Minkus Supreme Global Album Back In Print

Jim, If you want me to send the files direct to your email so you can post them on your blog, please let me know. Peter

Peter, thanks again for doing this. I briefly compared your scans to my later Supreme Global and found that your pages are largely the same, except for the first page of Bahamas. I'll say more about this later today.

Biggest takeaway is that your scans confirm what I had understood--there are no Minkus catalog numbers in the first edition. There are in at least some of the later ones.

Speaking of which, are their copyright years on your reprint?

And what is your impression of the paper quality?

Peter- no need, I will comment here.


1867 Scott 9 10pa lilac
First issue of the "Sphinx and Pyramid" design

I reviewed Egypt's spaces in the Minkus Global Supreme compared to Big Blue and the Steiner through the 1906 "Sphinx and Pyramid" issues, and here are the results...

1)Three surcharged stamp spaces (1879-Scott 27,28; 1884 Scott 42) are in the Minkus, but not in BB.

2) The 1866 "Turkish Suzerainty" issue- Scott 1,2,3,7,4, are given spaces in the Minkus, not in BB. These are rather expensive stamps with CV of $30-$47 for four stamps.

3) The 1867 "Sphinx and Pyramid" issue is given 5 spaces in the Minkus vs 2 spaces in BB. (CV generally $10+)

4) The 1872-75 "Sphinx and Pyramid" issue has 8 spaces in Minkus vs 4 spaces in BB. Two stamps in the Minkus (Scott 24,25) have a CV of $11 & $35 respectively.

5) The 1879-1902 "Sphinx and Pyramid" issue has 7 spaces in the Minkus vs 6 spaces in BB.

6) The 1888-1906 "Sphinx and Pyramid" issue has 7 spaces in the Minkus vs 7 spaces in BB.

7) BTW, I noticed also that the next issues (1914 and 1921-22), with different watermarks, are given separate spaces in Minkus vs being lumped together in BB.

Conclusions
* Minkus Global Supreme is a "Big Boy" album. The Scott Big Blue began life as a "Junior" album, ignores watermarks, and limits expensive stamps. The Minkus includes more expensive stamps.

* Clearly, the Minkus Global Supreme provides more spaces for the earlier issues of Egypt.

* The Minkus, as good as it is, is still not in the same league as the Steiner, which for early Egypt, includes spaces for the minor number perforations- clean-cut and rough, and blurred impressions stamps- some 26 spaces.

As far as aesthetics....


Egypt in Steiner
The Steiner offers a more leisurely presentation than the Minkus, which seems cramped.

Bottom Line....
For the WW classical era collector, the Minkus Supreme Global Album for early Egypt is a winner!

Peter, I've checked my copy of the Supreme Global which was published probably in 1961 against your scans of the Scott reprint.

Bahamas1. This is the most visually different between your Scott reprint and my copy, but it turns out, it really is just a few spaces rearranged on the first row. I do note additions to some of the descriptions. And, of course, Minkus catalog numbers are provided. I'm including a scan from my edition for comparison purposes.

Bahamas2. Essentially the same.

Cuba2. Appears to be the same. (Stamps in your scan hide many of the spaces.)

Egypt. Essentially the same.

Egypt2. Same except for some reason the overprint for the bottom left stamp is rotated 180 degrees in my edition!

Greece. Two additional illustrations in my edition.

Greece2. Essentially the same.

So the bottom line is except for changes in color terminology for a few stamps, the stamp spaces are largely identical.

As for the Minkus catalog numbers, as much as like many aspects of the Minkus catalog, since no dealers use these numbers anymore, I could see some people preferring they not be there at all.

As far as additional scans, I think it would be interesting to see the end page of a country like France showing the latest stamps (1951? 1952?) at the time your album was originally printed.

And if your volume contains US (mine is missing those pages), would you consider scanning the first page of 19th century issues?

1840to1940 (Bob)

I checked the 1961 edition color descriptions for Bahamas for the page you scanned, and many do not agree with the current Scott color descriptions- as one would expect for a Minkus album.

Enclosed is the last page of France to date 1953 on the Minkus Supreme Reprints

France1953 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2...?usp=sharing

Here is the first two pages of USA in the Minkus Global Supreme Album reprints

Please note that on the USA pages they use the Minkus numbering system

USA https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2...?usp=sharing

USA2 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2...?usp=sharing

Thanks for all your comments and reviews of the new Amos Minkus Global Supreme album reprints. I really enjoy the new album pages and like the feel and quality of the paper used to print them on. They are using a soft white 80lb text paper. The album pages appear to be a photo copy of one of the original editions. The photo images are not as clear and crisp as the original printings, but seem to be good enough looking. The pages are taken from the expanded Supreme album line and not the Master series. I like how compact the album is to keep the shelf space to a minimum. The Scott international has a more spread out feel with less places for stamp issues and use more blank spaces which take up more space on the shelf. The Scott international uses 60lb text cream paper.

