Trick or Treat? eBay Item Description of the Day

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

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

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]

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!

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

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.

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...