the intrepid "Blue" collector too much pause if that were all standing between him or her and the completion of a page.

So, are there any stamps cataloging under $10 between Scott #1 and #173 that are not included in the "Blue" Volume 1? I'm pleased to say that the answer is no. Admittedly, Scott does provide only two spaces where there are twelve stamps between #151 and 158B. But while most of these catalog under $10, I think the stamps have been rightly omitted as they are examples of different dies, reengravings or perforations. Moreover, all 12 varities are represented by the same two cuts in the catalog.

Some other statistics: The average 2008 Scott catalog value of these 81 stamps is $42. The total catalog value of all 81 is around $3200. The catalog value of the most expensive stamp on these two pages is $275 for Scott #1, the Penny Black.

2) The Minkus Master Global

The Master Global puts on one page what Scott reproduces on two for #1-173 and additionally manages to throw in four postage dues. (Remember that Minkus intermixes BOB stamps within the regular and commemorative issues. Whatever else one may think of the practice, it does make it much easier to integrate supplements.)

The Global has spaces for 57 stamps compared to the "Blue's" 81 (not counting the postage dues). Does the Global leave out any stamps cataloging under $10? Yes, two, ignoring again Scott 151-158B. These two stamps are Scott 111 and 143.

So you could argue that Minkus has provided for almost all of the low cost stamps without leaving out many affordable issues. But there is one troublesome anomaly, a space for the 5 shilling Seahorse. When you encounter situations like this, one has to wonder whether the people who edited the album actually collected stamps. Scott 174 cataloged in 2008 for $310 and this is more expensive than any other stamps on this page including the "Penny Black." My bet is that the editor included this oblong stamp for no other reason than symmetry which is why I ask whether a collector would ever think that layout trumped other factors when deciding to provide a space for a stamp that was excessively expensive in comparison to others in the album. (I suppose I should note that one could substitute Scott 180 for 174 and then you are looking at only $125, but the stamp still doesn't fit within the scope of the album.)

Minkus crams more stamps on a page than the "Blue." One difficulty with this is that the collector has little or no room on most pages to add additional stamps along the margins. The advantage is that you need fewer binders for a large collection and fewer pages should mean a lower price for the album. (The latter point is not an issue now as the Minkus Master and Supreme Global albums are out of print.)

There are significant differences in how Minkus and Scott describe the stamps belonging to each space which I will discuss in the next section.

To be continued in my next post.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

2010-02-16T20:08:00.007-05:00

This post is pretty much off the wall but I came across a set of album pages on eBay titled 19th CENTURY BRIEFMARKEN CUT-SQUARE ALBUM. These are 305 or so pages only for envelopes, wrappers, postcards and money orders (?), world-wide, through about 1913 (?) according to the seller. I assume these are reprints. I don't recall having seen anything like this before and couldn't find more information on the set via Google. So just in case the set is new to anyone else, I thought I would mention it.

Stamp Dens

2010-02-13T22:14:00.006-05:00

A fun thread on the always entertaining and informative StampChat board has been "Who has the MESSIEST stamp room(s) ????" It is a relief to know that there are collectors who are messier (actually, way messier) than I am. But although we have a study, I usually work on my stamps at the dining room table. Having feared that this arrangement would forever subject me to shame in professional stamp collecting circles, I was pleased to read the following in Lawrence Block's "Generally Speaking" column in the January 25, 2010 Linn's: "When I settle into my stamp room (and it's not a dining room, no matter what fantasies my wife is able to entertain)...."

Here is a photo of my setup where for the past few days I've been transferring stamps from a recent eBay purchase. As indicated in an earlier blog, the albums are sitting on Ikea plastic drafting tables which also act as holders for hinges, etc. You will note a beer to show that stamp collecting is indeed an adult hobby. Missing are a watermark detector and perforation gauge. One "feature" of the International is that usually watermarks are irrelevant (except for some of the US Bureau Issues). Perforation differences aren't usually critical either, although I was reminded only today that one is necessary for early twentieth century issues of Ecuador.

The "Album Count Sheets" are how I keep track of the number of stamps in my Blue Volume 1. I've mentioned this before but will cover it in more detail in a future entry.

Even if you are fortunate enough to have a separate stamp room, don't feel too sorry for me. In case I get bored, here is the view from our dining table, I mean Stamp Den:

Approvals from Another Era

2010-02-03T17:07:00.005-05:00

An album I recently purchased on eBay had several old approvals inserted between various pages. The format of these is very familiar and I'm sure I saw them as a kid, but the name of the company is no where on the sheets. Does anyone recognize these? If I were to guess, I would say H.E. Harris, but I can't imagine why they would leave off their name and address. Here are two examples. One is a facsimile of the famous British Guiana 1 cent Magenta and the other of two Bulgarian stamps from 1901. Interesting, several decades later these "rare" Bulgarian stamps only catalog $11 unused, $3.20 used. I hope no one was killed in putting these stamps into the hands of collectors--the accompanying blurb suggests that blood may have been spilled.

How to Become Unhinged

2010-01-18T18:41:00.007-05:00

A perennial problem with removing hinged stamps from old albums is that some will be stuck to the page and those that come off may well leave hinge remnants. The technique I use was described on several websites including Linns. It consists of first using tongs to hold the stamp as far off the album page as it will lift without tearing. I then lightly wet a small artists brush with water (a Q-tip would also work). I slowly move the brush back and forth between the hinge and the album page while simultaneously pulling the stamp/hinge off the page using the tongs. I like the brushes with slanted bristles. It is just like the sport of curling but without the skates. I suppose you could wear skates while you do this but I don't think it would help.

In cases where I have the stamp successfully detached but the hinge remnant refuses to separate from the album page, I brush a small amount of water directly on the remnant, wait a short amount of time, and then pick at the hinge with tongs. Generally it will come up without damaging the paper.

While this works for me most of the time, a recent thread on the Virtual Stamp Club forum suggested another approach. While the thread is devoted to separating stamps from envelopes it would appear applicable to album pages. The poster noted that a retired chemist he knows "uses and recommends common mineral spirits. Takes about 3 seconds, then slide tongs between stamp & envelope; lay stamp face down on paper towel, use Q-tip and fresh spirits to further clean back of stamp. Use talc, not talcum powder, to finish job." If I were going to try this, I probably would use oderless mineral spirits for artists.

Please let me know if you've tried mineral spirits and if it works more reliably than water.

Improved Coverage in the Later Editions

2010-01-13T16:40:00.007-05:00

I've had a chance to make a better comparison between the 1947 edition of the International and the 1969 version. As mentioned in a previous post, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the 1969 edition had improved coverage for some issues over the 1947 edition even though many stamps and even complete countries were dropped in the later version. The most dramatic improvement in the '69 was for Libya. In all cases, I do not know whether the additional stamps were added for the first time in the 1969 edition or had previously appeared in the 1955 or 1965 versions. At some point, I want to check this list against the latest version of the Blue (of which I only own part 1 of 4) to see if the changes "stuck." Here are my notes:

BRAZIL. The '69 has better coverage of postage dues than the '47.

CAMEROONS. The 1938 semi-postals are in the '69 but not the '47.

CONGO. More spaces in the '69 than the '47 for the 1930 and 1934 airmails.

COSTA RICA. Twice as many spaces for officials in the '69 than '47.

CUBA. Twice as many spaces for postage dues in the '69 than the '47.

DENMARK. Twice as many spaces for airmails in the '69 than the '47.

FRENCH EQUATORIAL AFRICA. Twice as many spaces for airmails in the '69 than the '47.

GRAND COMORO ISLANDS. 17 spaces for this country in the '69 vs. 8 in the '47.

FRENCH GUINEA. Better coverage of pre-1913 regular issues in the '69 than the '47.

FRENCH GUIANA. Better coverage of pre-1925 regular issues in the '69 than the '47.

INDO-CHINA. The '69 edition has 45 spaces for postage dues versus 35 in the '47.

ITALIAN COLONIES. The 1947 edition is missing the 1932 Dante overprints (8 values). However, the 1969 has only 4 spaces for the Garibaldi overprints versus 8 in the the 1947.

YUGOSLAVIA. The '69 has 17 spaces for postage dues versus 11 in the '47.

KUWAIT. 1969 has spaces for 4 additional values in the 1937 overprints (Scott 45-57).

LIBERIA. There are 7 spaces in the '47 for airmails vs 10 in '69. However, the additional airmails in the '69 is because Scott deleted spaces for the 1893 postage dues and the 1903 registration stamps.

