I Went Off And I Did It (Scott International)

Yep.

I bought the 1947 edition of the Scott International Postage Stamp Album.

Now I have to convince myself it was a good purchase.

Congrats.

Welcome to Big Blue.

ecmorgan,

What convincing? You made a good choice. Your message even has that little guy jumping up and down! Obviously happy and rightly so.

Jack Kelley

I'm just happy I made a decision. Here's my mindset, from reading this wonderful forum.

"Ok, Big Blue for me."

"Oh wait, he's got a good point. I'm a Minkus guy now."

"Wow, I didn't think about that, I better go the Steiner route."

"She brings up a good point, and I've got plenty of stockbooks."

"Stockbooks! What was I thinking, and I'm sitting on all those Vario pages."

Rinse and repeat.

Ya'll have had me in a state of indecision for 43 years! Which is saying something since I'm only 47.

Truth be told, it was the discussions on this forum and reading various blogs that led me to blue. Scott just feels right and I can cite all sorts of reasons for not wanting steiner/stockbooks/vario, but it doesn't really matter.

I have kind of a weird assortment of worldwide collection that is in stockbooks, vario pages, steiner pages, odd scott or minkus pages, in envelopes, etc. I hope that this route will give me some good direction and organization.

I'll continue to keep other specialty collections as is for the moment:
US Coast Guard postal history: Vario
Israel: Palo
Scouts on Stamps and Judo on Stamp: Vario
Dead Countries: Steiner
Haiti: Steiner

Now to take on the world.

And I failed to mention my US is in a Mystic Heirloom album, so I can remove those pages from the Scott and give a little room for adding pages.

Congratulations. I agree, the album feels "right." I've never regretted my decision to go with the International even though I recognize that Minkus, Steiner, etc. all have their own virtues.

"I bought the 1947 edition of the Scott International Postage Stamp Album."

Would love to see a pic of your "new" album! Where did you find it? Is it in nice condition? Is it different from the blue albums available today?

As soon as it arrives, I'll post some pics. ebay purchase. Tracking estimates Wednesday arrival.

ecmorgan, I bought a used 1947 edition of the Scott International Part One about 30 years ago, at a point where I could generally only afford to add one stamp at a time to my U.S. collection. It was a decision I have never regretted and one that in fact rekindled my love of stamp collecting. I could go to a stamp show with a limited budget and come home with lots of cool stamps that I needed for my album. More recently, I've focused more on my U.S. revenue collection and less on worldwide, but I still go back to the Big Blue periodically. It always reminds me of what it felt like to collect as a kid. I think you'll love it and you'll love "collecting to the album."

I posted on Jim's Big Blue blog last week for the first time, and received a nice reply.

I'm a 3c 1861 and 1857 1c specialist and this thread and Jim's blog interested me enough to buy a 47 BB, empty about a year ago, and a bad BB with a missing front cover but 3500 stamps to start with, about 2 months ago. I'm up to Finland and have really enjoyed myself. Haven't licked a hinge in about 30 years!

Since my post on Jim's blog, I bid on 2- 43/47 BB's, on ebay last week.. I didn't mean to win both of them, but did! Had to go out of town over the weekend so have missed the delivery, but will pick them up at FedEx tomorrow...looks like I'll be switching some pages around from album to album, and will have at least one to sell, but the BB world is fun, educational,and a relaxing way to spend an evening....or many...
Looking forward to contributing here...Ray

You'll have lots of fun working on that one. I bought mine about a year ago and it keeps me very busy in between other projects

Congrats!

Got the albums tonight...both '47's
Just going through very quickly, there are a few nice treasures I've found that makes me know that they were both very nice purchases....I'll post a few later....
Thanks, Ray

Scott Internationals are great, but you might regret the very thin pages of a 1947 edition, especially if you use mounts for any stamps.

Not only that Chris2005, 70 years old papers , should already show significant ageing problem

It's not good to keep weighing the pros and cons of everything you do, I think. As kids we were probably all a lot happier with whatever album we had because we didn't constantly compare it to other so-called "better" albums other people had. We just enjoyed it.

As adults, once we weigh the differences, it's probably best for our emotional health to make a choice and live with it. Kind of like getting married! You make adjustments and learn to be happy. I use a multi-volume Scott International, and although it's not as comprehensive as would be ideal, I can always add blank pages where I need to. I love the sophisticated look and less cluttered pages of Big Blues. Minkus is just much too cluttered and messy looking. Scott always had the best designed pages, in my opinion. I know Steiner pages are complete, but I can't enjoy 8.5 x 11 school binder sized pages, no matter how hard I try, and I can't abide using 3-ring binders. My pages need to be larger, and I like the printed images of the stamps better than blank boxes, and find the 2-post binders good looking. By not filling a binder with pages, I keep the page curving problem to a minimum, too, so pages lie somewhat flatter than if you pack the pages in. Using more binders solves this problem nicely. I've never understood why people buy the "jumbo" sized binder that holds so many pages since it makes actually using the binder more difficult. I get that it's a little less expensive to use these larger binders, but I prefer the smaller sized binders and more of them, and I'm willing to skip dinner out or a movie or a new shirt to get what I want.

For many countries I collect, I use Scott Specialty albums (individual countries) to be more complete and use Big Blue for my duplicates. For the other 80% of countries BB is my primary album. I'm very happy with it, and in the modern era (the last 50 or so years) the Scott International pages are pretty complete, as complete as Minkus, while being better looking by being much less cluttered. The lack of complete sets and omission of higher cost stamps "problem" (if you see it as one) seems to affect mainly "classic" era stamps before the 1950s or so, solved with some stamps going into white spaces or margins or by adding blank pages when needed. I do wish they weren't printed on both sides of the page, but not to do that would double the number of pages and volumes, and that would be enormous, so I can live with this.

Drew - great choice that works for YOU.