Question For Big Blue Experts

I am working with a fairly advanced BB collector who has about 32,000 in his Volume I. I have been able to find him a few stamps but I was surprised that the ones he needs are mostly low catalog value stamps usually less the $10 and often less than $1. This got me wondering what are the highest catalog stamps called for in Volume?

Start here:

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...a1-aden.html

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...islands.html

to Latvia:

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...-latvia.html

Jim Jackson has posted as far as Palestine.




Hard to fill countries:
http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...ig-blue.html

Expensive Syria Sc #106c,tough Cape Juby Sc #48,49,50,interesting Colombia Sc #E1

Older editions had the Italian States, Tiscamy etc. catalogued at $1000+ I think the BB you've been selling by country lots recently, Ken, had some of those but they were probably fakes. Some Mecklenburg and some of the other German states in older BB editions also had CVs above $500, if memory serves me correctly.

But the Italian States and rarer German States have been dropped from modern BB editions, though your client might be working with a pre-1969??

In Jackson's lists above, the "most expensive" stamps catalogue at up to $300 or so.

Of course Syria 106c is in the section of BB that Jim Jackson has not yet completed.

Plenty of "low value" stamps are a challenge to actually acquire.

As far as high value stamps..."Most Expensive (> $35 CV) stamps...

See http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.co...-latvia.html and others at my blog site.

(Note: The list reflects the lowest value that will satisfy a space in BB,not higher values that could be put in. )

(Note 2: Stamps/countries dropped in the '69 and later editions are not considered.)

Note 3: the list currently covers Aden through Palestine; Panama Canal- Zululand is yet to be published. )

The most expensive stamps that I am currently aware of that is in BB is 1847 United States Scott 2 10c black/bluish "George Washington"-CV $1000.

A few of the expensive non-U.S. stamps so far are...
(2014 Scott catalogue)

*China Scott 78 1c on 3c red ($500)
*France 1849-50 (Scott 7) 40c orange/yellowish Type I $475
*Hong Kong 1891 Scott 54 50c on 48c lilac ($300 mint)
*Canada 1852-57 Scott 4 Three pence red "Beaver" ($225)

Some overall perspective-

Consider there are ~ 7937 spaces in the 69 BB (and later editions) for Part IB1- "Lebanon-Quelimane". How many are "Expensive" (CV $10-$34+) or "Most Expensive" (CV >$35)?

"Expensive": 357 spaces ( 4.5%)

"Most Expensive": 80 spaces ( 1%)

The corollary is that 94.5% of the stamp spaces in BB for this section are CV <$1- <$10. That statistic is quite encouraging for WW classical collectors if one's goal is to fill the album for a not large expense.

You've gotten good answers, so I'll wander off topic. In addition to wondering what are the most expensive stamps in the Blue, I'm curious about which are the most difficult to acquire. Or to put it another way, when you add the last missing stamp to your album is it going to be something like the US 1847 10c Washington or is it going to be a stamp cataloging a few dollars? And will that last stamp just be one of thousands that could have been the last stamp, or will it be an item that you truly struggled to locate a copy?

I did an analysis of the most complete worldwide collection so far attempted which was missing fewer than 1000 major catalog numbers from the years 1840-2010. And in this collection cataloging millions of dollars, there were still a few missing stamps cataloging 20 cents. Did the collector just never get around to acquiring these? Were they once there and fell out of the album at some point? Or was the space filled with a misidentified stamp that was only discovered when the collection was offered for sale? Or a combination of all three?

Thank you all for the great answers. Of all the topics on SCF I find this one to be the most interesting. Before I found this topic I had never heard of or considered collecting to the album, but what a great idea.

I hope you will indulge me with 3 more questions;

1. Do you care if the stamp is used or unused?
2. What do you do with those pesky high values that don't fit in the album?
3. Is it cheating to buy a BB that has some stamps in it? (I don't think I could face Austria again.)

Thanks,

Ken

To the contrary, that is best way to both start and amass a BB collection. Buy an album with a lot of stamps and keep on doing so. Each time you buy an album, take out what you need and re sell the rest.