LIBYA. The '69 has almost 3 full pages of semi-postals vs. 4 spaces in the '47! Also, the '69 has twice as many spaces for airmails.

MALAYA: PERAK. The '69 has better coverage of 1938-40 than the '47.

MIDDLE CONGO. The '69 doubles the spaces for 1933 regular issues but drops 13 spaces for the 1936 surcharges.

PERU. The '69 has 7 spaces for airmails missing in the '47.

POLAND. The '47 is missing the 1933 and 1935 officials that are in the '69.

SAAR. The '69 has more spaces for the 1927-34 regular issues and the 1922-23 officials than the '47.

SAN MARINO. There are a few additional spaces in the '69 vs. the '47.

SPANISH [WESTERN] SAHARA. There are 25 spaces for this country in the '47 vs. 43 spaces in the '69.

SWEDEN. The '69 adds 10 spaces for 1918 semi-postals missing from the '47.

SYRIA. The '69 drops three spaces for the 1920 overprints (Scott 64-81) but adds 2 stamps from 1940 not in the '47.

TRIPOLITANIA. Something of a mess. The '69 is missing regular issues from 1933-34 (14 spaces), a number of semi-postals, and 2 spaces for airmail special delivery that are in the '47, but has 20 spaces for semi-postal airmails versus 6 spaces in the '47.

UGANDA. There are 4 spaces for this country in the 47 vs. 10 in the '69.

In a later blog I'll summarize where the 1947 edition is superior to the 1969 version.

International Blue-per #3: Canada 1897 Jubilee Issue

2010-01-08T14:22:00.013-05:00

"Blue-pers" is my silly name for mistakes, errors, inconsistencies, etc. in the Scott Volume 1. My first two examples represented two categories: 1) what I can only assume was a practical joke at the expense (pun intended) of collectors; and 2) an orphan--i.e., a stamp that was in the Scott Catalog when the album was originally compiled but has been delisted. I suspect that this second category will account for most Blue-pers. But with the Canada 1897 Jubilee Issue, we have an example of a mistake by the editors.

At some point after the 1955 Blue ("Thanks John for this info") but no later than the 1969 edition, Scott revised the first page for Canada. In doing so, the editors left two spaces for the 1897 Jubilee Issue, one illustrated with a cut for the 1/2c black (Scott 50) and the other a blank. The problem is that on the next page for Canada are eight spaces for the exact same series, this time with illustrations for Scott 50, 51, 52, 53, and 54 plus 3 blank spaces for the higher values.

What probably motivated the remodeling of the front page was to remove a space for what had been Scott 35, the 2c blue green Small Queen. In later catalogs this color been demoted to a minor listing as Scott 36d. In the photo, 36 is on the left, 36d the right. Here's a link to a very informative website on the Small Queens.

You have to wonder whether no one brought this duplication of the Jubilees to Scott's attention over the past 50 years? Their editors have been rearranging other pages and surely could have corrected this Blue-per with little effort.

So what's a stamp collector to do? You can't have a complete volume 1 if you have blank spaces, no matter how legitimate the reason! So do you duplicate two of the stamps on both pages? Put the first two stamps from the set (the 1/2c black and 1c orange) on page 1 and 8 of the remaining stamps on page 2? Put something on page 1 to cover up the two erroneous spaces? A major factor is that the 1/2c is not a cheap stamp as you might expect--in 2007 it cataloged $100. And the higher values of the Jubilees are even more pricey.

I guess we should be grateful that, as far as I know, Volume 1 doesn't have the problem that occurs in one or more of the later Blue Internationals of spaces for stamps that were announced but never issued.

New Years Resolutions

2010-01-03T16:32:00.009-05:00

There has been a thread on the Virtual Stamp Club devoted to resolutions relating to stamp collecting, so I might as well post mine:

1. Prepare five "duplicate" albums for sale on eBay after verifying that I've transferred all stamps of interest to my "Blue" Volume 1. I've actually completed one album, a 1947 edition of the "Blue," and used this as an opportunity to make notes on differences between the 1947 edition and my 1969. I'll post these in a couple of days.

2. As a corollary to my first resolution, buy a nice fat 1840-1940 collection with the proceeds to continue to build my Volume 1.

3. Count the number of stamps issued between 1840 and 1940 based on the Scott Classic Catalogue. While I've seen several estimates for the number of stamps issued to the present day (500K, give or take), I'm surprised I haven't been able to find numbers for the first hundred years of philately--a much simpler task. Anyway, I'm now in the "C's" with this project, but at the rate I'm going, it will probably be the Spring before this resolution is accomplished. The count will also give a rough breakdown by regular postage, airmails, semi-postals, etc.

Well, that should be enough to keep me busy. Vis-a-vis Resolution #1, below are pictures of my workspace for transferring stamps between two albums. I'm using the plastic drafting tables made by Ikea. These raise the albums enough to make them easier to browse and I like the round holders for keeping track of hinges (in the Ziplock bag), tongs, etc. My only "complaint" is that I wish the lips on the bottom of the drafting tables could be a little higher to hold albums more securely.

2009-12-26T17:00:00.002-05:00

If you haven't read it, check out reader Zenabi's comments on why he likes the computer created album pages produced by William Steiner on his Stamp Albums Web.

While Zenabi makes a good case for using computer generated pages as opposed to traditionally printed albums, I still have to come to terms with two concerns about any type of "comprehensive" album. The first concern, which I admittedly feel less strongly about than when I first started this blog, is that, whether it is the "Brown" Internationals or the Stamp Web pages, you can never complete these comprehensive world albums. More to the point, not only would they never be complete, my original assumption was that you would be forever reminded of the futility of your collecting choice by the many hundreds of empty or scarcely filled pages. While some collectors view this as a challenge, I worry it would be a constant reminder that no matter how much time or money I spent, the albums would look empty. But after studying scans on the Internet of some comprehensive collections, I realize that there are enough "common" stamps that most of the spaces in the albums will still be the ones in the "Blue" International and that one might very well feel a certain sense of accomplishment even if the "Blue Mauritius" and similar rarities were forever beyond reach. As Lawrence Block wrote: "When you collected the whole world, your albums held spaces for many more stamps than you would ever be able to acquire...You tried to fill all the spaces, of course--that was the point--but it was the trying that brought you pleasure, not the accomplishment." And in your quest you would be following in the hallowed footsteps of Ferrary, Hind, and other renowned philatelic giants of yore.

The second concern is more difficult for me to work around. The Stamp Albums Web Classic Era pages take up over 6500 pages. (His British Commonwealth pages follow the Scott Classics Catalogue by going through the reign of George VI.) Even stuffing 600+ pages to a large binder, this would require ten binders. Subway Stamp Shop estimates that their "Brown" reprints would take 19 binders to house properly. As Subway makes money from selling the binders, this estimate may be rather liberal, but still you will end up wanting something like a stamp den (stamp nook? stamp cave?) to house your collection as shown in this recent eBay auction photo.

While this type of arrangement would make it easy to cope with a large collection, my problem is I like the freedom of housing my entire holdings in two binders which I can play with on the couch while watching TV. You could argue that realistically one is rarely working on more than a single country at any one time, and, not that you would be so rude as to say this to my face, I could use the exercise of getting up now and then to switch albums. One of Zenabi's points is that you don't have to print all of the pages at once. What I could do is to print out the album pages one country at a time, remounting the stamps from my existing "Blue" before going on to the next country.

I've been meaning for some time to take out a subscription to Stamp Album Web so this has motivated me to do so. It will be fun comparing these pages with the "Blue."

Gratuitous December Post

2009-12-23T16:57:00.003-05:00

I've been trying not to blog anything purely personal--i.e., stuff with no possible utility to anyone else. But being afraid 2009 would come and go with no posts for December, I'm breaking my rule to comment on why I haven't added more than a handful of stamps since the summer. My excuse is eBay. I'm still trying to secure one more International Volume 1 or its equivalent which is sufficiently comprehensive that I can extract at least a thousand stamps for my album, preferably more. Unfortunately, in spite of the complaints on some of the lists I read about eBay stamp sales tanking, the eBay market is hot this year for good classic era collections.

