Collecting The First 100 Years - Scott Intl. Junior Album

http://johnapfelbaum.blogspot.com/2...lection.html

The Kelleher Album had, to use my own words,

"Never have I seen an album so encrusted with stamps like barnacles on a hull."

DRLIMAYE-----welcome to the SCF and congratulations on coming so close to your goal.As I mentioned on another forum those Cape Juby stamps you are looking for sold at H.R.Harmers auction about two years ago ,as part of a larger collection and I found no record of them selling since.
Your method of collecting is interesting but collecting to the blank spaces on a album pages leaves a lot out .But its good to read that there are areas were you expanded and developed beyond just filling spaces .Looking forward to seeing how you advanced your collection after your original purchase and how you filled the more diffcult blank spaces .......p.s. ....Im working on HELIGOLAND now and have some fifteen album pages of originals,reprints ,fakes and now working on the different printings of the reprints.

Quite the validation!

And thanks for your philatelic story. It is quite clear you had good training (The Indian States!) before tackling Big Blue.

I am still amazed that you are so close to finishing the album. I would love to hear how you've been tracking down the last thousand or so. I too am getting to the point where buying general collections isn't going to cut it through 1840. For later eras, I am currently going though a painful transition from Minkus Global Albums to Scott International Albums from 1976 to 1983. Moving the lovely stamps no nicely mounted is a pain (for me!) I've found it is hard to change your mind in mid stream!

I am picking up on this thread again after a lapse of about two+ weeks. During this period, thanks to the inspiration provided by the prior work of "jkjblue" and "1840to1940", and their tremendous efforts related to the Big Blue (Scott International Volume I), I have initiated an effort to develop an excel spreadsheet that could be very useful to Big Blue collectors. I have inserted below an image of part of the spreadsheet (see additional explanation below):







This spreadsheet is designed to maintain an inventory of your collection and also calculate the catalog value. It has room for notes and comments. There are separate sheets for each of the countries "A" to "Z". To date I have completed the A countries and am well on my way to completing the B. I am using as the starting point
the fantastic research by jkjblue on the Big Blue (see his country by country checklists on his blog (Bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com). I am then modifying his country "checklists" according to my version of the BB which happens to be 1943 (coincidentally the year of my birth!). Your BB album may have some differences (as has already been pointed out by jkjblue in his blog0. But changes can be easily made to the Spreadsheet.

Some notes on the spreadsheet below - please provide your comments as I am still in the very early stages of this and can make changes if appropriate.

Column B shows the year of issue (sometimes there is a difference between the Big Blue [BB] pages and the Scott Classic Specialized catalog, and you have to use your judgement - as I have - in selecting the year to put into the spreadsheet)

Column C has the stamp number based on the BB (the jkjblue blog provides such numbers). Sometimes the BB description can be satisfied by more than one stamp; the spreadsheet (SS) provides the options. When the BB shows a blank space, the SS provides suggestions for the stamps that might best fit in that space.

Column D is for "notes". The notes may include a description of the stamp series (such as King George V, or Air Post, or Postage Due) and any other notes such as what stamps may fit in a blank space.

Column E ("My Collection - Scott No.") is for the collector's inventory. Here you specify which stamp you have in each space.

Columns F & G are for checking whether the stamp you have is mint (unused) or used.

Columns I, J, and K are for the cat values. The total column in K is there in case you have both mint and used (as I do in a few cases) or when you may have multiple stamps of the same kind, in which case you can put a number rather than a check mark in F or G and get the total cat value.

Column L is for comments. I am planning to use this column to make notes to myself such as when I have an incorrect stamp in a space, or when I have a used copy that I would like replace with a mint, or when I have stamps that do not have spaces in BB but I have included them in the album anyway, etc.

At the bottom of each country are totals (no of stamps, cat value) and % completion relative to the BB spaces.

Having started this, I realize that this is a massive undertaking, and expect that it may take a long time (perhaps several years depending on how much time I can devote to this). But when completed, I can make it available to BB collectors.

In the meantime, if anyone out there would like to help with this undertaking, I would certainly welcome this.

Comments are welcome.

I am now picking up on the questions in my original post. The first question was answered earlier. This is the second question:




I had been dabbling in worldwide stamp collection from age 8, but was not a very serious worldwide collector until much later. I started this particular collection in 1987 when I was able to win what became the starting point of my Big Blue (BB) collection. As mentioned in my earlier posts, when I "won" the collection it was about 30 to 40% full (I did not inventory it).

I added to the collection the few stamps I had collected earlier and did not at that time think much about a "complete collection". In the following few years, I devoted time to picking up collections for countries that were under-represented or not represented at all in the BB albums (the collection was in 4 albums with some countries quite full and others quite empty).

