Block's "Generally Speaking" columns now available for Kindle

I was pleasantly surprised to see in the latest Linn's that Lawrence Block's first 25 columns on collecting the world are available as an eBook for the Kindle (or any other device that has Amazon's Kindle app). You can find out more on the author's blog. If you collect classic era stamps but don't subscribe to Linn's, or have missed some of Block's informative and entertaining columns, this is a very inexpensive ($2.99!) way to catch up. It would be interesting to learn if any non-collecting mystery lovers download the book and decide to start a collection.

Blue Volume 1 sells for $8700 on eBay 1/1/12

This was covered in nice detail a week ago by Jim on his Big Blue blog (be sure to also read the comments) but I finally decided I should at least reference the sale here for the record. I have been monitoring worldwide albums on eBay since January 2008 and this album realized far more than any that I am aware of. I estimate that the volume held between 23-25,000 stamps with many key items present. My experience is that the average eBay Volume 1 has fewer than ten thousand stamps, usually much fewer. Once you hit fifteen thousand, you are talking about only one or two collections a year. There was a volume with 30,000 stamps offered in 2008 with a starting bid of $7500 which eventually sold for $4750 after several relistings. Unfortunately, I didn't save any pictures of this collection.

2012 New Year's Resolutions

I have only two resolutions for 2012. The first is to try to reach the 20,000 mark in my Blue Volume 1. This resolution is only of interest to others if I use it as an excuse to take another overview of what a Volume 1 at this state of completion "looks" like: e.g., which countries do I still not have a single stamp, which are complete or largely complete, what has been the cost so far, what do I wish I had done differently, etc.

The second resolution is to finish penciling in Scott numbers directly in the album for all of the stamps I still need. Largely thanks to Jim's checklists, I am complete through French Guinea plus another dozen or so countries later in the alphabet. It may seem like this is a no brainer, but in my early days of filling the Blue knowing the numbers was more of a convenience than a necessity. After all, I was largely buying other International albums so a catalog was only necessary on occasion to puzzle out a difference of opinion as to which stamp belonged in a space. But at this point I am largely buying individual stamps and sets so knowing what I need when going through pricelists, etc., would be a real time saver. If I would devote just 30 minutes a day to this task it would be done in a month or so. But if it were easy, everybody--even Scott Publishing--would have already done it!

Thank You

The recent spate of comments on a couple of my posts reminds me that I should thank all of you who have provided so much information and insight on the topics of this blog over the years. I have learned so much and really do appreciate each of you taking the time to share your knowledge. And a special thanks to Jim and Keijo for their own blogs.

BOB

Page Density for Popular Worldwide Albums

In preparing my 2012 New Year's Resolutions, I made the mistake of going back to relook at the ones I posted for 2011. I say mistake, because I am chagrined to admit that I only accomplished one of the three. In fact, I had forgotten about two of them! While I have changed my mind about the value of one of these, Joe's recent comment reminded me about the remaining resolution--to look at the density of stamps per page of the major worldwide albums. So here goes.

For printed albums, the maximum number of spaces is provided by those albums that don't give individual boxes for stamps, but rather rows and columns with lines separating the illustrations. This is a layout I associate with albums from H. E. Harris, although you can find plenty of examples back into the 19th century. The illustration shows a part of a page from the 1890 Scott Challenge Postage Stamp Album by way of example.

In the H E Harris Masterworks album for Europe that I still own for some unknown reason, the maximum number of stamps that "officially" can be housed on a page is 90: i.e., no country header and 10 rows of 9 columns for definitives. If you have a mix of small and large Classic era stamps, you might expect a page to hold between 50 and 70 stamps.

Next in maximizing the number of stamps per page is Minkus. The Master and Supreme Global albums, of course, provides boxes for individual stamps. The maximum number of stamps per page looks to be 9 rows of 9 stamps each or 81 spaces. But this is highly unusual as most pages have between 6-7, or less commonly, 8 rows and fewer than 9 stamps per row.

For the Scott Blue International Volume One, I didn't find any pages with more than 7 rows; 6 or 7 rows appeared to be the most common. Eight definitives was the maximum on a row, so this gives the theoretical maximum per page of 56 stamps.

For the Browns, I only browsed the 19th Century volume. It was the same as the Blue, maximum of 7 rows with 8 stamps per row. Most pages had fewer than 8 stamps per row. I remember that this was my biggest surprise when I first saw the Brown albums. I had just assumed there would be fewer stamps on a page than in the Blues.