By way of comparison, for about a six month period in 2008 I kept a spreadsheet tallying the over 100 worldwide collections offered on eBay during that time frame that had significant coverage from 1840-1940. The most expensive item during that time period sold for $870.00. Just this month in 2009, there is an "Antique Stamp Collection in Scott Brown Album..." that sold earlier today for $3100. A 3 volume international (1840-1949) sold a few days ago for $1326. Two Scott browns sold at the beginning of the month for $2024 and $2950. Now admittedly these particular collections have Scott catalog values of 10 times or more the selling amount, but we're still looking at almost all of the large collections selling for over $1000 during the past few months versus none fetching above $1K for at least half of 2008. Most of the higher priced collections are being offered by NYStamps who provides an estimated catalog value (often in Euros for some reason) and generally a couple of hundred photos. This is contrast to the sellers in 2008 who usually did not give catalog values but often provided a ballpark count but not necessarily much in the way of photographs.

As I can't justify spending a couple of thousand at one time for a collection (even if I expect to recoup a fair amount of that when resold), this is motivating me to work through most of the albums I've accumulated to prepare them for sale on eBay. The reason I've been holding on to them is that these albums still hold stamps that are not in my edition of the Scott International and I've been dithering about whether to ignore stamps for which there are no spaces or save them on stock pages. I'm finally decided to go the stock page route, aided by Subway having a great sale on double sided black stock sheets (buy 5 packages at a reduced price and receive a 6th free). Hopefully, I can complete this project within the next couple of months and use the proceeds to help pay for one large collection. Then I'll switch over to bidding on single country/regional collections for awhile and see how that goes.

Bosnia & Herzegovina Addendum

2009-11-03T20:17:00.000-05:00

In poking around the Amos Advantage site, I came across the following: "Scott International Album Pages: Bosnia & Herzegovina 1879-2007 (92 Pages / 45 Sheets, [Product Number 800BOH]). This addendum to the Scott International Album contains pages for Bosnia & Herzegovina. Coverage includes stamps released by the Muslim Government as well as those issued by the Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb Administrations." I can't find any information about this Addendum elsewhere on the web, so I don't know what is going on. The Volume 1 already has 5 pages for Bosnia & Herzegovina starting with 1879. Are these repeated in the Addendum? Has anyone seen these pages?

2010 Scott Classic Out November 9th

2009-11-03T12:51:00.005-05:00

November is the month in which the latest edition of the Scott Specialized Catalogue of Stamps and Covers 1840-1940 appears. According to Scott, the 16th edition has 2300 new numbered listings, "including 58 for Castelorizzo, 240 for Cilicia, 122 for Fiume, 797 for various French colonies, 123 for Hungary, and 40 for Memel." Also appearing for the first time are French railway parcel post stamps, the Indian Feudatory States of Kotah and Tonk, and Russian postal fiscal issues. Several sections have been reworked and, of course, there are thousands of price changes and price additions (especially for covers and mint never-hinged). By the way, it looks like the Falkland Islands (Scott 74a) 5-shilling King Penguin stamp won the competition for the stamp to be featured on the catalog's cover. For more information, click here.

As far as I know, there is only one competitor to the Scott and it isn't current: Yvert &Tellier Catalogue Des Timbres Classiques Du Monde, 1840-1940 which was last published in 2005. The APS Library doesn't have a copy and I haven't seen it offered by a US distributor. (The only US library showing ownership in OCLC's WorldCat is the Library of Congress.) I can buy the catalogue from a French source at near the retail of 79 Euros, but factoring in shipping, it seems a little steep just to satisfy my curiosity. Hopefully, I'll be back in France before too long and peruse a copy there.

UPDATE 12/29/09: The February 2010 Scott Stamp Monthly contains a multi review of the 2010 Scott Classic Catalogue(pp 10-13, 69). The review is considerably more detailed than the press release linked above. One addition I found intriguing is listings for three-hole punched Hungarian stamps issued between 1921-24 which were I believe defaced by the government to curb speculation. As I have probably a hundred duplicate stamps from this era on stocksheets, I was hopeful that I could find examples of these. Alas, a cursory search didn't turn up any although they aren't always easy to spot. Here is a picture of one from the Poppe Stamps site (the company is selling this one for 49 cents).

UPDATE 1/3/2010. Turns out I had several of these stamps after all, but I did find the holes difficult to see without a magnifying glass.

A Picture is Worth a 1000 Words

2009-10-31T16:39:00.001-04:00

I've made a few scans to show some of the categories of differences in the various editions of the "Blue" International volume 1. I've mentioned these in previous posts, but sometimes a picture is clearer. All pages are copyright Scott/Amos Publishing Company, 1943, 1969, or 1997.

EXAMPLE 1.
While Scott in its most recent editions has sometimes lopped off a few stamps that were in earlier editions when they occured at the end of pages, on occasion an entire page gets dropped. For example, WWI Austrian Military stamps were in editions at least through 1947, but were MIA by 1969.
EXAMPLE 2.
Sometimes an entire country originally in the "Blue" has been dropped from the latest editions. Again, these tend to be countries that only had a row or two of stamps at the bottom of pages devoted to another country, but sometimes an entire page bites the dust. These German states were in editions at least through 1947, but were gone by 1969. Note the space taken up by the flags and coats of arms.
EXAMPLE 3.
As with later editions of the Scott catalogs, newer versions of the International helpfully attempt to bring together sets that span multiple years. You can see this with Angola. The 1943 edition has the Ceres series that began in 1913 split between 1913, 1922 and 1925/26. By 1969, this series had been edited into one sequence. Interestingly, some stamps that were in the 1943 edition are missing from the 1969 edition and vice versa for no obvious reason.
EXAMPLE 4.
One noteworthy feature of the latest editions is their ability to integrate with the International Volume 2 and beyond. This required Scott to split off categories of BOB stamps, such as airmails or postage dues, so they could be on their own pages. You can see this at work with Australia. The first scan is of 1943 with regular postage, airmails, and then postage dues, all on one page.By 1969, Scott had started to rearrange pages in anticipation of the wholesale changes it would make in the 1970s. Finally, the 1997 version shows the additional splits that are now typical through the album and which helps explain why it is in four parts. (I've omitted any blank backs of pages.)

Is There a "Best" Edition of the "Blue"?

2009-10-28T21:53:00.001-04:00

For the past year, I have been trying to determine if there are editions of the "Blue" which are more complete and accurate than the rest. My working hypothesis has been that the 1947 version is the best candidate. Turns out my supposition may be incorrect. I originally came to believe the 1947 edition was the most complete because I knew the more recent versions of the "Blue" are missing entire countries and pages that were in pre-1950 editions. (This is largely as a consequence of a change in editorial policy starting in the 1970s that began every country and every major category of stamp within a country on the front of a page.) But when I began seriously comparing the 1965 edition with the 1947 version, it turns out it isn't just the later version that is missing stamps that are in the earlier; there are some stamps in the 1969 album that aren't in the 1947 one.

Here are a few examples from the "A" countries:

AFGHANISTAN
1947 album missing Scott numbers 330 and 331 that are in the 1965 album
1965 album missing Scott RA1, RA2 that are in the 1947 album

ALGERIA
1965 album missing Scott P1, P2 that are in the 1947 album

ANDORRA
1965 album missing Scott J16 that is in the 1947 album
1965 album missing specific spaces for Scott 28, 29 that are in the 1947 album (i.e., what had specific IDs in the 1947 version are now left blank)

ANGOLA
The 1913-26 Ceres series is complicated: The 1947 album is missing Scott 134, 135 and 140 that are in the 1965 album while the 1965 album is missing Scott 150 that is in the 1947 album. Both albums omit Scott 138, 143, 145, 147, 152, 153 plus higher denominations. (I'm ignoring Scott 129 that is no longer in the catalog.)

ANTIGUA
1965 album missing 31-35 that are in the 1947 album

ARGENTINA
1947 album missing Scott 140-142 that are in the 1965 album

So the answer is less clear than I thought. The 1947 edition has hundreds more stamps in it than those published in 1969 and after, but nevertheless is itself missing some stamps that were added during the editing process for later editions. I suppose there is a possibility that the 1955 or the 1964 editions have everything in the 1947 plus the additions I'm seeing in the 1969 "Blue." You rarely see the 1955 or 1964 editions offered on eBay so it may be some time before that question can be answered. If you own either of these editions and would be willing to check a few pages, please let me know.

Stamp Collections Online

2009-10-16T16:21:00.005-04:00

I just stumbled across a couple of sites I should have known about before this. Bill Seymour has a webpage for "Online Stamp Collections," including his own. Countries Mr. Seymour has scanned from his own collection include Alaouites, Alexandretta, Algeria, Allenstein, Argentina Collection, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Belgium, El Salvador, Greenland, New Zealand, Niger, Turkey, Upper Volta, and Yugoslavia. What makes these especially relevant is that they fall within the Classic Era of collecting.

