How Many 1840-1900 Pages Are In The Scott International 1840-1940 Section?

I'm weighing the pro's and con's of replacing only the 1840-1900 pages in my Scott International album with the first group of (Subway Stamp Shop) Vintage Reproduction pages covering those same years, but I have no idea how many pages I'd be removing. This is the first section of the six-part VR pages that cover the hundred years of stamps from 1840-1940.

The six groups of 1840-1940 VR pages total 5152 single-sided sheets of pager. But I only intend to use the first group covering 1840-1900. Subway says that total is 815 sheets of paper (same as "pages" since they're printed on only one side). So I know that 815 new pages would be going into my albums. How many pages will be coming out?

The total 1840-1940 pages in a Scott International is 2288, counting both sides of the page (these pages are two-sided), but the more important number is the number of sheets of paper
(half of that) which is 1144. That's all pages through 1940. But I'd be removing just an unknown number of pages for only 1840-1900.

Why do I care? I don't want too many more volumes to deal with -- but I would like more spaces for stamps, at least in the early years. As you likely know, the Scott International provides spaces for only a partial number of stamps, sometimes omits fairly common stamps, includes only partial sets, and inexplicably confuses one stamp for another in a few places.

Why only replace the pages for 1840-1900 then? In later decades, Scott seems to have added more and more stamps likely for an average collector to acquire, so I'm guessing later pages of the Scott International up to 1940 are more complete. Pages for the 1960s, 70s and so on seem virtually complete for most countries. I realize that more spaces means more empty spaces, but I prefer to see what I don't have and what additional values a set contains -- even if I can't afford them.

Any idea how many pages there are in a Scott International album for only 1840-1900?

Just for fun, here are my statistics:
Big Blue / Scott International, 1840-1940: 1144 sheets of paper or 2288 "pages" (since printed on both sides)

Vintage Reproductions, 1840-1940: 5152 pages and sheets of paper (since printed on only one side)
1840-1900: 815 pages (roughly 16% of the total)
1901-1919: 1159 (22%)
1920-1929: 1058 (21%)
1930-1934: 799 (16%)
1935-1938: 709 (14%)
1939-1940: 612 (12%)
Total: 5152

If I used the VR 16% figure for the Scott International, I get 183 sheets of paper. But I have no idea if the Scott Int'l pages covering 1840-1900 are the same percentage as the VR pages. If you see what I mean. Nevertheless, by this guesstimate, I'd be removing "around" 183 sheets of paper, and inserting 815 new sheets of paper. So, if I do this, 600 more sheets of paper get added to my albums. That's about 2 "small" binders worth of pages.

Is this likely to be anywhere near accurate? Has anyone ever counted the number of Scott Int'l pages for only 1840-1900? I'll give you a hearty handshake if you do!

I wish you the best DrewM but one thing your statistics do bear out is the staggering increase in the world's stamps after 1929.

I can really see why some folks limit themselves to a 19th century collection!

Hi Drew,
I can't help, but I do fully understand what you wish for! At one point I seriously considered to set a cut-off year at 1900, however I did not manage to get rid off all the others!


I fully agree, stamp collecting for me is not about achieving completeness or filling pages. I prefer having spaces for all the major numbers and minors numbers I could ever be likely to find even tough it means I will never come close to filling them.
Good luck, hope someone can help.

Drew,

I had exactly the same idea about a year ago when I purchased only the 19th century VR pages.

The number of 19th century stamps in Scott International vary a lot depending on the country. And, of course, they are not completely separate from the post-1900 stamps (at least in my version).

My guess is that there's only a page or two, sometimes three of 19th century stamps in Scott Internationals. So X that by the number countries.

What I would suggest doing is just leaving those pages in your BigBlue and using them to house any duplicates or just leave blank. The spaces for 19th century stamps on Scott International are for the rather common/inexpensive stamps, that accumulating duplicates of those should be rather easy. That way, if you ever want to sell your Scott Internationals, they will be all in one piece.

I didn't pursue this route at the time because I went ahead and ordered all the rest of the VR pages, but I do like this idea as a more compact approach, and I may rethink it again

If I did, I'd have two volumes of 19th pages, 3 volumes of the 1840-1940 pages, and in the future may buy the 1940-1949 pages, which I assume would be another two volumes. So, I could have up to 1950 in maybe 7 volumes.

I agree with Chris. I think you will find that the 1900 cut-off for Big Blue is very ragged, with many pages overlapping the 1900 cut-of date.

Here is the first page for Rhodesia as an example...

