Revisiting the Supremes

No, Filling Spaces isn't changing into a Motown Blog. Rather, some recent comments about Minkus worldwide albums have encouraged me to reexamine the Supreme Global albums. For the collector who has yet to choose a worldwide album, the Supremes represent a tempting option. Long out of print, Scott recently reprinted the 1952 edition of the Supreme and, guess what, it costs rather less than the comparable Blues. The Supreme definitely contains more stamps than the Blue. The big question is whether the choice of stamps for inclusion is less, shall we say creative (idiosyncratic, cavalier--where is that thesaurus?) than the Blue. Or to leap to the bottom line, will the majority of stamps a worldwide collector is likely to acquire be in the Supreme?

To perform this comparison I employed a volume of the Supreme which covered countries A-J (the US is missing in my copy) and a two volume edition of the Minkus World Wide catalog from the early 1970s. For the Scott International side, I relied extensively on Jim Jackson's BigBlue blog. It would not be too much to say that one of the reasons this analysis took so long to publish is that I needed Jim to complete his work on all of the countries from A through J!

I randomly chose countries (colonies, etc.), big and small, that were in both the Scott Blue International Volume One and my copy of the Minkus Supreme. This came to 63 before I stopped. Out of these 63, I did not complete 13 because making the comparison turned about to be too time consuming. For those not familiar with their approach, Minkus, as with most publishers besides Scott, integrates semi-postals, officials, postage dues, airmails, etc. within a single sequence. Thus it is impossible to quickly compare the Scott and Minkus albums page by page. Moreover, the albums tend to group stamps of similar design even when separated by decades. As an example, here are the Minkus catalog numbers for a row from the Supreme that contains spaces for the Christian X definitives of Denmark from 1913-1927:

124 125 276 275 126 222 223 127

From a display standpoint, I'm not complaining as I would rather have related stamps in denominated order rather than scattered over multiple pages. But from the standpoint of comparing coverage, jumping back and forth within a range of hundreds of catalog number makes matter difficult.

OK, enough excuses; lets look at some of the larger countries. Coverage in the Supreme Global of those countries I compared ranged from 60 to 100 per cent. Specifically,

Albania 29% of the stamps from 1840-1940 are in the Blue vs 60% in the Supreme;
Afghanistan 10% vs 62%;
Greece 46% vs 66%;
Denmark 52% vs 67%;
India 58% vs 78%;
Bulgaria 64% vs 82%;
Czechoslovakia 50% vs 87%;
Finland 57% vs 88%;
France 66% vs 90%;
Germany (Empire) 77% vs 90%;
Argentina 40% vs 100%;
Greenland 39% vs 100%
Bavaria 80% vs 100%.

Wow, look at those 100 percents! Impressive. What is problematic for me is that the Supreme's coverage isn't always impressive even if it almost always beats the Blue. Take Greece and Denmark, for example. Why should the Supreme be missing one third of their stamps issued 1840-1940?

In looking at Denmark, I found that while the Supreme contains more stamps than the Blue, it is missing 33 stamps that are in the Scott album, only a couple of which were probably omitted because of catalog value. Ignoring some individual items, the Supreme is missing all of the following that in the Blue occupy multiple spaces:

--all of the 1875-1902 numerals (Scott 25//34, Minkus 43//52) perforated 14x13 1/2
--the three 1884 large corner numerals perf 14x13 1/2 (Scott 38-40, Minkus 63-65);
--all of the 1907 Newspaper stamps (Scott P1-P6, Minkus 98-107);
--four semi-postals (Scott B1 and B6-B8, Minkus 221 and 387-388)
--two early airmails (Scott C1 and C3, Minkus 262 and 264)

Catalog value could not have been a determining factor in most of these cases. Nor do I think it was just the perforation difference, as the Minkus catalog clearly differentiates the issues via major numbers. In any event, the omitted Newspaper stamps, semi-postals, and airmails clearly are as important as similar stamps included in the album (even, as in the case of the two airmails, a little pricier).

To say this another way, the question I was hoping to answer was why the Supreme has poorer coverage of Denmark compared to say Finland. And the bottom line is the reason isn't obvious. (Incidentally, I did check the Supreme against the Master Global just in case my copy of the Supreme had the wrong pages.)

If there were a "problem" with Denmark and Greece, I assume there also are at least a few other countries that aren't as well represented as they could be. But can't you resolve the issue via adding your own "blank" pages? Unfortunately, unlike the latest version of the Blue Internationals, the arrangement of the Supreme Globals does not lend itself to displaying stamps missing from the album for two main reasons: 1) countries can begin on the back of pages meaning any blank pages you add will be out of sequence, and 2) the greater page density of Minkus albums means there often is little space to squeeze in more stamps (assuming you would even be open to using the margins).