Mr. Seymour also lists other people's scanned collections of which the most interesting to the "Blue" International Collector is the Antonius Ra World Collection. Again, emphasis is on the Classic Era. This is still a work in progress so not all countries are represented, but those that have been scanned are well worth a look (including a very impressive US). Here's a page of Roman States from the Antonius Ra collection to give you an idea of the treat in store for the worldwide collector:

(All rights reserved, Antonius Ra.)

I've had it at the back of my mind that when my own collection reaches say 20,000-25,000 stamps, it might be interesting to start scanning my pages. At the rate I'm going that is still some years off. Alternatively, I could scan pages when an individual country is complete. I do have several of those already.

ADDITION: I just found "...Dr. Cheng Chang’s web site of world stamp collection by country. Dr. Cheng Chang intends to collect over 90% of the world’s stamps from 1840, the world’s first stamp, up to and around 1990, though collections from many countries, such as China, Canada, Germany and so on, are up to year of 2000 or even over." Although Dr. Chang appears to have some Internationals, the great majority of his collection is housed in Scott Specialty albums. Absolutely worth taking a look. I think you will be impressed.

Not Another Rarest Stamp in the "Blue" International!

2009-10-14T15:52:00.001-04:00

Regular readers of Linn's Stamp News will know that at the back of most issues is the column "Stamp Market Tips." The stamp featured in the 10/19/09 issue is Colombia's 1917 Special Delivery Stamp, Scott E1 (SG E373). While the stamp currently catalogs only $25 in unused, $75 used, condition, it apparently is much scarcer than that amount suggests. According to the column's author, Henry Gitner, "this stamp is greatly undervalued and is virtually impossible to find in any condition. Many Columbian and special delivery collectors have been looking for this stamp for years and have never even seen one, let alone own[ed] an example."

Needless to say, the "Blue" International Volume One contains a space for this stamp, which, in all fairness to Scott, cataloged a mere 40 cents in 1943. Covers are extremely rare but even rarer is a used example off cover.

An interesting article with an illustration of a block of 25, since broken up, can be found at http://www.franadams.us/dps/exhibits/colombia_e1.pdf.

OK, it took me three months to find Syria 106a. Let's see how long Columbia E1 takes. At least I know what I want for Christmas.

UPDATE: It only took a couple of weeks to obtain this stamp. I found an album page on eBay with it plus a few others and won the page for $13. For those of you with deep pockets, another copy is still available on eBay as part of a large Colombia collection but the seller wants $749 for the lot. Interestingly, a single copy of E1 sold on eBay not too long ago for US $4.90 from a UK dealer.

Lawrence Block's New Column in Linn's

2009-09-28T20:47:00.001-04:00

I've blogged earlier on the mystery writer Lawrence Block and his famous stamp collecting hit man, John Keller. Mr. Block now has a monthly column in Linn's, "Generally Speaking," the first one of which appeared in the September 28, 2009 issue. According to Linn's, "Like his character, he collects worldwide, 1840-1940, and he'll be writing for Linn's from the special perspective of a general collector."

What I particularly like about Mr. Block's books (and what I look forward to in his columns) is how he captures the world of stamp collecting. A couple of examples from his novel Hit Parade:

"When you collected the whole world, your albums held spaces for many more stamps than you would ever be able to acquire. Keller knew he would never completely fill any of his albums, and he found this not frustrating but comforting...You tried to fill all the spaces, of course--that was the point--but it was the trying that brought you pleasure, not the accomplishment." (Page 37)

"Well, a stamp collection's like a shark...If you're not adding to it, there's not much pleasure in having it." (Page 286)

"Stamp Acts" in the NY Times

2009-09-18T17:34:00.000-04:00

The august New York Times does run articles, even ads, relevant to stamp collecting from time to time, but I found Matthew Stevenson's recent OpEd piece especially relevant to the "Blue" International collector. You can find the entire piece at this url, but I wanted to quote a few lines to whet your appetite:

"I consider Simon my most-traveled friend. As well, I take some personal pride in having tarried in places like Okinawa, Pakistan, Bosnia and Mongolia. But both of us drew blanks as the pages of the [1925 Scott Modern] stamp album unfolded around such names as Horta, Labuan, Mayotte and Rouad...In 1925, six-year-old boys, like my father, knew more of the world than do frequent-flying travel writers today."

"In the early days of World War II, places like Memel, Marienwerder, Helgoland/Heligoland or Upper Silesia went from stamp collecting to Nazi occupation, as if Adolph Hitler was in pursuit of first issues, not simply lebensraum."

While I don't know whether Mr. Stevenson is aware of it, Sandafayre Stamp Auctions has a very helpful Stamp Atlas online. Alas the index doesn't drill down to places like Horta (which, incidentally, is part of the Azores--yes I had to look it up!). Perhaps cross-referencing the "Blue" with the Stamp Atlas would make an good future project--I might even learn something.

Scott's Reference Album of Philatelic Terms

2009-09-17T17:01:00.000-04:00

Some years ago I thought it would be fun to find an alternative way of collecting stamps that would free me from the tyranny of the printed album. One possibility that I entertained was a collection illustrating philatelic terminology and concepts--for example, different approaches to prevent the reuse of stamps. (My favorite is Afghanistan's approach to tearing pieces out of its early issues.) The project never got off the ground, but I was reminded of it when I came across an eBay auction for the 1936 Reference Album of Philatelic Terms published by Scott. This brief album was "designed so that a stamp serving as an example may be mounted opposite each term listed. When all the spaces are properly filled, the result will be a very comprehensive reference collection." To that end, the first 2 pages were devoted to "Perforations and Roulettes," and included Common, Clean Perf, Rough Perf, Hyphen Hole, Lozenge Perf, Pin Perf, Sewing Machine Perf, and Part Perf. The other sections are Printing (Engraving, Typographing, Lithographing) including such terms as Se tenant and Moire, followed by "Paper," then "Philatelic Terms," such as Double Surcharge, and finally, "Do Not's: Things which are to be avoided in forming a stamp collection." These include Thin Spot, Repaired, and Heavily Cancelled. Obviously with only 24 pages to work with, there are lots of missing terms and areas, but still, an interesting concept. I wonder how long it would take to find the 84 stamps representing each of the terms?

But who am I kidding. I love the the Procrustean bed that is the printed album as long as I can add additional stamps wherever there is empty space on the page.

Stamp Quotations

2009-08-30T15:14:00.029-04:00

Its almost the end of the month and I find that I haven't posted anything for August. It isn't from lack of interest. I've just been unsuccessful (read willing to spend enough money) in purchasing any albums on eBay to continue my collection. (Wouldn't you know that the one album that I presumably would have gotten closed when I was on vacation.)

In any event, I've been collecting interesting/amusing quotations related to stamp collecting for awhile just in anticipation for an emergency post. I particularly like Pynchon's description of stamps as "thousands of coloured windows into time and space." I know I have more that I will add as these resurface. Feel free to post your favorites.

"Things did not delay in becoming more curious when they came across Pierce's stamp collection, thousands of coloured windows into time and space, ex-rivals for her affections that would be broken into lots."
--Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49.

"Son, stamp collecting is like life. It stopped being fun a long time ago." --Homer Simpson to Bart on The Simpsons TV show

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
--Ernest Rutherford, physicist

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.”
--Jeanette Winterson

"The philatelist will tell you that stamps are educational, that they are valuable, that they are beautiful. This is only part of the truth. My notation is that the collection is a hedge, a comfort, a shelter into which the sorely beset mind can withdraw. It is orderly, it grows towards completion, it is something that can't be taken away from us."
--Clifton Fadiman in Any Number Can Play.

"What should I do? I think the best thing is to order a stamp with my face on it."
--Charles, Emperor of Austria 1882-1922 on learning of his accession to the throne.

"What do you call the stamp guys? Philatelists or something? Well whatever it is, it’s some Greek or Latin root meaning 'complete nerd.'”
--Chris M. Keating (http://analog-nation.com/2008/12/09/stat-5/)

"For seventeen years, he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps."
--Harold Nicolson, the official (!) biographer of England's King George V.

