http://www.rfrajola.com/npu/npu.htm
The famous stamp collector Josiah Lilly said that there were 100,000 postage stamps he wanted for his collection and he succeeded in acquiring 77,000. My considerably easier target is 35,000 of the more common stamps from 1840-1940 contained in the Scott Blue International Album Volume 1. This blog will record my progress, provide general information about Classic era philately and hopefully encourage other "Blue" collectors.
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Scott International Ne Plus Ultra edition
I've commented in the past about advertisements for the Brown Internationals that teased a wide variety of formats, including fancy binders and loose leaf pages, but are practically never seen on the market today. Richard Frajola has a set for sale of the 19th century Browns split into four springback binders. Mr. Frajola notes the "wooden stop block to keep the pages aligned" that is visible in the bottom photo. Cool, don't you think? The dealer has scanned all the pages: here's the link:
http://www.rfrajola.com/npu/npu.htm
http://www.rfrajola.com/npu/npu.htm
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5 comments:
Wow! Nice!
I checked the Ne Plus Ultra pages, and as said, they are entirely identical in layout with the 19th century International Postage Stamp Album (Big Brown) -except for the omissions, which the 19th century big Brown keeps.
The omissions and occasional inclusions in this Ne Plus Ultra are a bit curious.
There is no United States or Canada or Newfoundland, but there is a page for British Columbia and Vancouver island.
There is no Germany or Baden or Bavaria, but there is Bergedorf, Bremen, and Brunswick!
I wonder if the omission pages were removed from this set, or was the Ne Plus Ultra edition published that way?
Jim, I don't recall seeing any ads for the Brown albums that referenced differences in coverage. (Well, that's not quite right: there was a cryptic reference to one edition in the 1890s that might have been "simplified.") So my assumption is we are just talking about different bindings, etc, and not changes in comprehensiveness or page layout. I'm sure you aren't surprised that the US is missing as it was not uncommon for collectors to use a different album for our country, but the other omissions are surprising. My main take on this though is that the collector took full advantage of being able to arrange the albums to reflect his or her collecting interests which obviously included placing the British Empire at the front.
These albums are really attractive. I have never seen an offering for one of the albums until about a month ago which was for a single somewhat damaged album with a limited number of stamps. What a waste! :(
Checking the description in the link, it states that the U.S., British America and German area pages were removed by the original owner. About a year ago, I picked up a very clean example, only one hinge mark in the entire album, only this one was in 2 volunes, with the split at Mexico.
Exactly. The Frajola description of these albums says that the U.S., and most of British North America and Germany are missing from the albums because the owner had removed them. It's not that Scott left them out of the albums. That wouldn't make much sense.
I've seen these "Ne Plus Ultra" (meaning 'nothing better') Scott International albums before on Ebay and elsewhere. They're really beautiful albums designed for those who could afford that sort of thing, of course. In fact, Scott marketed similar very upscale versions of this same album, the Scott International Album, right up into the 1940s and perhaps the 1950s, albums that were one step up from the usual blue-covered International albums we're so used to seeing, though my memory is not very good about the details of them. They might have just been the continuation of these Ne Plus Ultras.
As described in the listing, they're standard springback albums which were the luxury album of the era. In photos of Franklin Roosevelt looking over his albums in his White House stamp room, back when a sophisticated president did that sort of thing, it's clear that his personal collection was in springback albums. I don't know if they were by Scott or some other publisher though it would be interesting to know. To be effective, springback albums require the pages to be very bendable or they would be too curved to hold stamps -- even more curved than 2-post albums. The solution was to add a linen strip to the left margin of each page. This allowed the page to bend much more than paper would normally do. But it's very expensive to make pages that way. A more modern alternative is to impress grooves into the left hand margin to help the page bend -- or, as Lighthouse and Schaubek and other publishers do, to cut elongated holes into the paper along the margin which also allow the page to bend more than normal. I'm sure most people know this.
These were leather-coverd binders with linen-hinged pages using the Standard Scott International page layout we still see today. Very expensive albums at the time, the equivalent of a few hundred dollars a volume. Scott's current upscale "album for the rich" is the Schaubek manufactured Scott National album which sells for more than a hundred dollars a volume times six, seven, or eight volumes -- well more than the regular Scott National pages. Schaubek binders require a special six-hole punch unlike the usual Scott two rectangular holes plus three round holes punching. And, as Schaubek printed pages, they may also get the elongated holes along the left hand marigin -- but I'm not sure about that. Scott, however, does not currently publish an upscale worldwide album. The 'Big Brown' one-sided pages which cover 1840-1940 worldwide, include all stamps from that era (unlike the regular 1840-1940 pages Scott sells which are an edited version), and that are printed on only one side of the page are not published by Scott, but by Subway Stamp Shop under some agreement with Scott. So basically Scott only sells one upscale album and it's the U.S. National Album they have printed by Schaubeck in Germany, or at least printed on Schaubek's pages somewhere.
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