Are Scott International Album Pages For Recent Decades Fairly Comprehensive?

Scott International (aka "Big Blue") album pages from 1840-1940, the Classic Era which makes up this albums so-called Volume I (actually for sets of pages now), were fairly selective, often omitting the high values of a set and less common individual stamps. Coverage was maybe 60-70%, I think. They were designed for, as the album says, a "representative" collection of the world's stamp.

I've often wondered if Scott International pages got more comprehensive in more recent decades when stamps were less rare and more easily acquired. Are Scott International pages for the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and so on, fairly comprehensive? Do they include many, most, or all the stamps which have spaces in Scott's more specialized individual country albums, the Scott Specialty albums?

Does anyone have more recent Scott International pages and a Scott Specialty album to compare pages? It would be be interesting to know if Scott's stamp coverage on modern-era pages is pretty much the same in its more generalized International and more specialized Specialty albums. Or are significant numbers of stamps still omitted from the International album for this era?

redwoodrandy, your 2 links are useless for what the OP is asking

DrewM Scott International are a real pain to work with, whatever it'S 1850, 1900 or 1980 you always have stamps that have no space. It will be fine if they omit stamps with same design but different perforations or watermark, but it's not the case they omit way too much cheap stamps.

I will say the years 60, 70 , 80 are worst than 1840-1940 , all true they removed expensive stamps in the classic area, many of the one omitted are cheap, but in 1980 they all cheap.

You better to go with Steiner's, with a software like LibreOffice Draw, you can even make new places for single stamps that will be only include in a souvenir sheet in Scott albums.

My impression- and it is qualitative rather than quantitative as I have not done an actual review - is that yes, there are fewer stamp spaces missing in the Scott Internationals for the later years compared to Big Blue 1840-1940.

Now, whether it is acceptable ( area66 suggests it is not, and just go with Steiner) is up to an individual collector.

DrewM: I've centered my collections on the Scott Internationals Parts I through V. Yes, Part I (1840-1940) has not worked well for me and I have a lot of interspersed blank pages. For most of my main collecting interest; Portuguese Colonies; I've gone exclusively to Scott blank pages through 1940, and then revert to the pre-printed pages for 1940 through 1965. I still have some blank pages after 1940, but have found the regular pages to be more than adequate.

I've checked into Steiner pages in the past and they would not work for me. They don't fit my International binders. And I bought my five Intl. parts around 1983 or 84. No desire or time to now have to re-mount maybe 50- 60,000 stamps total. As Jkjblue says, it's a matter of personal preference.

Steiner's pages fit perfectly in Scott binders if you insert them in plastic protector, actually it's what I'm using instead of glassin as interleave , look at the photo, a modified Steiner's pages, I do have an adjustable holes punch adjusted to the Scott post

Look at just one exemple, in 1972 Sweden make a nice engraved set of planes, well in the Scott no space for the 25o

Area: as I said, it's a matter of personal preference. I prefer my current pages rather than spending a ton of money to switch over to Steiner pages. As for 1972 Sweden, I don't collect past 1965 except for Portuguese colonies (through 1974 and the de-colonization) and Canada (through 1973).

I understand the concept of a "representative" collection, as reflected in the make-up of the Big Blue. But my sense is that most of the collectors who got close to filling them would actually have benefited from a more comprehensive album. But the real killer for me is the ordering of the stamps. Whilst not as bad as the "Specialty" albums, where stamps from the same set are artificially placed dozens of pages apart, the separation of air-mail and charity stamps is pretty hard to live with.

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That's because you live on the other side of the pond.

Scott-Centric collectors (U.S.) are apoplectic if the stamps in an album are all mixed up - regular, semi-postal, air post on the same page. Horrors!

Jim

It took me a considerable amount of time to think out what a "semi-postal" was!

Actually, European practice on air-mail stamps differs, but the charity issues are ordinarily with the others (Switzerland may be an exception, but I don't have a printed Swiss album).

Geoff

After about 1980, it's better to think of the Scott International album pages as "yearly supplements" rather than albums. They tend to have everything Scott listed at in the catalogue for that year at the time of developing the pages, which may or may not mean a full year for many nations. But in general post-1980 Scott is comprehensive for main number stamps (though for most part no varieties or souvenir sheets are included).

So far it looks like even in recent decades, the Scott Internationals remain somewhat selective. It would be useful to find out how selective, though, in other words to compare a number of countries over the last four decades or so to see approximately what percentage of stamps are included in the Internationals.

I'm not asking because I'm deciding which album to use. I'm just curious. I collect using a few Scott Specialty (and many Davo) country albums for those countries I collect in depth as well as Scott Internationals for other countries (plus duplicates of the in-depth countries). So, I'm not too bothered by whether Scott includes all, most or just many stamps. I'd just like to know if there's a general consensus on how comprehensive the Internationals are for recent decades.

As for adding Steiner pages inside page protectors, I'd be more inclined to get pages I needed printed onto actual Scott Int'l sized paper (it can be done) -- if I decided to supplement the International album, which I might do for some countries.

On the different subject of the Scott catalogues (and albums) separating regular/commemorative stamps from semi-postals and airmails, I've always found that pointless -- and I live on the "correct" side of the pond! Scott's idea beginning a century or more ago of separating stamps by type may have made sense at the time (when people collected postage dues, officials, envelopes, and many other types because there were so few "real" stamps). But it doesn't make much sense today. I much prefer the Stanley Gibbons, Michel, and others' approach which is to combine them, including them by year and not by type. Interestingly, Japanese catalogues do as Scott does, separating stamps by types. Very confusing and a bit strange, I think. In fact, in all my Scott albums I take the semi and air mail (and any other) pages and insert them as chronologically as I can so stamps from, say, the 1920s are with others from that same era. It's not always easy to do that, but it just makes a lot more sense to me.

In fact, Davo albums also separate stamps by type now that I think of it -- so also with those albums, I often put the semi-postal and airmail (and souvenir sheet, etc.) pages with other pages from that year or years. Stamps of the same era tend to reflect the same topics and issues and have similar styles -- my main reason for not wanting them separated into many different sections of an album.