..."the thrill of the quest, the desire to hunt down that really rare stamp that you read about when you were at school and there’s almost the feeling that when you’ve got it you’re not so interested any more and you move on to the next one."
--Simon Garfield, The Error World: An Affair With Stamps

Synonyms for collectable postage stamps: "sticky treasures," "collection of paper heads," "pretty bits of paper," and "colorful scraps."
--Alan Bradley,The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"He was an enthusiastic stamp collector, and taught the boys to learn the history and the geography of the issuing countries, as well as to keep neat, orderly albums. And that was his downfall."
--Alan Bradley,The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"...about the pristine perfection of the things, the enchantment of engraving, the pleasures of perforations, and the glories of glue..."
--Alan Bradley,The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"...Father puttered on, mounting bits of colored paper with more fearsome relish than some men mount the heads of stags and tigers."
--Alan Bradley,The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"A Collection...[is] an obsession organized."

"You must kiss our fair Queen, or her pictures, that's clear
Or the gummy medallion will never adhere;
You will not kiss her hand, you will readily find
But actually kiss little Vickey's behind."
--A ditty inspired by the newly issued "Penny Black" entitled "Lines on the Post Office Medallion," June 6, 1840, The Town

"A new mania has bitten the industriously idle ladies of England. To enable a large wager to be gained, they have been indefatigable in their endeavors to collect old penny stamps; in fact, they betray more anxiety to treasure up Queen's Heads than Harry the Eighth did to get rid of them."
--Punch, 1842

"Is it the intention to establish a cheap portrait-gallery of living princes and rulers?...What curiosity can any reasonable being have to possess the commonplace effigies of the most commonplace-looking people in Europe?"
--Charles Lever, Irish novelist, writing on the new stamp collecting fad in Blackwood's Magazine, 1864

"Philately starts where the catalogue ends."

“In Norway during winter, you became religious, took up drink or collected stamps.”
--Richard Ashton, Sotheby’s (as quoted in "The Once and Future Philatelist: A writer’s sentimental journey into the clubby world of stamp collecting" by Jonathan Kandell, Arts & Antiques, September 2010

"Stamps and coins are not prep. Why? Because."
--Preppies are collectors, but of things like miniature Eiffel Towers, according to True Prep by Lisa Birnbach with Chip Kid.

"He was stable and sane, an avid art enthusiast with the same mutant gene as the stamp collector...--except that there were glorious buildings erected solely to house and protect his objects of interest, objects that commanded the attention of scholars, historians, and news bureaus, giving undeniable proof that they were worthy of devotion."
--An Object of Beauty, a novel by Steve Martin.

"Can you imagine Archie Bunker collecting stamps? Well, I can't."
--Earl Apflbaum in reference to the educational aspects of the hobby.

"Chris: Couldn't we just stop philateling?
"Peter: Too late.
(gunshot)"
--Family Guy "German Guy" Episode

"Look but don't touch! I paid $27,000 for that stamp."
"You paid too much. That's a red stamp. Everybody knows that red stamps only cost 2¢. The most I ever paid for a stamp was 8¢, and that was for one of those airplane ones."
--Early to Bed, a 1936 Hollywood comedy

"This year the USPS released stamps with portraits of Pixar characters, Selena and Mark Twain. Do you think that's what stamp collectors are into? Stamp collectors are into eating TV dinners alone and crying. Put out a stamp series of famous people eating TV dinners alone and crying, and there's your $10 billion [needed to get the Post Office out of debt]."
--From Joel Stein's article "Pushing the Envelope" in the September 26, 2011 issue of Time Magazine.

"Next time ask my barber to approve them before you issue stamps with my portrait."
-- King Christian X of Denmark. I found this quote on the Quotes and Sayings website which also explains the reference.

1943 Scott Catalog is a Winner

2009-07-20T15:49:00.000-04:00

Thinking that having a catalog contemporary with the "Blue" would have some advantages, I earlier had tried the 1941 edition. This didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped, so I've been on the lookout for the 1943 edition as this is the one that Scott specifically mentions on the original album title page (albeit just in conjunction with the US pages). I can now confirm that the 1943 edition does indeed do the trick--covering all of the issues in the "Blue" plus issues for 1941 and some of 1942. The only disadvantage is that the 1943 edition was published in two volumes: Volume 1 covered The Americas and the British Commonwealth of Nations; Volume II comprised the Stamps of Europe, Africa, Asia and their colonies. So the geographically challenged such as myself may have to look in two places for some of the lesser known colonies (now just who "owned" Montserrat, W.I.?), this is a small inconvenience. And, who knows, I just might learn something from the exercise.

Apropos the Brown Internationals, an advertisement in the back specifically says the series is to be "discontinued due to the recent trend towards specialization." The final volume is No. 5 through Aug., 1938. Unlike the 1941 catalog, the 1943 does not mention the "Annual Albums" which might have completed the decade if they were ever published.

Syria 106A On eBay

2009-06-24T19:51:00.000-04:00

A copy of SYRIA #106a NH CAT $170.00, Item number 250451789564 is listed on eBay with a minimum opening bid of $40.00. End time is Wed, Jul-01 at 7:25:19 pm EST. This is reputedly the most difficult to find stamp in the "Blue," but I'm beginning to have my doubts. I found one last year on StampWants and now here's another.

Update 7-12-09: The stamp sold for US $155.63.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, Indian State Style

2009-06-16T16:34:00.000-04:00

PrincelyStates.com
A stamp collecting forum I haven't mentioned before is Stampboards.com. A thread I particularly enjoyed had the great title "Banging the drum for the Uglies" and refers to the stamps of the various Indian States.

According to tonymacg who started the thread: "I don't know who coined the term 'the Uglies' for the Indian States, but it goes back a long way. Probably a Penny Black fancier. Anyway, it refers to the group of Indian princely states that, at different times between 1864 and 1953, ran their own post offices, and issued their own stamps - in most cases, valid only for postage within the borders of the particular State."

There are a number of photos of appallingly ugly stamps and information about them. Unfortunately, many of these can't be found in the "Blue" International but that doesn't make them any less interesting to the Classic Era Stamp Collector.

Jal Cooper in his Stamps of India book gives a good explanation of the difference between Convention States and Feudatory States which can be summarized as: Convention states overprinted the stamps of British India while the Feudatory States came up with their own distinctive designs. As I've commented before, Scott provides spaces for some of the Feudatory States but only a compilation page for the Convention State overprints.

The Convention states were comprised of Chamba, Faridkot, Gwalior, Jind, Nabha and Patiala and all were signatories of postal conventions with the British Government of India. According to Cooper, "these stamps were mostly used for internal postal services in the States, but they had a franking value of carrying letters outside the State limits to any part of British India."

Cooper provides a handy list of Indian States with the years they issued stamps. Two of these don't fall chronologically into the time period of the Blue: Idar and Jasdan. These full list is:

Alwar
Bahawalpur (not in Pakistan)
Bamra
Barwani
Bhopal
Bhor
Bijawar
Bundi
Bussahir
Chamba
Charkhari
Cochin
Dhar
Duttia
Faridkot (both Convention and Feudatory)
Gwalior
Hyderabad
Idar (1941-1950, not in the "Blue")
Indore
Jaipur
Jammu
Jasdan (1942-1950, not in the "Blue")
Jhalawar
Jind (both Convention and Feudatory)
Kashmir
Kishengarh
Las Bela (now in Pakistan)
Morvi
Nabha
Nandgaon
Nawanuggur
Orchha
Patiala
Poonch
Rajpipla
Sirmoor
Soruth
Travancore
Wadhwan

International Blue-per #2: Angola 129,130

2009-06-05T15:12:00.001-04:00

I'm penciling in Scott catalog numbers for Angola and get to the 1914-26 Portuguese Colonial Ceres key-type series: 1/2c olive brown, Scott 118--check, 1/2c black, 119--check...5c deep blue--nope. What's going on? I'm staring at two spaces in the album for the 5c value, one deep blue, the other bright blue. The 2007 Scott Classic Catalogue lists only one 5c stamp and it is described simply as blue.

My 1941 Scott catalog, however, matches the album. It assigns the number 129 to the 5c deep blue from 1913. The number 130 is assigned to the 5c bright blue from 1922.

In its single listing in the 2007 catalog, confusingly, Scott has dropped #129 entirely and changes #130 from the 1922 issue to 1913.

All of this presents the "Blue" collector with a problem. Regardless of the catalog, the album has two spaces. Does the revised listing in the 2007 Catalog mean that there never were two different colors actually in circulation? That's going to be a problem if the collector wants to fill every space in the album.