From what I have seen of the Stanley Gibbons Ideal album pages, the maximum number of rows is 7 and the theoretical maximum of stamps per row is 7, giving us 49 total. Note that the page size of the Ideal is smaller than all but the Steiner.

Finally, the Steiner pages available from stampalbums.com. John checked Malta and came up with an average of 13.6 stamps per page. If I may quote his message: "Sets are together and will start on a new page if they don't fit on the previous page. Each set also has a brief description at the top of the set. The pages tend to have no more than five stamps on a row (definitives) and no more than 6 rows (most pages have 5 or less). Note that the Steiner pages are on letter size paper, a bit smaller than Big Blue." To use the same maximum calculation as above, this should mean no more than 5x6 or 30 stamps per page, about one third of the Harris albums and close to half of the density of the most packed Scott pages.

Obviously, all of this is quick and dirty, but it does give some idea of the differences between albums in terms of how many stamps you can house on a page (and, by extension, whether you need to clear off a shelf in your bookcase or build an addition to your home to house your collection).

Addendum: I randomly checked a number of Scott "Green" Specialty pages and it looks like the maximum density is 7 rows with 7 small stamps per row, or 49 spaces. (I trust everyone is in awe of my impressive multiplication skills. If only there were math checkers like there are spelling checkers.) Of course, most pages have fewer stamps. I believe the Specialty albums have the least dense layout of the Scott albums.

Stamp Image Bursting Software

Jason Drake is a software developer who created a program for his own use that takes an image of a group of stamps and automatically bursts--i.e., crops--them into individual images of each stamp that can be saved separately. When he discovered there was interest from other collectors in his program, Jason made it available via this link. It runs on Windows, Macintosh and Unix operating systems. The app is free although donations are appreciated.

I've been working with the software for about a week and have found it useful. The application works especially well with stamps housed on dark backgrounds, such as black stockbook pages. Unfortunately, white or cream color album pages can be problematic, although I have had some success.

Regardless, kudos to Jason for making this available and his willingness to incorporate suggestions from users. You can find a nice discussion about the program on the Stampboards website.

SG Worldwide Albums. Part 2: Images

As the Ideal and Imperial albums are unfamiliar to most US based collectors, I thought it would be helpful to post some pictures. As indicated in Part 1, images of the Imperial album are not plentiful. However, a copy of the 1874 edition is available on Google Books. As a reminder, only the British Empire volumes are sold today.
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Image 1, from the Regency Stamps Website, shows the Imperial Album currently available for sale. Note on the left side of the pages are abbreviated Catalog listings for the stamps that are on the right. Incidentally, the image of the Imperial (and Ideal) album on the American distributor's site are much better than on the Stanley Gibbons website and light years better that the one SG uses on eBay.

Image 2. A closeup of what one of the Imperial's "catalog" pages looks like.

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Image 3. A page of Egypt from the Imperial.

Image 4. A page of Great Britain showing spaces for different Penny Red plates.

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Image 5. An "ancient" picture from the Imperial's Local Posts volume.

Now on to the Ideal. As a reminder, only the Foreign (i.e., non-British Empire) volumes are available for purchase today.

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Image 6, from the Regency Stamps Website, shows the Ideal Album currently available for sale.

Image 7. Preface to the 8th edition of the Ideal.

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Image 8. Preface to the 2nd edition of the Ideal by which Stanley Gibbons means the 2nd edition after the 8th. Confused?

Image 9. A warning about not coloring outside the lines from the Index to the 2nd edition. Boy, Stanley Gibbons was really strict.

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Image 10. The first page of Mauritius in the Ideal. Yes, there are, or rather, were two spaces for your copies of the "Post Office" Mauritius.

Image 11. A page of Bavaria from the Ideal.

I have several dozen images from the Ideal albums. Let me know if you are curious about a particular country and I'll see if I have any.

Part 3 of this series will compare the Ideal and Imperial with other worldwide albums.

ADDENDUM. I forgot to put in a couple of images from the Imperial Sectional album.

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Image A1. Note the high section number. As I mentioned in Part 1, there were over a 100 different sections.

Image A2. A page for Bosnia. Has the same format as the main volume so I assume we are looking here at a page for "new issues." I also assume that there was a catalog on the facing page but I can't verify that.