Fifty Shades of Blue (and Brown), Part 4

Type C: The Blue Internationals

[Previous parts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Interlude, Part 3]

The Brown Internationals (what I am calling Type A1 and A2) were the flagship of Scott's worldwide album line for some seventy years. Even so, Scott had long been aware of the need for an intermediary album that went beyond their beginner albums.

Scott's first attempt to fill this niche was an Abridged International published in 1897. I have no other information about this album beyond that it apparently was not successful.

In 1914 Scott released the Junior International Album which was able to shoehorn the world into one volume by omitting what the editor considered "rare and high-priced stamps." Scott released new versions every year or two for almost forty years. Until the late 1930s there were no supplements so each new edition superseded the previous ones. The initial versions were hardbound, although there were usually several options on type of binding. Editions are often found with a blue binding, hence the "Blue Internationals" sobriquet.

I had originally planned on providing a detailed list of editions, but as I've posted this elsewhere, I think that what might be most useful at this point is a series of summary statements:

--The editions between 1914 and 1943 are named Junior Internationals and largely differ from each other by adding the latest new issues. They are mostly hardbound although Scott started issuing annual supplements around 1938 to get collectors to 1940 without having to buy a new album.

--The 1947 was the first edition which dropped Junior from the title; it is otherwise identical to the 1943 edition.

--The 1955, 1964 and 1969 editions eliminated hundreds of stamps and even some countries that had been in the album but also added some stamps not in previous editions.

--The 1979, 1985, and 1991 editions were published in two parts; these dropped even more countries and stamps that had been in previous editions (although again there are a few stamps that appear in these editions for the first time)

--1994. I have not seen this edition so I do not know if it was in two or four parts.

--The 1997 edition was split into four parts and is the one available today from Scott/Amos Publishing. This edition brought back many of the stamps dropped by the two part versions although there are still hundreds of stamps missing that were in the 1969 and earlier editions. Every country and almost all subgroups of issues (e.g., semipostals or airmails) begin on the front of a page to allow easy integration with International volumes 2 and beyond. The quality of reproduction is inferior to earlier editions but the paper is heavier and of archival quality.

I also want to emphasize what is probably the biggest point of confusion for persons coming to the Internationals for the first time. The splitting of the Volume 1 into two and now four parts was a move by Scott to cover increased printing costs or increase their profits or both. It does not mean that they were more comprehensive.

Although not apparent from the above, there were years at a time when Scott allowed various International volumes to go out-of-print. Scott is now using on-demand printing technology which hopefully means the Volume 1 will always be available for purchase, although you might have to wait while your copy is reprinted.

In the future, I will do a post on considerations in choosing an International edition for your collection.

The Blue board hardbound binding, "Brown"-type boards, Blue looseleaf

Thirty Thousand Stamp Blue Volume One for Sale

If you are having second thoughts about ponying up $2.9 million for the 99% complete worldwide collection mentioned earlier, perhaps this will appeal. Thanks to reader Jim for alerting me about a Blue 1840-1940 with 30,000 stamps which is being offered whole by Apfelbaum until Monday, August 20, after which it will split it up. Selling price is $9500. There is a companion US collection which could mean that the worldwide volume doesn't include the US. You can read more about both sets on Apfelbaum's Corner. John Apfelbaum makes an interesting general comment about the Blue Volume 1 and similar collections:

Before 1940 everyone who collected stamps had a World Wide collection. They may have specialized in US or Great Britain but they maintained a general foreign collection that had been their starter collection and which, for most collectors, was still the major appeal that philately had for them.

More on Just How Many Stamps Are There?

Before I did my count of worldwide stamps 1840-1940 awhile back, I tried to ascertain whether anyone else had made such a count. I assumed naturally that at least in the early days someone might have taken the trouble to count the number of stamps issued between 1840 and 1850 say. But I couldn't initially find anything. But it dawned on me that I never really tried searching Google Books. This time I came up with a citation to the article "Philately's Ninetieth Birthday" by Kent B. Stiles (Scott's Monthly Journal, May 1930, pp 74-76). Thanks to the APS Library, I now have a photocopy.

Below is the table prepared by Mr. Stiles of stamp types by decade from 1840-1930. As the author explains, the rows total correctly across, but the Grand Totals at the bottom don't because there can be overlap between types (i.e., you could have an airmail stamp that was also overprinted and thus is counted in both categories). Mr. Stiles' total of 79,500 at first seemed high to me but he then I remembered he is counting minor as well as major varieties which I certainly didn't do.