My next step was to search for the stamp(s) through the usual sources (the APS Stamp Store, StampWants, et al). Guess what, it didn't take long to find the 5c stamps in two obviously different shades of blue:

As to sources other than Scott, the Yvert&Tellier Catalogue assigns numbers 148 and 207 to these stamps. Len Thompson's article, "Starred Ceres" (PPSB #111 May 1990) gives a detailed listing for 6 Portuguese colonies, but not Angola which fell out of the scope of the article. Nevertheless, these listings tend to confirm multiple colors for similar issues. His listings are based on the Simoes Ferreira catalogue.

Several collectors on the always helpful rec.collecting.stamps.discuss responded to my question about these issues.Tony Vella says that his "Eládio de Santos lists the 1914 Angola 5c as azul-escuro (dark blue) and the 1922 issue as both azul-claro (light blue) and azul-esverdeado (greenish-blue). Chris kindly provided a list from his Stanley Gibbons 1996 Part 9 catalog:

1914: blue, chalk-surfaced paper, p15x14 (SG 211)
1915-21: deep blue, unsurfaced wove paper, p15x14 (SG 284)
1918: pale blue, ditto (SG 284a)
1924: deep blue, unsurfaced paper, p12x11.5 (SG 306)
1921-26: pale blue, ditto (SG 306a)

(For an interesting thread on Ceres issues of the Portuguese Colonies click here.)

By way of background, the following colonies used the Colonial Ceres key-type: in Africa, these were Angola, Portuguese *Congo*, Cape Verde, *Guiné*, Moçambique, Inhambane, Lourenço Marques, Quelimane, *Tete*, St. Thomas & Prince. In Asia, Portuguese *India*, *Macao*, *Timor*. (Colonies are from John Cross in his article "1913-14 Colonial Ceres: Plate Varieties" (Portu-Info #112 1994).

I checked each of these colonies that used the Ceres key-type and found several still in the 2007 Scott Catalog that have the same color pairing:

Cape Verde
Scott 155 5c deep blue ('14)
Scott 156 5c brt blue ('22)

Macao
Scott 221 10a deep blue ('13')
Scott 222 10a pale blue ('23)

Thompson lists both a 10a dark blue and 10a blue from November 1913 and a 10a ultramarine and 10a blue from 1922.

Portuguese Guinea
Scott 151 5c deep blue ('14)
Scott 152 5c brt blue ('22)

Thompson lists both a 5c blue and pale blue from 1914 and a 5c greenish blue from 1921-22.

St. Thomas and Prince Islands
Scott 205 5c deep blue ('14)
Scott 206 5c brt blue ('22)

Tete
Scott 31 5c deep blue ('14)

Thompson lists a 5c blue and 5c light blue from 1914.

Why did Scott reduce the Angola 5c to a single shade? One possibility is that the colors were felt to be a consequence of the type of paper used and not the use of two different inks. Scott notes that "Two kinds of paper, chalky-surfaced paper and ordinary, were used..." Additionally, Cross states that "the values of especially the first issuance were reprinted many times to replenish depleted stocks. This resulted in a while host of paper, perforation and (where applicable) star varieties for primarily the major colonies."

Why did Scott drop the Angola pair but not the multiple colors for Cape Verde, Macao, Portuguese Guinea or St. Thomas and Prince Islands? My bet is that Scott at some point decided to simplify the Ceres listings for Angola but never got around to doing the same for the other colonies listed above. If so, the "Blue-per" is in the catalog, not the album! IMO the two shades are sufficiently distinctive and available that Scott should restore #129 to the catalog.

In any event, I now own the 5c in both shades so I can remove that roadblock in my quest to complete the "Blue" International.

International Blue-per #1: Syria 106a

2009-05-28T17:08:00.000-04:00

I thought it might be interesting to report periodically on bloopers in the "Blue" International as I come across them. By bloopers, I mean stamps that don't belong in the album because they fall outside its scope, stamps in the album but no longer in the Scott catalog, incorrect descriptions that don't match any stamps, and other curiosities that a collector will encounter.

I have found three bloopers so far but as I am still researching two of these, lets start with one already mentioned in this blog: Syria 106a, reputedly the scarcest stamp in volume 1. As I've already talked about why this stamp doesn't belong in the International (http://globalstamps.blogspot.com/2008/10/scarcest-stamp-in-scott-international.html), I won't repeat these comments. But I would like to mention a few facts about the error and how it came to be. Most of the specialized information below is from Alexander Kaczmarczyk's book, The Postal Issues of Syria, Lebanon and the Alaouites 1919-1945.

As a younger collector, I found overprints and surcharges boring, but now recognize how often these additions are illustrative of interesting historical conditions. In the case of Syria, previous to 1918, this country used Turkish stamps. After World War 1, France assumed responsibility for the occupied territory and rather than create stamps specifically for Syria, instead overprinted existing French stamps. These overprints changed over time to reflect various revisions in the administration of Syria. For example:

The 1919 French stamps to be used in Syria were overprinted T.E.O. for "Occupied Enemy Territory."
In 1920, this changed to O.M.F. for "French Military Occupation."
For a few months in 1920/21, the Aleppo Province used Egyptian piastres rather than centimes, requiring the addition to the overprint of the word piastre and a "dingbat" rosette to cover up the original letter c following the denomination.
In 1923 following a mandate from the League of Nations to change from military to civilian administration, the O.M.F. overprint was replaced by "Syrie Grand Liban."

The First Civilian Mandate issues, valid between September 1923 and 15 February 1924, were overprinted on the then current French designs:
Scott 104/Yvert 88 10C overprinted on 2c violet French Blanc type: Liberty-Egality-Fraternity
Scott 105/Yvert 90 25C on 5c orange Sower
Scott 106/Yvert 91 50C on 10c green Sower
Scott 107/Yvert 92 75C on 15c olive-green Sower
Scott 108/Yvert 93 1P on 20c brown Sower
Scott 109/Yvert 93 1,25P on 25c blue Sower
Scott 110/Yvert 94 1,50P on 30c orange Sower
Scott 111/Yvert 95 1,50P on 30c red Sower
Scott 112/Yvert 96 2,50P on 50c blue/dark blue Sower

(In addition there were similar overprints on the Merson and Pasteur designs.)

There overprints offer collectors numerous varieties. You'll find examples where the overprint was double printed, printed off-center or inverted (sometimes just a single letter, in other cases the entire overprint). In other cases, there are noticeable variations in spacing (leading/kerning), e.g. Sy rie. There are overprints with missing commas (2 50 instead of 2,50) and, in at least one case, a missing denomination. There are misspellings (cnetiemes for centiemes). And there are a few "albino" lettering--i.e., outlines only. Here are some typical examples:
In addition, there are two examples of an overprint being applied to the wrong stamp. One is the 50C overprint which should be on the 10c green Sower but which was erroneously applied to the 5c orange. This error is listed in Kaczmarczyk but not found in the International album or Scott or Yvert catalogs. The other is the 25C overprint which should be on the 5c orange instead being erroneously applied to the 10c green. This is the infamous Scott 106a/Yvert 90a that somehow found its way into the Scott International Junior and subsequently into the "Blue" International.

One might reasonably wonder about the lack of quality control at the printers who applied these overprints but the reason for the inconsistencies is rather surprising. The overprinting was performed by the Imprimerie Jeanne-d'Arc press operated by Capuchin monks in Beruit. According to Kaczmarczyk, "a good portion of the press employees were orphans raised by the monks which may explain the number of varieties and errors that this press produced." (A picture post card survives of the press operations--see http://www.tecc-systems.com/lebphila.com/issa/1922-23.shtml) So I guess we should cut them some slack?

What else do we know via Kaczmarczyk about 106a? Approximately 630,000 10c greens with the correct 50C overprint were released beginning in October 1923 but we have no idea how many additional of these are the 25C error. The errors were applied to existing French stamps in sheets of 100 (four 5x5 panes) with a central gutter, "millésime" 3 in row 2. Here is an example of a "millésime": According to Kaczmarcyzk, "in the great majority of cases" the sheets "were overprinted in one operation by the use of 50-cliché printing plates." This suggests that at least fifty (one hundred?) of the errors were printed in 1923 and at least one stamp with the gutter and number "3" attached brought itself to the attention of a stamp collector. The stamp apparently exists in both unused and used condition. It would be interesting to learn if multiples of 106a have survived or if there are examples on cover. If anyone has any additional information, please let me know.