What about smaller countries including territories, offices, etc? As I knew from previously comparing the Supreme and the Blue, for the mainstream countries well-represented in both albums, Minkus in most cases is noticeably better. But I also had the impression that the coverage for states, territories, offices, etc., seemed less impressive, and so it is:

Brunswick 24% in the Blue vs 13% in the Supreme
France (Offices Egypt) 18% vs 14%
France (Offices Zanzibar) 10% vs 15%
Eastern Rumelia 18% vs 24%
France (Offices Turkey) 37% vs 25%
Baden 28% vs 29%
Germany (Marianas Islands) 42% vs 36%
Italy (Offices China) 19% vs 40%
Italy (Offices Crete) 60% vs 45%
French Colonies (General) 25% vs 46%

So here are my opinions:

--if you are the kind of collector who expects to find a space in your album for all but the most expensive stamps in the catalog, the Supreme won't do: it is missing too many affordable if not necessarily common stamps;

--if the need to keep the footprint of your albums to a minimum is paramount, the Minkus Supreme gives you more bang for your buck than the Scott Blues;

--if you want to collect worldwide for a decade or two beyond 1940, the Minkus Supreme appears to offer good coverage and you might still be able to squeeze the pages into three binders*;

--if you go with the Minkus, don't expect an easy time of converting Minkus numbers to Scott and vice-versa. It took me most of an afternoon to do a concordance for Denmark. The flip side of this is, unlike the Scott Blue, Minkus does provide catalog numbers for every stamp in the album and the Minkus catalogs are still affordable to acquire from eBay or other sources.

Because I want to keep my worldwide collection to a couple of binders, if I were starting over, I might very well choose to go with the Minkus Supreme Global. But, in my opinion, the Supreme isn't comprehensive enough to persuade me to remount my Blue. I know that there are readers who use and prefer the Minkus albums and I would love to hear your opinions or counter arguments.

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*The reprinted base volume sold by Amos Press covers 1840-1952, so you will need to buy at least one set of Supreme Global supplements if you want stamps beyond this date. Part 2A & 2B will take you through 1963. Again, vis-a-vis affordability, similar coverage with the Blue Internationals would take you into parts 5/5A.

Yet Another Almost Complete Blue Volume One

Dr. Robert Friedman & Son's 102nd Sale in the 27 May 2013 Linn's offers a Volume One as lot 337. Here is the description:

337 Worldwide - A fabulous 1840-1940 valuable collection of some 50,000 stamps with no duplication in three excellent condition bulging Scott albums containing Scott Junior International pages in A-Z format. Approximately 97% of the spaces provided are filled with a mint or used stamp and about 90% of the value is in mint singles and sets. There are literally some thousands of nice condition stamps that catalogue between $20 and $300. The collection was lovingly assembled over some forty years and the stamps were purchased individually or in sets. The collector wrote in pencil the Scott catalogue number under most of the stamps for easy identification. Many of the countries are complete or almost complete for the spaces provided. It is obviously very rare to find such a comprehensive pre 1940 collection these days and the buyer will be thrilled with the price of: NET $29,950.

So, if the 97% is accurate, the collection is missing only about a 1000 stamps for which Scott provided spaces. Since the album appears to contain an additional 15,000 stamps beyond the spaces, it would be interesting to see where the collector found room to put them.

Another way of looking at the collection is that the stamps would fill a little more than 60% of a set of the Browns. I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether the price is right.

When I first began obsessing about the Blues in 2007/2008, it wasn't even obvious if anyone had  completed a Blue Volume 1. Now, a couple of complete or almost complete Blues seem to appear each year. Still very rare, but it is comforting to know that multiple collectors have taken up the challenge that the album presents.

No More Empty Spaces

"True Blue" collectors live for filling our album. But what are we to do with the occasional album mistake by Scott's editors for which there is no proper stamp? You know what I'm talking about: duplicated spaces, spaces with the wrong description or cut, and spaces for which no possible stamp will fit (for example, the provided space is vertical but the only stamp that will work is horizontal).

So in keeping with the day, I am pleased to report that Scott intends to provide collectors with custom stamp-shaped labels that can be mounted in these specious spaces. Scott is doing this because it is a much cheaper solution than actually correcting the album errors. The Cinderellas will be available in MNH, MLH, Unused, and Used formats. (Specialty versions, such as with inverted centers, are under consideration.) Now Blue Collectors will no longer have to look at any empty spaces in their albums.