>

	1840-49	1850-59	1860-69	1870-79	1880-89
Overprints	0	25	606	1219	3062
Air	0	0	0	0	0
Bisects	5	59	111	70	99
Commemorative	0	0	1	4	33
Inverts	0	13	58	233	458
Military	0	0	0	0	0
Newspaper	0	30	44	142	53
Occupation	0	0	0	161	43
Official	34	59	74	379	561
Parcel Post	0	0	0	0	23
Pebiscite	0	0	0	7	7
Postage Due	2	3	82	230	376
Semi-Postal	0	0	0	0	0
Spec'l Deliv'y	0	0	0	0	2
Tete beche	8	29	57	53	51
Registration	0	4	10	12	9
War Tax	0	0	0	33	0
Grand Total	181	1830	4211	5010	6980
	1890-99	1900-09	1910-19	1920-30	Totals
Overprints	4541	6390	10362	10611	36,816
Air	0	0	27	965	992
Bisects	52	19	84	6	505
Commemorative	530	396	803	2680	4,447
Inverts	608	729	1065	595	3,759
Military	5	96	204	17	322
Newspaper	206	62	195	111	843
Occupation	4	155	1847	633	2,843
Official	1035	915	908	1300	5,265
Parcel Post	32	109	129	292	585
Pebiscite	0	22	0	453	489
Postage Due	657	819	1164	1808	5,141
Semi-Postal	16	35	1017	1418	2,486
Spec'l Deliv'y	7	34	78	135	256
Tete beche	41	31	39	72	381
Registration	46	59	32	31	203
War Tax	16	14	198	2	263
Grand Total	10342	13438	16470	20915	79,377

Why stop with the Blues when you can complete the Browns, too?

Harmer-Schau is offering by private treaty a collection they say is 99.9% complete for the world from 1840-2010. Accord to Harmer-Schau "The collection is meticulously housed in black mounts in over 200 Minkus albums. Also, there are numerous albums, stockbooks and file folders with extra material, such as booklet panes and sheetlets. All countries are represented, Afghanistan (nearly complete tiger heads, mostly in full plating) through Zululand." Asking price is $2.9 million USD.

Now before you stop reading and reach for your checkbook, I should note that there is no U.S. (which I assume also means no Confederate States, Hawaii, et al). And there are at least 600 empty spaces, ranging from expensive rarities to at least a handful of cheap stamps. (What's up with those?)

So I have a few questions. Who is the collector? How many stamps are included (using Keijo's count of worldwide stamps, I assume close to 600,000)? Are there really Minkus albums covering the world in depth? (If I had to guess, I would assume this is some combination of Minkus Specialty albums with their Global/Supreme Global supplements.)

There has been a nice discussion about this on Stampboards.

You can find more information on the collection at the Harmer-Schau website.

If anyone reading this blog buys this collection, please let me know! My guess is that it won't sell whole, but that offering it as such is the first step before breaking it up by country. Maybe if that happens we'll see some photos and learn more.

P.S. I hope to find time to work through the list of the 600 missing stamps and report back here.

Update 8/11/12: I converted the wantlist to Excel so I could more easily play with it and have posted the results in the StampBoard thread linked above. If anyone wants a copy of the Spreadsheet, let me know. Bottom line is that there are more like 1200 stamps missing with a total 2007 catalog value in excess of $5 million USD. Fortunately, there are a couple at 20 cents that I could afford.

Fifty Shades of Blue (and Brown), Part 3

TYPE B: The Vintage Reproductions reprints of the Brown albums

[Previous parts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Interlude]

By the mid-1940s Scott had sold all remaining stock of the Type A2 Brown albums. As there was no satisfactory substitute for the Browns on the market, out-of-print volumes remained sought after in auctions and other venues. In 1994 the now defunct company Vintage Reproductions of Notre Dame, Indiana, reprinted, with Scott's permission, the albums through mid-1938 on one side of 70-pound acid-free 10" x 11.5" paper. The pages were cut and drilled to fit the "Blue" International Binders making it easy to integrate with subsequent volumes of the "Blue" International Series (Type C).

1994 Volume 1 1840-1900 (815 pages);
1994 Volume 2 covers 1901-1919 (1159 pages);
1994 Volume 3 covers 1920-1929 (1058 pages);
1994 Volume 4, 1930-1934 (799 pages);
1994 Volume 5, 1935-1938 (709 pages);
1996? Volume 6 covers 1939-1940 (612 pages).

