Okay, I'll bite.
1. I strongly agree with landoquakes about all stamps together in their actual chronological order. However, Scott has painted itself into a corner on this by the way it organizes its catalogue, so they will never do this. But they should.
We naturally want to see stamps in the time period in which they were issued. This keeps stamps with the same subject matter and same design style together. We don't separate commems from regulars, so why separate airs and semis which were issued and used at the same time as the other stamps? Only Minkus was bright enough to organize their albums the "proper" way. In all my own Scott albums, and I have a ton of them, I move the air and semi pages where they belong chronologically. It just makes much better sense to see stamps in their proper order instead of separated into types of stamps.
2. Yes, include catalogue numbers.
3. One things sadly lacking in nearly all Scott albums (due to laziness on their part?) is stamp identifying information above each stamp or set of stamps. "What was this stamp issued for?" is often a mystery. Was the old argument for not identifying stamps on album pages to avoid clutter? I don't find a simple name or short description clutters the page at all. Another argument might be that the stamp itself tells you what it was issued for. But far too many stamps do not do that -- and foreign stamps are all in foreign languages you may not even know. To find out what a stamp is honoring, you have to look in the catalogue.
Bill Steiner's popular "print yourself" pages do include brief identifiers above each stamp. I find this such a good idea that in some of my Scott albums, I've actually replaced all the Scott pages with Steiner pages printed on Scott blanks. I remove the Steiner borders and change the fonts so they match Scott's pages better. Do this by saving Steiner's pages in 'Word'. Going to all this trouble clearly indicates my preference for including stamp identifications.
4. Printing pages on one side of the page makes an album much better by not tangling stamps up with stamps on facing pages. Subway's "Vintage Reproductions" pages does this. These are the pages which exactly reproduce Scott's Brown pages. But doing this would literally double the length of the album, so I have reservations about it. If you collected "only" to 1940 or 1950 or some other early year, you'd probably prefer this. Collecting to a much later date might mean you'll need an additional room to hold just your albums! The way I handle my Scott International's two-sided pages is by using clear acetate interleaving. Glassine interleaving works, too, but I hate the "crinkle" sound it makes, and it's not clear so you can't see through it. The fact that no one makes this wonderful clear acetate interleaving any longer may be a commentary on the state of the hobby.
5. Binder size for the International album is currently too large. Filled with pages, these 3.5" binders are almost too heavy to pick up, and even worse they hold so many pages, it make the pages curve too much for comfort. Instead of issuing them in 3.5" widths, publish them in 2" binders which are much easier to deal with. I have a set of 30 Subway Stamp Shop International binders (no longer made but a copy of the Scott binders) that are 2" thick. It is such an improvement, you cannot believe it. I probably wouldn't have a worldwide collection at all if I had to use larger binders.
6. In the original International albums, Scott began each country with a short description of its history with some statistics and a space for its flag. I've always liked that. It "fancies" up the album a little. I'd go back to doing that.
7. And finally the most obvious one of all: Include spaces for all (or nearly all) stamps and not just those collectors are "likely" to own as Scott mistakenly does now. I could see omitting major rarities, but even those are few and far between and don't harm an album. We might like to see their blank spaces. Scott's National album contains a page for the C3a inverted airplane stamp none of us will ever own. I like having that page for the fun of it. So I'd include spaces for all stamps ever issued.
I do not think there's a need to end the new International album at any particular date as collectors can perfectly well buy just the volumes they want. I collect the world "only" up to 1975 (still way too much) simply by owning only those volumes. If others want to collect later years, it might seem overwhelming, but let them try. But if you do, you better save up for an extra room on your house!
The work to make these changes would take a great deal of time and effort, and there's a limited market for this. So I don't think Scott/Amos would do this in a million years. They seem long past innovating and may be simply trying to stay afloat. It's nice to think about, though.
And one other point: Subway's nice Vintage Reproduction pages already do many of the more important things I've suggested. So why not just buy those? |
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Posted Yesterday 6:21 pm
