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

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

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

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.