I have seen but apparently lost the press release which says when Subway Stamp Company acquired the rights to the albums. They originally sold copies in three versions: one matched the original International paper size punched for two post binders; the second was punched for #3 2-post Scott Speciality album binders, and the third for #3 3-Ring Binders.

While it is possible that the 1939-1940 volume was reproduced from an album edited by Scott, it was never advertised or published as part of its International series. Although it isn't proven, I believe Vintage Reproductions used the last two Scott Annual Albums to cobble together their Volume 6 so collectors could expand the set past 1940 with the "Blue" Internationals. However, I have never seen the annual volume that would have covered stamps through 1940, so I can't be certain that this is what Vintage Reproductions used.

You can purchase the Vintage Reproduction reprints from Subway Stamp Company. You will see examples very rarely on eBay, both with and without stamps.

The easiest way to tell loose pages of the Vintage Reproductions from original Browns is that "Vintage Reproductions Page" is printed in the left hand margin of every page.

Images

(1) Example of the left margin of the Vintage Reproductions

(2) The mysterious Volume 6

Fifty Shades of Blue (and Brown), Interlude

[Previous parts in this series: Part 1, Part 2]
The Scott Provisional and Annual Albums
I'm going to take a detour before talking about the Vintage Reproductions reprinting of the Brown albums to discuss Scott's Annual Albums and the mysterious Progressive Albums. Today's printed albums are largely loose-leaf and therefore amenable to updating through annual supplements. But updating bound albums, like the Browns, was more convoluted. As mentioned in the earlier posts, many of these albums could be purchased loose-leaf but at a much higher cost than the hardbound versions. Although I have no hard data on this, I assume that the paucity of loose-leaf Browns on eBay demonstrates how few were sold.
In any event, in addition to interim editions of the Twentieth Century Browns published every few years, Scott also started a series of single year albums that could be used in conjunction with the Browns or other albums or on their own. The earliest of these were called the Provisional Albums. I only know about the Provisionals from one source, George Turner's article in Scott's Monthly cited earlier. Mr. Turner writes: "Returning to 1926, Provisional Albums were started. In the late 1930s the title was changed to Scott's Annual Album and were issued quarterly, later to only three times a year. These were simply temporary space providers for all new issues chronicled in the Scott Monthly Journal each year."
I suspect that Turner's comment about multiple issues in a year applies only to the Provisional Albums. As far as I know the Annual albums were published once a year.

1926-193?, Provisional albums

Loose-leaf pages published first quarterly and then three times a year

1936, Annual album 1934-35

1937, Annual album 1935-36

1938, 1 June, International annual postage stamp album, 1936-1937 ed

1939, 14 March, International annual postage stamp album. 1937-1938 ed

1940, 14 June, International annual postage stamp album. 1938-1939 ed

[1941?, Annual album 1939-40?]

I have never seen a copy of the 1939-40 album or found a reliable citation to it. It is possible that it was prepared but never released.

The dates for the stamps in the annual albums match the corresponding catalog coverage and thus are not complete years. One of Scott's ads mentions the "annual albums which provide spaces for stamps issued between publications of the Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue."
I have previously blogged about the Annual Albums. If you follow this link, definitely check out the comments as these have much additional information.
If you can shed any more light on the Provisional Albums, please let me know. Otherwise, the next time I'm in a philatelic library, I'll try to see what I can find. I will also dig a little deeper in search of the last Annual album.

Fifty Shades of Blue (and Brown), Part 2

Type A2: The Brown Internationals [Previous Posts: Part 1]

Oh, I thought Part 2 of this post was going to be so simple, the Browns occupying five volumes as follows:

19th Century Edition
20th Century Edition 1901-1919
20th Century Edition 1920-1929
20th Century Edition Part 3
20th Century Edition Part 4

Straightforward, right? Except that the first version for 19th century stamps was named something different, there were multiple interim versions for all but Part 4, and Scott may even have used different titles for some printings of the albums. And I wasn't even planning to talk in this post about whether Scott published a Part 5 for 1939-1940. Whew!

So the prudent reader will take note of the simplified listing above, quit reading, and head to their drawing room for a beer or nice sherry. Still here? Don't say I didn't warn you.

It starts simply enough. Scott realized around the turn of the last century that it would soon be impractical to confine the Type A1 International album to a single volume much past 1900. They decided to freeze the initial volume's coverage through the end of 1900, and used this opportunity to make some major revisions including printing the non-US sections from "entirely new plates."

