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

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

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

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

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"?

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

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.