The 2009 Scott catalog values 106a at $170 in unused condition only, same as 2008 but up from $125 in 2007. Yvert & Tellier in 2008 valued 90a at 250 Euros in both unused and used condition. As indicated in another blog post, the error is not in Stanley Gibbons.

But regardless of how interesting, the bottom line is that this Syrian error is out of place in a volume that focuses on "the varieties ordinarily found in most collections...."

Missing countries in the 1969 edition of the "Blue" International

2009-05-18T17:38:00.001-04:00

As threatened a few days ago, I have compared the contents of the 1969 edition of the "Blue" with the 1943/47 versions. As a reminder, I believe the 43/47 editions were the most complete of the "Blue" Internationals. While I am not certain, I believe the 1969 edition was the last single volume edition. Because of editorial changes, it is not identical with the 1943/47 versions. In fact, the 1969 album is missing 68 countries or other political entities that are in the 43/47 version, specifically:

Baden
Bergedorf
Bremen
Brunswick
Carinthia
China Offices Abroad (1911, i.e. Tibet)
China Offices Abroad (1915-20, 1929, i.e., Sinkiang)
China Offices Abroad (1925, i.e. Yunnan Province)
China Offices Abroad (1929, i.e., Manchuria)
Columbia--Bolivar
Columbia--Cundinamarca
Corfu
Dalmatia
Eastern Rumelia
Eastern Silesia
Hamburg
Hanover
Heligoland
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Bamra*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Barwani*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Bhopal*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Bhore*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Bijawar*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Bundi*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Bussahir*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Dhar*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Duttia*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Faridkot*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Jammu and Kashmir*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Jhalawar*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Jhind*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Las Bela*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Morvi*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Nandgaon*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Nowanuggur*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Orchha*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Poonch*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Rajpeepla*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire...--Wadhwan*
India--Feudatory States of the British Empire....--Alwar*
Ionian Islands
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Albania*
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Constantinople*
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Durazzo*
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Janina*
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Jerusalem*
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Salonika*
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Scutari*
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Smyrna*
Italy--Offices in Turkish Empire--Valona*
Lubeck
Mecklenburg Schwerin
Mecklenburg Strelitz
Modena
Nicaragua--Cabo Gracias a Dios
Nicaragua--Province of Zelaya
Oldenburg
Parma
Pitcairn Islands
Romagna
Saseno
Siberia
Turkey--Offices in Thessaly
Tuscany
Two Sicilies
White Russia

So is there any pattern? To begin with, White Russia is no doubt missing because Scott by the 1940s had removed these stamps from the catalog after determining they were never officially issued. (Remember that the album on which the "Blue" International is based, the Scott Junior, began in 1917 so there were a number of changes in the catalog in the intervening decades.)

The states or offices marked with an asterisk were all on three "compilation" pages which Scott dropped. Many of the remaining that were deleted were also on a single page with several other countries. For example, one deleted page eliminated the spaces for Baden, Bergedorf, Bremen, and Brunswick; another took care of Hamburg, Hanover and Heligoland.

My guess is that many of these were deleted in Scott's initial editorial attempts to 1) have as many countries as possible begin on their own pages while 2) wanting to get a better alphabetical order BUT 3) trying not to increase costs or size of the album by adding additional pages. If this is accurate, we lost Carinthia, for example, because it was out of sequence (it originally came before Cape of Good Hope). As Carinthia only occupied half a page, including it in the proper alphabetical sequence would have added an additional sheet to the album.

I think all of this is important for two reasons. First, if you are starting an International collection, you need to decide whether you are willing to sacrifice completeness for the current 1997 version's better paper and correct sort order (not only getting the countries in alphabetical order but allowing for integration with later volumes by separating out regular/commemorative issues, airmails, etc.). Unfortunately, not only is the 1997 version missing most of the countries above, it is also missing hundreds of stamps that were in earlier versions (again a victim to alphabetization which dropped "left over" stamps). Of course, you can always use the numerous blank pages in the 1997 four part edition or add your own pages to house the missing stamps/countries. Or you can pick up a used 1943/47 version (sorry, I don't have a clue about the coverage of the 1955 edition) which will give you as complete a "Blue" as was ever produced but at the cost of thinner paper and a vexing alphabetical sequence which also makes it more difficult to add blank pages or integrate with later volumes.

The other reason is that if you are like me, you are initially building your collection through the purchase of "Blues" on eBay, removing what you need as you go through the albums page by page. Knowing the differences between editions could help identify which stamps you might be sorry you didn't remove even if there aren't illustrated in your version.

Win a copy of the 2010 Scott classic catalog

2009-05-14T19:48:00.000-04:00

Scott is sponsoring a contest where you can vote on the stamp that will be shown on the cover of the 2010 Scott classic specialized catalog and be automatically entered into a drawing to win a copy of the catalog when published. The two choices are the 1933 Falkland Islands (Scott 74a) King Penguin stamp or the 1931 Indian Native Feudatory State of Jaipur (28) Blue Peafowl. If you are wondering, the Falkland Islands stamp isn't in the "Blue" but the Jaipur issue is.

The voting period ends August 31. For more information or to vote, go to http://www.linns.com/secure/catalogue/2010/CoverContest.aspx

A Rose is a Rose...

2009-05-14T17:57:00.000-04:00

I've uploaded a pdf listing the countries in the 1943/47 editions of the "Blue" International keyed to the names used in the Scott Classics Catalogue. Most of the 500+ political entities are the same, but the following list highlights the main differences. So, by way of example, the stamps listed under Belgian Congo in the catalog are found under Congo in the 1943/47 "Blue." As you may know, while the Scott Catalogue is in alphabetical order, the same can't be said for earlier editions of the album. These "out of sorts" are indicated in parentheses. Again, by way of example, you'll find the album pages for Bavaria before those for Batum. Scott modernized some country names in later editions as well as got the alphabetizing correct starting in the 1970s. Unfortunately, a number of countries that had been in the International were dropped at that time, including many of the ones with only a few issues that had previously been combined on a single page.

NAME OF COUNTRY IN 2007 SCOTT CLASSIC ==> NAME OF COUNTRY IN THE SCOTT 1943/7 INTERNATIONAL
Austria Lombardy-Venetia ==> Lombardy-Venetia
Belarus [not in Classic Catalog] ==> White Russia
Belgian Congo ==> Congo
China--Offices in Tibet ==> China Offices Abroad (1911)
China--Provinces--Manchuria ==> China Offices Abroad (1929)
China--Provinces--Sinkiang ==> China Offices Abroad (1915-20, 1929)
China--Provinces--Yunnan ==> China Offices Abroad (1925)
China--Shanghai ==> Shanghai
East Africa and Uganda Protectorates ==> East Africa and Uganda (after Cuba)
Ethiopia ==> Abyssinia
French Morocco ==> France--Offices in Morocco (after Offices in Zanzibar)
German States--Baden ==> Baden
German States--Bavaria ==> Bavaria (before Batum)
German States--Bergedorf ==> Bergedorf (on same page as Baden)
German States--Bremen ==> Bremen (on same page as Baden)
German States--Brunswick ==> Brunswick (on same page as Baden)
German States--Hamburg ==> Hamburg
German States--Hanover ==> Hanover (on same page as Hamburg)
German States--Lubeck ==> Lubeck
German States--Mecklenburg-Schwerin ==> Mecklenburg Schwerin (after Memel)
German States--Mecklenburg-Strelitz ==> Mecklenburg Strelitz (before Mexico)
German States--Oldenburg ==> Oldenburg (after Oltre Giuba)
German States--Prussia ==> Prussia (before Penrhyn Island)
German States--Saxony ==> Saxony
German States--Schleswig-Holstein ==> Schleswig (before Saxony)
German States--Thurn and Taxis--North German Confederation ==> Germany--Postal Service of Princes of Thurn and Taxis--North German Postal District
German States--Thurn and Taxis--Northern District ==> Germany--Postal Service of Princes of Thurn and Taxis--Northern States
German States--Thurn and Taxis--Southern District ==> Germany--Postal Service of Princes of Thurn and Taxis--Southern States
German States--Thurn and Taxis--Wurttemberg ==> Wurttemberg
Iran ==> Persia
Ireland ==> Irish Free State (before Iraq)
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands (Dodecanese) ==> Italy--Aegean Islands
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Calchi ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Karki
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Calino ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Calino
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Caso ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Caso
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Coo ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Coo
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Lero ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Lero
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Nisiro ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Nisiro
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Patmo ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Patmos
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Piscopi ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Piscopi
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Rhodes ==> Italy--Rhodes
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Scarpanto ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Scarpanto**
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Simi ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Simi**
Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Stampalia ==> Italy--Occupation Stamps--Stampalia**
Italian States--Modena ==> Modena (after Mexico)
Italian States--Parma ==> Parma
Italian States--Romagna ==> Romagna (before Queensland)
Italian States--Roman States ==> Roman States
Italian States--Sardinia ==> Sardinia
Italian States--Tuscany ==> Tuscany
Italian States--Two Sicilies ==> Two Sicilies
Jordan ==> Trans-Jordan
Korea ==> Corea
Malaya ==> Straits Settlements--Protected States--Federated Malay States
Malaya--Johore ==> Straits Settlements--Johore
Malaya--Kedah ==> Straits Settlements--Kedah
Malaya--Kelantan ==> Straits Settlements--Kelantan
Malaya--Negri Sembilan ==> Straits Settlements--Negri Sembilan
Malaya--Pahang ==> Straits Settlements--Pahang
Malaya--Perak ==> Straits Settlements--Perak
Malaya--Selangor ==> Straits Settlements--Selangor
Malaya--Sungei Ujong ==> Straits Settlements--Sungei Ujong
Malaya--Trengganu ==> Straits Settlements--Trengganu
Netherlands Antilles ==> Curacao
Netherlands Indies ==> Dutch Indies
Portuguese Guinea ==> Guinea
Puerto Rico ==> Porto Rico
Ruanda-Urundi ==> Belgian East Africa
Saudi Arabia ==> Hejaz
Saudi Arabia--Nejdi Administration of Hejaz ==> Nejd
Slovakia SEE ALSO Czech 255-256 ==> Czechoslovakia--Slovakia--German Protectorate
Solomon Islands ==> British Solomon Islands (after British East Africa)
South Africa ==> Union of South Africa
Spanish Morocco ==> Spain--Offices in Morocco
Spanish Morocco--Tangier ==> Spain--Offices in Morocco--…Tangier (after Spanish Guinea)
Spanish Sahara ==> Spanish Western Sahara
Thailand ==> Siam
Turkey--Military Stamps--For the Army in Thessaly ==> Turkey--Offices in Thessaly
Ubangi-Shari ==> Ubangi
Yugoslavia--Croatia-Slavonia ==> Jugoslavia--Slovenia-Carniola

