Scott & Minkus International Albums - Comparison

Artful-not that I want to disabuse you of your tentative Minkus choice, but there is a BB Scott number checklist available, which follows the BB page format- so easy to pencil into the BB spaces.

Jkjblue, that is a point in Scott's favor. I do read your blog regularly (and comment occasionally as well), so that checklist would be handy. The day when I buy one or the other is probably at least a couple years off yet and I'll want to decide at that time whether a classic WW collection is going to be a major collecting focus or just a sideline, or if I even want to do it at all. I've got some other areas I'm busy with at the moment, but the day will come when I won't be able to afford to add many stamps from those areas. Not sure what I'll do yet at that point, but it will probably be a few years yet before that decision is forced upon me.

*runs up to soapbox*

Or one could use Lighthouse Vario stockpages and create your own layouts based on whichever catalog and whichever stamps you wish to include, and free yourself of the tyrrany of pre-printed album pages!

*hi-tails it off soapbox before the crowd throws rotten tomatoes*

:D

If I grew up in Europe, no doubt I would be using stock books or pages for the collection. There is indeed a lot of advantages.

But I am so ingrained by years of use of albums to house stamps, it just seems natural.

BTW, check out DJCMHOH's new blog about WW collecting- especially French Colonies. Definitely worth a read.

Y'know, that's actually pretty good advice and I'm kind of doing something similar already. I came to a realization while reading Jkjblue's excellent blog today. Today's topic was El Salvador and Big Blue, the least comprehensive of the Scott/Minkus/Steiner troika, has 18 pages for Salvadoran stamps, 500+ spaces. I really have no desire to collect El Salvador to that extent, and I realized that there are a lot of other countries I'll probably feel the same way about. I still wouldn't rule out such an album, but right now I'd probably say no. This is pretty long-term thinking on my part, anyway, as I'm satisfied with the way I'm collecting right now.

Right now, if I come across something that I like that happens to be from a country I don't actively collect, I stick it in a Lighthouse stockbook. I'll probably just keep doing that for the foreseeable future.

Edited to add that if I do ever decide to go the pre-printed album route, I'll probably try to find a used one in decent shape with the stamps still in it. That would probably mean Scott, since those are far more prevalent in the US.

Artful: exactly how I thought, but, if you buy a worldwide album, it's surprising how you get drawn into collecting things you had no intention of going near! Still light on El Salvador, though ...

DJCMHOH/Jim: is there a link to the new blog, please?

Geoff

Jim

Many thanks!

Geoff

I've thought the same thing. Any space in my albums practically cry out to be filled, regardless of whether I particularly care for the stamp or the country. It would definitely be a long-term project, trying to fill all the spaces in a large international album like Scott or Minkus.

I still have my childhood Harris Traveler worldwide album, and I still add to it once in awhile, most recently over this past weekend. I buy a lot of various mixtures and packets and once in awhile I'll go through my "backlog" and see if I have any stamps I still need in that album. I added a few dozen this weekend. That album is, of course, not comprehensive enough, often with a half-dozen entities assigned to half a page, and it's just kind of fun to visit that album once in awhile. I'd kind of like to fill every space in that album sometime before I die so the Young Me could be proud.

Quote:
DJCMHOH/Jim: is there a link to the new blog, please?


http://djcmhphilately.blogspot.com/

Excellent blog!

Artful

Carry on feeding the Young Me inside you! It's so easy to become blase about material that, as a child, you never expected to own. Now it's there, in your album. I still get a kick out of getting even the middle values of sets where, as a child, I picked up only the lowest values in mixtures from Woolworth's.

Geoff

LOL - I feel the same way about finally getting things I could only dream of as a kid. Even the things that are 50 cents to a dollar now were not in the budget back then. So some of these pages I'm now completing have been 40 years in waiting...

Here's what I have found

Pros for Minkus Supreme Global (and supplements)

More complete worldwide (Grenada Grenadines, mid 70's and on Bhutan, Mongolia and many others that Scott excludes)If you want to collect the whole world including the wallpapers, Minkus has much better coverage.
The mixing of regular, airmail and semi's when part of the same set are all on one page, rather than 3 for scott.
More compact than Scott International

Cons:
Thinner paper
cramped stamps for folks who use mounts.
harder to find supplements
Minkus cat numbers


Scott Internationals

Pros: easier to find used and new
better paper for more modern supplements
plenty of blank space for mounts
later supplements have Scott numbers

Cons: takes up a lot of space
not as complete coverage
somewhat a bland presentation of spaces.
Sometimes has a single stamp on a page

I had a two volume Minkus Supreme Global from 1976 to 1982 and I got rid of the first volume thinking that Scott International would have the stamps. I was wrong!

Below is the difference on how the pages look for the same set of stamps. Scott International is on the left and Minkus Supreme Global on the right. Sometimes there isn't a lot of difference between the two. I say go for wherever you can find the best deal and get ones with stamps mounted already if you can.

Argh! My pet peeve! I'm a big fan of Bill Steiner's work and it's debatable if I'd even be collecting to the extent that I am today had I not found his website. About my only complaint is the number of pages that only have one or just a few stamps on them. In general I like the sparser layout of his pages, but there are times I wish he'd been just a little more efficient with the space available on the pages. Being able to fit a few more stamps into a single binder is a good thing. I'm really not trying to complain, though, as I think Steiner deserves to be enshrined in a Hall of Fame of some kind for the work he's done.

Steiner has helped out who knows how many collectors. He has done much to keep stamp collecting alive. I was a past subscriber myself. How much space would a complete Steiner collection take? Here's a guy who made his own pages on lined notebook paper and put as many numbers together as he could through around 1990 or so. This is B-Z. There were about 150 binders total. Unfortunately he spent so long making the binders, they were only filled sparingly.