The cover page does not say what edition the Minkus Supreme Global Stamp Album were taken from. It has a copyright 2010 by Scott Publishing Co. They state that it is "The Most Complete Two-Volume set of Albums ever published anywhere in the world" On the binding it has the words Minkus Publishing - New York, NY.

I also found that they combine several smaller related counties on a single page to save space. Please see scan below.

Horta - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2...?usp=sharing

Thanks,

Peter

Peter, I think you have encapsulated the advantages of both albums.

Both Albums ( Big Blue, Minkus Global Supreme) offer a short shelf- compared to the Steiner - as the main advantage. And that is a very important advantage for the majority of collectors. ( I should mention that my Steiner for 1840-1940, 1840-1852 for British Commonwealth, takes up some 41 1 1/2" binders.)

That, and there is a possibility of completely filling the pages- the Steiner, not so much. ;-)

Between the two albums-Big Blue and the Global Supreme- the Global Supreme offers more spaces (but not always, see below), while Big Blue is indeed more spread out, offers more color descriptions, yet, usually has fewer spaces for a country. (But 35,000 spaces is still a LOT of spaces. ;-)

I checked the Portuguese Colony page you scanned for the Global Supreme, and here are the results for spaces compared to Big Blue...

Horta
16 MGS; 7 BB

Madeira
31 MGS; 25 BB

Funchal
8 MGS; 14 BB

Thanks for the comparison. All three albums are great, but offer different advantages. I do prefer the layout and feel of the Scott international, the completeness of the Steiner pages, and the compactness and expanded stamp selection of the Minkus. For someone wanting to display the most amount of stamps in the smallest amount of shelf space, the Minkus Supreme is a great album. With the thicker 80lb text paper on the Minkus Supreme, it allows you to use showgards mounts (provided you trim them short to fit). I use Scotch Removable Double Side Tape to secure my mounts, which allows me the opportunity to re-position the stamps if needed and prevents the paper from getting wrinkled.

Thanks for scanning. It looks like Minkus just rearranged pages to accommodate new issues as needed which does make one wonder how supplements worked (i.e., did collectors end up having to remount some pages?).

Your two US scans are very interesting. I am rather surprised that the types of the 1851 and 1857 issue aren't included (i.e., only one space for say the 1851 1c Franklin). I'm not complaining, just surprised.

I'm glad to know that Scott did the Supreme Global reprints on better paper. I had assumed this was the case, but it is nice to have it confirmed.

I think everyone has done a great job of summarizing the pluses and minuses of the Supreme. I guess the biggest question in my mind is how difficult it is to collect using the Minkus since it doesn't follow the Scott catalog? I found that penciling in Scott numbers into my Minkus for a few larger countries that I was analyzing took far longer than I would have expected.

Anyway, Peter, I hope you will continue posting about your experiences with the album as you fill it.

"...I should mention that my Steiner for 1840-1940, 1840-1852 for British Commonwealth, takes up some 41 1 1/2" binders..."

Wow! I had no idea that they would take up so much room! Has anyone printed out all the pages of the world for Steiner? I once dealt with a collection of 150 3 ring binders and that was plenty daunting.

There are approx 11,500 pages worldwide up to the year 1960 on the steiner pages. So having 150 pages per 3 ring binder would = 77 binders. I could only imagine how much space the complete world would take up. cheers, Peter

80,000 pages for the world according to the Steiner website in 1 1/2" binders @ 150 pages per binder....

533 Binders.

Just caught up with this discussion--and very many thanks to Peter for the superb scans and for describing the albums, paper, and other intangibles so well. The illustrated pages confirm that this is a reprint of the Fall 1954 first edition of the Minkus album which (as I mentioned earlier) does not have (Minkus) numbers below the stamps. In my experience there are some corrections in later editions, and occasionally more watermark varieties for British colonies, but overall the differences are not huge.

Compared to Steiner, I think the Minkus offers advantages of space which are pretty overwhelming--I could never have 41 binders, let alone the 70 plus I'd need to go up to the early 1960s.

If Amos/Scott continue to roll out on-demand reprints of the Minkus albums, I hope they include reissues of some of the more popular speciality albums. These are very comprehensive and easy to integrate into a Supreme Global, when you want to have Steiner-like coverage for a particular country. The Minkus speciality pages for few countries (eg Switzerland, Iraq, the British Caribbean) are currently available from Subway Stamps at dirt-cheap closeout prices--I've bought several in the past and they have same border etc as the Minkus Global series. Some of the really big Minkus collections (including one priced at several million at Harmer-Schau, described in 1840-1940's blog) must have been based almost entirely from Minkus speciality volumes.

On the US issues, I suspect Minkus--who marketed largely in the US--thought people with an interest in American stamps would have a special album for that, so their coverage of the early material is somewhat skimpy by comparison, say, with that given to Great Britain, Germany, or Australia.