The labels announced so far are:

Label 1) This space intentionally left blank.

Label 2) We are experiencing technical difficulties.

Label 3) Error Code 404: Stamp Not Found.

Label 4) Label reproducing the Penny Black but Queen Victoria is replaced with a portrait of J Walter Scott who happens to look a lot like Alfred E Newman.

Speaking of Alfred E Newman, does anyone remember Mad's Talking Stamps authored by Frank Jacobs?

The "Towson" Collection

Daniel F. Kelleher is auctioning on February 24, 2013 a worldwide stamp collection built in the 1950s-1970s and housed in over 100 Scott Specialty Albums. Now I know my fellow Blue collectors will have difficulty understanding why anyone would go to so much trouble when a perfectly good one volume album was available, but to each their own.

You will find a link to the auction website here. Note that you can download two Adobe acrobat files for the Towson Collection as presented in the print catalog (there are three other collections being auctioned over the same weekend). But you should also checkout the individual country links for the individual lots. I particularly call your attention to what appears to be only a single image for a country lot but that in reality often contains multiple pages from that album.

How Much Does It Cost to Collect the World, 1840-1940?

There are two statistical questions that I have been interested in since beginning to collect the first century of philately. The first asks: how many stamps were issued between 1840-1940? That one has been answered well enough for my satisfaction. (There are approximately 80,000 major varieties. For more details, search this blog using the two words "how many.")

The second question is: how much does it cost to collect the first hundred years of philately? Or more precisely, what I'm really interested in is how many stamps from this era are affordable.

I have cited in an earlier blog post Michel Bégin's cost analysis. But Bégin's work was limited to only a couple of dozen countries. I have recently learned that Sandy R. Stover undertook a more complete study which was published in 2006.* Rather than attempt to add up the value of every stamp in the catalog, Mr. Stover used statistical sampling for stamps cataloging less than $1000. (For stamps above $1000, which otherwise might have skewered the results, he identified individual stamps.) His initial calculations used the Scott Classic Catalogue for 2000, which he updated five years later for his article.

To briefly summarize Mr. Stover's study, he estimates there were in the neighborhood of 82,000 stamps issued between 1840 and 1940. Of these, 50 percent catalog less than $1.50, 77 per cent less than $10, 92 per cent less than $100, and 99 percent less than $1000 per stamp. However, if you wanted one copy of every major number in the Scott Catalog, you are looking at approximately $22.5 million American dollars (with the understanding that many rare stamps do not have values in the Scott catalog if there is insufficient market information available).

Along this line, Mr. Stover analyzed the affordability of collecting Classic Era stamps of individual countries. The United States had by far the largest number of stamps valued at $1000 and above: 341. The US was followed by Italian States/Italy German States/Germany, Great Britain, France, and, surprisingly to me, Mexico. A total of one hundred and ninety stamp issuing entities had at least one stamp cataloging $1000 and above. One hundred and forty one had none!

Mr. Stover enlivens his statistics with a number of interesting comments. For example, although it is heartening that 92% of Classic Era stamps catalog at under $100, he notes that this still comes to an aggregate catalog value of $540,000. While obviously, one would be paying only a percentage of the catalog value, even half of a half a million dollars is no small sum for most of us, even if amortized over decades of collecting.

But those of us using the Blue can take satisfaction that our total cost will be rather less than $540,000. How much less is unclear, but I suspect we are talking about a current catalog value for a Blue Volume One falling in the very low six figures.

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*Stover, Sandy R. "Surveying the Classics: Questions of Value." The Circuit: The Official Journal of the International Society of Worldwide Stamp Collectors, July/August 2006, pp 6, 9; September/October 2006, pp 6-7, 9.

Harmer-Schau Auctioning a Nearly Complete Blue Volume One

Harmer-Schau's Worldwide Philatelic Auction (Sale 96, January 11-13, 2013) includes an Extensive 3 Volume Blue Internationals Collection. They describe it as follows:

Many thousands mint or used from A-Z to 1940, virtually all spaces filled incl. U.S. with back of the book spaces full, occasional extra item incl. Germany Air Zepp sets (South America set reprints), decades to put this collection together, rarely seen this complete, value throughout the collection, fresh overall, generally Fine to Very Fine. Estimate $6,000-8,000.

UPDATE: The collection sold for $18,100, including buyer's premium (thanks to Houghton Grandmal for this information). This works out to around fifty cents a stamp.

Which Blue Volume One Edition is the Best?

