Big Blue Giddy Madness

What a story.

A few weeks ago, I posted that I finally did it and bought a big blue, 1947 version. I was soooooooooooooo excited.

Then.

The ebay shipper never shipped the album. It listed the label as printed but USPS never had receipt. Also, he never responded to any messages from me, nor from ebay when I opened a resolution.

On Wednesday, I hear from ebay that my payment has been refunded due to no response from the seller.

I'm a teacher during the day. Literally a few minutes after getting my refund, while students were taking a few minutes to work on a short quiz, I checked ebay. There it was - Volume I and Volume II!! Same price as the 1947 version. Question to the seller, he responded immediately.

Best part? The binders were personalized (apparently the previous owner's name was engraved on the binders), and the seller - for no extra charge - replaced them with nice Big Blue binders that aren't personalized.

Purchased before the quiz was finished.

Paid immediately, albums arrived today.

So nice. Such good condition. And I'm so happy I nearly peed myself.

Of course, my parents are in town, and my twins are celebrating their 8th birthday, so I can't work on my stamps yet, but still, excitement abounds.

Good things come to those who wait.

I remember a boy doing that in Junior Three at school, but never a teacher ...

Great story. If you're like me, collecting worldwide and working on those Big Blues will make you feel like you did when you started out as a kid.

I have to admit it has been quite a while since I've been this excited about stamp collecting.

What a joy, congratulations - and thanks for sharing your enthusiasm, ecmorgan. We all may need some from time to time - your enthusiasm lightened up my day
Jon

So glad things worked out for the best

So this is a thing? People look for older Scott International albums to begin new collections, even though they are 50 years or more out of date? I have three of them myself and I don't know what to do with them. I have a feeling that I really don't understand how the different volumes are set up. I was given two different older collections by friends that belong to their parents. I have a Volume 1 from 1947, and a Volume 1 and 2 from 1958, if memory serves me. I've been cherry-picking from them the stamps I like and want to keep, and I have no idea what I'll do with them once I've taken what I want. They came with Scott catalogs of the same vintage, too.

Well done! I remember getting my Volume I set (I was in high school at the time). It was quite a day. Still have it, though I've pulled countries of particular focus out and put them on Steiner pages for improved coverage and layout.

Dave, when you're only collecting up to 1940, a Big Blue part one can't really get out of date. More importantly, if you can find one in decent used condition, the price is almost always far cheaper. A set of new pages, plus binders, will run well over $500. True, some changes have been made over the years, and the paper in the 1947 edition is thinner than the new pages, but mine has held up for about 30 years. It's not perfect, but it's fun to "collect to the album" when I'm taking a break from my more "serious" (and more expensive) specialty.

So far, I collect only USA material, and I know very little about worldwide collecting, although I'm intrigued by it. I have some questions that you may be able to answer.

Scott sells an "International" album, 1840-1940, parts 1A1, 1A2, 1B1, and 1B2. The total page count is well over 2,000, double-sided. Subway Stamp Shop sells what appears to be an older version of the Scott International, 1840-1940, with many more volumes and single-sided pages. Could someone please explain all of this to me?

Is the current Scott International 1840-1940 "complete" or anywhere near complete? What about the Subway Stamp Shop version?

Someday I may want to dabble in WW 1840-1940, and I'd like to know what albums are available for such an undertaking. And that includes out-of-print albums that might be available only on ebay, etc.

And what is the Scott International Brown album that I have seen mentioned?

Thank you!

RustyC summed it up nicely. It's a place to put my worldwide stamps and to have a little fun when I'm a little tired of my specialty areas.

For me, Steiner, Vario, Stockbooks are just too broad. I have trouble even getting started.

paul78703, what you see on Subway is an authorized reprint of the Scott International Brown albums that covered 1840-1940. The "Browns" (so called because of the color of their typical binding) provided spaces for all major numbers in the Scott catalog at the time of publication but were discontinued by Scott. This is opposed to the "Blue" International Volume One which Scott/Amos still publishes and has spaces for 35,000 of the more common stamps issued between 1840-1940. Several of us can go into further detail if you are interested.

Paul, the Scott International that is now sold in four parts is the Big Blue (from the blue cover) that we've been referring to in this thread. It has spaces for about 35,000 stamps from pretty much all the stamp issuing entities of the period 1840-1940. However, it doesn't have spaces for the rarer and more expensive stamps. High values are omitted from many sets. Even so, it is a challenge, albeit a fun one. As I mentioned above, I've been doing it for 30 years and am only about 80% complete.

I believe the Scott International being sold by Subway is what is known as the Brown Album or Big Brown. It has spaces for EVERY stamp. So it is much larger and much more expensive. And completion would be impossible except perhaps for the one person who owned the British Guiana.

One of the advantages today of the Big Blue 1840-1940 album (Sold presently as Parts IA1,IA2,IB1,IB2) is there is a checklist available, if I may be so bold as to mention my own contribution.

It is available for personal use from my blogsite-

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/

A checklist is particularly important for a "representational" album, where one might want to know if there are spaces for a particular stamp.

The checklist is based on the 1969 edition Big Blue, but since there has been no major changes in spaces since then (except for the Scott editors shuffling pages/categories around), the checklist works very well, even for the pages now sold by AmosAdvantage.

For earlier BB editions, the checklist is accurate about 90% of the time.