Apparently Scott wasn't initially certain when they wanted to terminate the Type A1 album they had been publishing since 1875/76. Consequently the earliest edition published in the twentieth century was still called the International Postage Stamp Album 1901 (following the Type A1 naming convention). After 1901, Scott renamed the volume covering 1840-1900 the 19th Century Edition, a title that stayed the same for as long as the Brown albums were published.

I assume that the decision to have the album include stamps from 1900 is based on their interpretation of when the 19th century ended and the 20th century began (which we all revisited awhile back with the debate about whether the 21st century started in 2000 or 2001).

As indicated in my first post, there are differences in coverage between Version A1 and A2. The most substantial is that Version A1 includes spaces for cut squares for the world. Scott indicated that the decision to drop cut squares was due to postal stationary losing popularity with collectors. I have read that when philately was in its infancy, collectors naturally wanted to own anything that smelled like a stamp, including all manner of locals and what now would be considered cinderellas. As the number of legitimate stamps grew, collectors began to focus.

In 1903, the first "20th Century" Part was published which covered 1901-1902. What seems strange to us now is the approach to handling new issues. Was the idea that a collector should buy the 1901-1902 album and when say the 1901-1906 volume came out, he or she should remount their collection? In any event, Scott continued to publish what I call "interim" editions before deciding to freeze the first 20th Century volume with stamps from 1901 to the end of 1919. Similarly, this was was followed by interim editions starting in 1920 with the second volume eventually being frozen at 1920-1929, the third at 1930-1938 with at least one interim edition, and the fourth with 1934 to mid-1938.

So a more accurate summary of the Brown Internationals as published by Scott in the twentieth century is:

1901 edition, published 1901?

[covered 1840-1900?];

19th Century Edition

[1840-31 December 1900];

20th Century Edition 1901-1919

[Part 1] (interim editions include 1901-1902, 1901-1908, 1901-1910, 1901-1912, 1901-1916, 1901-1917, 1901-1918)

20th Century Edition 1920-1929

[Part 2] (interim editions include 1920-22, 1920-1927)

20th Century Edition Part 3

[interim editions include 1928-1934, Sep 1929-1933, 1928?-1935 (c1938)]

20th Century Edition Part 4

[1935-1938]

(You'll note that the later volumes are really partial years that match up with the respective catalog--i.e., the 1939 catalog only covers through mid-1938 which is why Volume 4 only has spaces for stamps through mid-1938.)

To my knowledge, the covers for the 19th Century Edition and the last two parts of the 20th Century Edition do not specify years. So if you see a year range on the other two bindings rather than volume numbers, e.g., 20th Century Edition 1920-1927, this is a clue that you have an interim edition, not the complete one. But this isn't foolproof. I have a Part 3 that doesn't have a year range on the binder but the title page indicates that it isn't the final version.

The earlier volumes, at least, were reprinted multiple times. I have seen a citation to a 19th Century Edition printed as late as 1941, for example. I have heard rumors that Scott made some revisions over the years when reprinting the Browns, but have no concrete evidence of this.

As with Version A1, the Browns were available in a surprisingly wide variety of bindings and paper qualities, most of which are not encountered today. Almost all of the Browns you see for sale are hardbound, although Scott did sell loose-leaf versions. There are also hardbound versions printed on one side only.

Scott decided in the early 1940s to discontinue the Brown series in favor of their Green Specialty albums although they continued to advertise the Browns for as long as they had copies to sell.

The original Brown volumes show up on eBay and other venues with some frequency. The earlier ones are more common than the last two. The Twentieth Century Volume 3 is the hardest to find.

If you are new to the history of the Brown Internationals you may wonder why there is no 20th Century Edition Volume 5 [1939-1940]. For information on that, see the discussion in the next post concerning what I call Version B. This post will also reveal something never before mentioned in my blog: the Scott Provisional Albums.

I realize that this is convoluted, but I believe it is worth knowing that interim editions exist so you won't think you are automatically buying the complete volume without first checking.

Images

(1) The first Type A2 album that in later printings became the 19th Century Edition (the number of engravings, 4000 rather than 6000, is the giveaway that this not the Type A1)

(2) A 19th Century Edition bound in boards

(3) The 19th Century Edition printed in two volumes on one side of the page

(4) The first Twentieth Century album covering 1901-1902 only

(5) An Interim album for the Twentieth Century Part 2 that covered 1920-1926 (versus 1920-1929 in the final version) and the Part 3, both bound in the typical brown