Choosing the Blue Volume One edition that makes the most sense for you shouldn't be that difficult, but it often is. The elephant in the room is cost. A new copy from Amos Publishing will run almost $500, more if you need binders. A used copy on eBay of an older edition might be purchased for a tenth of that, especially if the album is hardbound and mostly empty of stamps. But for the reasons advanced below, in my opinion any money you save initially by going the latter route is forever paid forward with inconvenience.

The Blue Volume One currently on the market first appeared in 1997 and is sold in four parts. It is missing 700 or so stamps that were in some of the earlier editions (the 1943 and 1947 hold the most stamps), but compensates by using heavier archival paper, puts countries in the correct alphabetical sequence, is optimized for ease of adding customized pages, and for integrating with International volumes covering 1941 and beyond. When you consider that the most common complaint about the Blue is that it omits so many stamps, the ability to add your own pages at the appropriate point in the album is a major advantage.

Needless to say, the latest edition holds even a greater advantage over the old hardbound versions as these literally can burst at the seams as you fill those spaces. Nor can you add or replace pages as you can with a looseleaf version.

One place you can consider saving a few bucks is through buying used binders. Since most collectors build their collections in the beginning by buying other Internationals, this gives you a potential source of "free" used binders. Even if you purchase new ones, in my experience binders will start to come apart after a few years of heavy use. So I would suggest starting with used ones in good condition, reinforcing them with book tape when (before?) they start to tear, and then replacing as needed. Once your collection starts to approach stasis you can switch to a nice set of pristine binders. Incidentally, while I use the Jumbo binders, I have heard that the regular 3" binders may stand up better to wear and tear.

I would also consider purchasing slipcases to protect from dust and allow your albums to easily be stored vertically. This might also reduce stress on the binders and help them last longer.

If the price of a new Volume One is an issue (and even if you can afford the new albums, it still grates some collectors to be spending money on something other than stamps), you can consider purchasing one part every few months. (See, Scott splitting what was originally one part and charging four times as much is really a feature--you're welcome.) One positive aspect of acquiring a single part at a time is it gives you the opportunity to leisurely transfer stamps from other albums as well as prepare the new ones more thoroughly for a lifetime of collecting pleasure.

Speaking of which, here is what I would suggest doing as you acquire each part:

1) Interleave. The transparent interleaving is classy but more expensive and thicker than the glossy. Regardless of which type you choose, you will need to go to a second binder because of the added thickness.

2) Reinforce the blue fly leaves pages at the front and back. These are subject to the greatest wear and tear. I have not had any luck using hole reinforcements on these outside pages. (The only product I've found that works is C-Line Product's Self-Adhesive Reinforcing Strips.)

3) Similarly, reinforce the title page and table of contents and the last page or two in the album. If you are using more than one binder, reinforce the first and last couple of pages in each additional binder. You may be able to get away with hole reinforcements for this since the inside pages are stressed less than the blue fly leaves.

4) If you have bought a used Volume One that you intend to house your collection permanently, go through the album and identify pages that are starting to tear and reinforce these with hole reinforcements. Similarly, identify any pages that will need to be replaced should you get a better copy when buying used albums.)

5) If you don't have the latest edition, a fair number of countries will be out of alphabetical sequence. I have found that creating an index page to help you find those countries is a great time saver when going through APS Circuit Books or multi-country pricelists.

6) Pencil in the catalog numbers for stamps you have yet to acquire. You'll have Jim's checklists to help for most of the first half, but for the near future, you'll need to figure out what goes where for the remainder of the album on your own. I also pencil in catalog values for the more expensive stamps I still need. This helps me quickly evaluate whether an opportunity to acquire them is a bargain without constantly having to check the catalog. (Some collectors are loathe to write in their albums and would argue against penciling in anything.)

Suggestion #7 might well have dealt with what to do about housing countries and stamps missing from the Blue, if only I was confident about the best approach. One possibility would be to do a preemptive strike and put blank pages at the appropriate places in your album for every country. (Otherwise, you have to take the album apart each time you want to add a new page.) Or you could maintain a separate album or stockbook for such stamps until you accumulate enough to decide what will work best for you.

But what if you aren't starting from scratch and already own a Scott Volume One, Minkus Global, or the equivalent? While the above observations apply, I know that transferring a large number of stamps from one album to another is a hassle. To be perfectly honest, through the generosity of another collector I own a set of the four parters, but I cannot bring myself to transfer twenty thousand stamps from my 1969 edition to the new ones. Even so I am reminded practically every time I use my album of how much better it would be if I followed my own advice.