Absolutely, I recommend starting off with a partially filled album. It is the most cost effective way to build a collection. My caveat though, if it is an older album, to seriously consider transferring the stamps to a new Blue.

Because I didn't follow my own advise, my collection is in a 1969 edition which makes it very difficult to add blank pages for stamps missing in the album. So I keep a separate binder with looseleaf stock pages for stamps I want to keep not in the Blue (or were in the Blue at some point, just not in my edition).

As to used/unused. I opt for used wherever possible (I get really cross when I have to decide what to do with a mint unhinged stamp), but this really is a personal decision--no wrong answer. But the Blue album pages, particularly the earlier editions, may prove a challenge to have mounts on both sides of all those pages.

Whilst I'm sure it's the natural choice in the US, I wouldn't go near a Scott album because of the gaps in coverage and the weird nomenclature (semi-postal?), but it is great fun to collect to an album, in my case the Ideal and the Imperial. It also provides a way of structuring your purchases, so you can keep an eye out for auction lots that cover countries that are under-represented in your album. And I've found that it's meant that I've returned to one of the things that I liked about stamps when I was seven - finding out about different countries and their histories in a painless way. Each to his/her own, but "specialisation" definitely isn't for me. Now, just need to find the 1c magenta on ebay to give a bit of life to the British Guiana page ...

Spot on.

I don't watch the game show "Jeopardy" often, but last week the historical cultural geography questions seemed rather easy to me, although the contestants had problems with them.

Yes - we have a quiz show called University Challenge over here. Last week I was able to show off my knowledge of the Malay States and Borneo!

Just on filling The Big Blue, with the Ideal/Imperial combo, you do away with the frustration of being nearly there, because you know that no-one has ever completed them. Less tension from the acres of white spaces.

Great topic!

I would love to hear more about the worldwide collection that was
only missing about 1,000 stamps from 1840 to 2010, this would have to
be a collection in the neighborhood of about 500,000 different
stamps! As for getting a big blue with stamps in it I don't think it
is cheating at all. It is a very smart way to build your collection.
One of the hidden costs are mounting materials. If you want to do it
right you need good hinges (old Dennison or Fold-O hinge) and if you
shop around they run about $10-15 for 1,000 hinges. So if you mount
10,000 stamps there's at least $100 on hinges alone. If you find a
Big Blue with 3,000 stamps in it you've already saved about $40 in
hinges, not to mention the time it takes to hinge 3,000 stamps. I do
see the appeal about starting fresh though. You never know how good
the previous philatelist had in identifying stamps. From what I've
found though is that most people that own Big Blues were pretty good
at this. Out of some of the largest collections, it's true that some
very common stamps are missing. If you merge other collections into
your own one will find very complete British Colonies, but there
always seems to be the odd stamp missing in sets like 1950's-80's
Romania and counties like that and it is not always the high-valued
stamps either. I prefer used by far. Gum is just asking for trouble.
For me high values and other stamps are mounted on quadrille sheets
and stuck in the album or I do messy it up a bit and fit them where I
can on the sides.

The collection, which may still be for sale, was offered by private treaty in 2012 through Harmer-Schau: http://www.harmerschau.com/pdfs/ptcollection01.pdf

The collection was missing about 1200 stamps (sorry about my typo of 1000) and also did not include US. Asking price was $2.9 million. There is a long thread of 79 posts on the Postage Stamp Chat Board which I think still makes a very interesting read.

Very interesting discussion ---------biggest- needs to be clearifed .So far there has been many collections that the value exceeded 2.9 million dollars on the market . So the idea of this collection having 500,000 different is stunning ,now that is a huge achievement .I would be curious if one person did it or was this a group effort or was a employee or two working on the collection.

Floortrader, the prospectus implies that it is the property of a single collector, although that doesn't mean he or she built the collection by themselves. There was speculation that the owner might be a doctor who was active at auctions (I know that narrows it down!), but I don't remember anyone putting a name to the collection.