Some of these country collections I purchased from dealers at stamp shows and others at auctions. I did not maintain any records of my specific efforts and acquisitions.

As the albums started getting filled up, I started looking for specific stamps or sets of stamps (at stamp shows or auctions - there was no ebay in those days!). I am sure fellow collectors are very familiar with the challenges. If you buy collections you get many more stamps than you need and often do not get some of the early ones for which BB provides spaces. Even when you buy specific sets often B does not have spaces for all the stamps in a set so you end up with paying for more stamps than you need.

As the collection started getting filled up, my focus shifted to more of the individual sets and stamps, and when ebay (and other such auction sites and dealer web sites) arrived, the process became somewhat easier than physically going to stamp shows and rooting through boxes and boxes of stamps in glassines. Then I was able to find stamps of "obscure" countries like Karelia, Heligoland, Angra, Barbuda, etc. - Now you can find many of these on ebay but again, not necessarily the older ones to fill the BB spaces. Some interesting anecdotes in these efforts that I shall share later.

I am rambling again, so I shall stop now.

JKJBLUE---thanks for that link to APFELELLBAUM ,they were asking $9,500.00 for 30,000 stamps did they get it or was it broken down .It seems high to me at 32 cents per stamp .
When people talk about Scott vol I is it the single volume or the four volume set and how much difference between the two .

I saw the lot subsequently for sale at their site, but I don't think it sold. I've lost track of it since.




The four volume set (Part IA1,IA2,IB1,IB2 with four blue binders) is the '97 edition of BB.
Although it is more spacious with better paper, it is virtually the same as the '69 edition sold as Part I (Volume I), and one large blue Binder-i.e. "Big Blue".

Therefore, there really is no substantial difference in content between the '97 and '69 editions.

There are some differences between the various editions prior to '69, but no more than 10%.

So, a 1941 edition of Big Blue has very much the same stamp spaces, about ~90% identical, compared to the '69 or '97 edition.

All Big Blues have very similar DNA.

That is what makes drlimaye's '43 edition spreadsheet so useful: if one has a different edition- already 90% of the work is done!

Thanks drlimaye!

What did you do with the stamps in the set where BB had no spaces?

Thanks for that information --------as you can see I also have a more comprehensive set of Internationals

a partial answer to the above question from SCB. I have now completed the spreadsheet for "A" countries, and the scorecard is:
No of "countries" - 22
No. of Spaces in BB - 1969
No of stamps in my collection - 1969
% in my collection - 100%
No. of unused stamps - 997 (50.6%)
No. of used stamps - 973 (49.4%)

Dear Floortrader:
Very impressive! Do you have an inventory of what is in all those albums?

When I was building up my collection, sometimes when I had one or two extra stamps in a set, I would simply add them on the page or subsequent page. But things started to get complicated and ugly as the BB does not provide extra space for additional stamps, and I did not want my collection to look like "barnacles on a hull" (to use the quote from jkjblue), so I simply put these aside - they are probably in a box somewhere.

When I purchased a collection and had a lot of extra stamps, in some cases I started building separate collections of those countries (examples Indonesia and Philippines) to add to my South and Southeast Asia collections. In some cases I simply donated the extra stamps(and got a tax deduction!)

There is no simple answer. Depends on your objective and focus. If the goal is primarily to fill up the BB, you can ignore the extras. If on the other hand you want to collect everything, then the extras can be placed in another (country-specific) album.

I bought Parts 1 through 5 of the Blue Internationals in the early 1980s, to be the primary home for my stamps. They're in 11 binders, 7 jumbo & four regular, with a 4th regular size about to be added. I encountered the same problem as drlimaye. I've dealt with it in several ways, often with blank quadrille pages immediately following a page with stamps. This is an issue primarily for the up to 1940 pages. For a couple of my Portuguese colonies collections, I simply lined out the year dates and put in my own dates; then add blank pages.

As I undertake reorganization over the winter, I may end up disposing of the early, pre-1940, pages for some countries and just going with blank pages.

I've also converted some Scott Specialty pages into international pages (requires some trimming & re-punching the holes) for several countries, again primarily Portuguese, if they're reasonably presentable. Guess there is no single way to make things happen.

Floortrader: I love the picture of your shelves.

Climber Steve and Drlimaye thanks for the kind words and apology to those who seen it before in other places .
drlimaye to answer your question ,no! .I have no kind of inventory and after so many years sometimes surprised what I have but to be more truthful Im more surprised on how much cheap material im missing as a worldwide collector.
Climber Steve --------your not the only one cutting down pages from the Seciality Series,been doing it for years ...lol.