My next task will be to prepare a similar list for the 1969 edition which is the only other complete "Blue" that I own.

Countries Missing from the 1943/47 Album

2009-05-13T17:15:00.001-04:00

Although I've mentioned in several posts that there are countries in the earlier editions of the International that got lost in later revisions, particularly when Scott split volume one into two parts. But that doesn't mean the original "Blue" was complete. I count 21 political entities in the Scott Classics Catalogue that are not in the "Blue" International. This post will look at each of these and try to determine whether the editors of the album made a wise decision to omit. And while I'm at it, I'll report whether the countries are in the Minkus Master Global (I don't have access to any of the Supreme Globals).

Bangkok
Great Britain issued 22 stamps for the capital of Siam between 1877 and 1885. The least expensive is $75, the most expensive is $40,000. Scott made a good call; these stamps are too costly to be included in the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

Bechuanaland
British Bechuanaland is different from the Bechuanaland Protectorate that is included in the "Blue." Scott lists 42 stamps for Bechuanaland of which a number catalog between 75c and $10. I believe the inexpensive issues of Bechuanaland should be in the "Blue." Both British Bechuanaland and the Bechunaland Protectorate are under Bechuanaland in Minkus.

British Columbia & Vancouver Island
Before this colony became part of Canada, it issued 18 stamps. The stamps catalog between $80 and $1250. Scott rightly omitted these issues. Not in Minkus.

Bushire
An Iranian port which according to the Classics Catalogue was occupied by British troops in 1915. These 29 stamps catalog between $32.50 and $6250: too expensive for the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

China Treaty Ports
According to Wikipedia, "Treaty ports were port cities in China, Japan and Korea opened to foreign trade by the Unequal Treaties." The catalog lists issues from Amoy, Chefoo, Chinkiang, Chungking, Foochow, Hankow, Ichang, Kewkiang, Nanking, Wei Hai Wei, and Wuhu. Scott differentiates these from the British settlement of Shanghai which is in the "Blue." While few of these stamps are terribly expensive, as a group they would probably best be served by a "compilation page," i.e., a page with the names of the treaty ports at the top but no specific illustrations or descriptions. Of course, it would be great if Scott replaced all of its "compilation pages" with regular album pages with specific spaces, but until that happens... Not in Minkus.

Columbia SCADTA-Consular Overprints
These Consular Overprints were related to airmail and the Scott Classics Catalogue devotes 4 pages to them but they are missing from the "Blue." The majority catalog more than $10 each so Scott was right to omit these pricey if interesting issues. Not in Minkus.

Columbia--Boyaca
The Columbian states of Antioquia, Bolivar, Cundinamarca, Santander, and Tolima are in the "Blue," but not Boyaca. Most of its 34 issues from 1870-1886 catalog for under one dollar so this state belongs in the "Blue" with the others. Not in Minkus.

Costa Rica--Guanacaste
There are 67 issues for this province which are all overprints of Costa Rican stamps. Some are very expensive, but there are enough issues under $3 that at least a handful should have been included in the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

Faroe Islands
These Danish islands have only 6 stamps in Scott, the least expensive of which is $20. Scott is right to have left these overprints out of the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

Griqualand West
Originally part of the Cape of good Hope, it later became a British Crown Colony. Griqualand West issued 102 overprints of Cape of Good Hope stamps between 1877 and 1878. While several are under $10, most are more expensive and thus the territorial division doesn't belong in the "Blue." (There is a Griqualand East but apparently it didn't have any stamps.) In Minkus under Cape of Good Hope.

India--Native Feudatory States--Idar
Idar didn't start issuing stamps until 1939 and has only one stamp in the time period covered by the "Blue." Even though it only catalogs a few dollars, the stamp appears to be difficult to find. On the other hand, similar issues are relegated to a "compilation page," so it wouldn't be a big deal to add. Not in Minkus.

Italian Offices Abroad--Offices in Africa--Bengasi
The other Office in Africa, Tripoli, is in the "Blue" but with only 2 surcharges cataloging in the $20's, Bengasi doesn't belong. Not in Minkus.

Italian Offices Abroad--Aegean Islands--Lisso
Italy overprinted its stamps for 14 islands which Scott conflates on a single "compilation page" for all but Lisso. Lisso's overprints don't appear to be any more expensive than most of the other islands and should have been included by Scott. In Minkus with the Aegean Islands.

Lithuania--South Lithuania
South Lithuania, specifically, the Grodino District, has 8 overprints, all over $40 each. South Lithuania doesn't belong in the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

Mexico--Provisional Issues
These stamps from ten Mexican states were issued during times of political unrest. Almost all are too expensive for the "Blue" album so this was a good decision by Scott. Not in Minkus.

New Britain
Originally a part of German New Guinea under the name Neu-Pommern, New Britain has 45 surcharged stamps, all of which are too expensive for the "Blue." Surprisingly, these are in Minkus.

New Republic
The New Republic became part of the Union of South Africa, but between 1886 and 1887 issued 64 stamps. Almost all are more than $10 so the republic doesn't belong in the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

Peru--Provisional Issues
Various Peruvian cities issued overprints between 1879-1882. Some of these are under $10 but enough of them are more that these provisional issues probably don't belong in the "Blue." 64 stamps. Almost all are more than $10 so the republic doesn't belong in the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

Russia--Wenden
Wenden was originally part of Livonia. Scott lists 12 stamps issued between 1863 and 1901. While four are under $10, it is a toss-up as to whether Wenden belongs in the "Blue." I found a few Wenden issues on stamps.org, et al, but that suggests that these aren't that easy to acquire, so I'm going with the "Blue" editors on this one. 64 stamps. Almost all are more than $10 so the republic doesn't belong in the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

Stellaland
This was a republic created by the Boers that issued 6 stamps in 1884-5, all of which are expensive. It doesn't belong in the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

Venezuela--Local Stamps
The Port of Carupano and the State of Guayana issued local stamps between 1902 and 1903. They are too expensive for the "Blue." 64 stamps. Almost all are more than $10 so the republic doesn't belong in the "Blue." Not in Minkus.

As always, corrections or comments would be appreciated.