Rhodesia (British South Africa Company)

1891-95
1,2,3,4,(5),

1896
26,27,28,29,30,31,

1897
50,51,52,53,54,55,

1898-1908
59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,

1905
76,77,(78),

1909
82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89

See the problem? But maybe you are O.K. with half filled pages.

Unfortunately, probably the best way is simply leaf through the BB pages and see what you got. If you get through to Zululand and you are still enthusiastic, then that is the way to go. If you give up in disgust half way through at the ragged mess it creates, well, then you have your answer too.

Here is what I do as I have the Vintage Reproduction, Minkus Supremes, and Scott Internationals. It works for me and may for others, who knows.

If I collect a specific country, those albums are filled first, then the order below will also apply.

If I don't collect the country, I use the Vintage Reproductions first, the first duplicate goes into Minkus, and any other duplicates go into the Scott.

I am almost 70 years old and don't expect to fill any of them, but am having a lot of fun doing it.

Interesting comments, everybody.

Drew, I've been puzzling over this for some years.

When I first started the Big Blue, I enjoyed having all my collection in one binder. Then as it grew larger and I added interleaving, my collection went to two (4 inch) binders. All of this was in the name of convenience. But now I think that multiple luggable albums may not be the best solution. If I were interested in pursuing a comprehensive 1840-1940 collection, either with the Vintage Reproduction pages or Steiner, I think would opt for smaller (preferably 2 inch) binders divided by region: such as, France and Colonies. While that would translate into a lot of binders, individually they would be easier to work with.

So, in your case, you might start with the 19th century edition, see how you like it, and then consider moving your entire collection over.

One thing to consider, in spite of the reverence that the Brown Internationals are held in, they have some major problems, particularly in the earlier volumes. As the Virtual Reproductions are exact reprints, these will have the same defects. As I recently noted on my blog, this is what is going to be missing:

--United States. Confederate States. Provisional issues.
--Afghanistan [2 pages, entire country!]
--China issues of the treaty ports [3 pages]
--Colombian Republic insured letter stamps [2 pages]
--Colombian Republic Tolima insured letter stamps
--Griqualand--West. Cape of Good Hope stamps surcharged
--India. Protected States of the British Empire in India.
--Madagascar. (British) [provides 6 oversized spaces but no descriptions]
--Mexico. Provisional issues of various districts of Mexico
--New Republic (Part of Zululand). [provides 1 cut; remainder of spaces without descriptions for 1886 issues]
--Peru. Various issues of Peru used in different districts, during the Chilean war, 1881 to 1884 [1 and 1/2 pages]
--South Australia. Official stamps.
--Venezuela. Revenues used for postage 1867 [1/2 page]
--Victoria. Revenues used for postage
--Western Australia. Revenues used for postage [1/2 page]
[possible that I missed some of these half pages]

I look forward to you posting what you decide to do.

If you live to 100, you have another 30 years to fill them up!

I hadn't even thought about the question of Scott International pages not ending cleanly at 1900. Hmmm . . . does that bother me or not? I guess I'll have to spend some time browsing my many volumes to see what I think. But I don't think it's going to bother me if the first 20th century page (or two) of some country contains some late 19th century stamps that are also on the last page or so of Vintage Reproduction pages for that country. It's just a few more spaces for duplicates. It would be nicer if there were a cleaner cut-off, though, but that's not how albums are designed.

In any case, there is absolutely no chance in the world that I'm going to fill up most pages in this album, not just the 19th century pages but also probably most pages before about the 1940s since those stamps can be somewhat harder to find than more modern stamps and more expensive. So I have no concerns at all about unfilled spaces. To make it even "worse" my Scott International album pages go through 1975, a decision I made so my world collection goes up through my childhood and immediately afterward when I was still collecting. I pretty much stopped collecting in the 1970s because of the usual -- employment demands, marriage, kids -- but began again after retirement. I'm also "almost 70" now, too, so I'm planning out my many collections. I did keep buying stamps all those years through postal accounts, new issue services, and some dealer purchases followed by ebay purchases. But I just stored them in stock books because of lack of time. Time to start putting them into albums. I just need another 30 years! Forty would be even better. Cough cough.

If I do buy the first group of Vintage Reproduction pages I suppose I could add them to the album without removing the existing 1840-1900 pages just to see how that would work. Not sure about that, though. I'll do some album browsing to see what that would look like. Or I might remove some, but not others. I can also do some rough counting of the 1840-1900 pages just to see how many there might be. If we get a rainy day, maybe I'll count all the pages up to 1900.

As noted above, if I removed the current 19th century pages from A-Z, it would be about 183 sheets of paper or 366 "pages" (they're two-sided). I'd be adding 815 (one-sided) VR pages. So that would mean removing almost 400 pages (that's only a guess) and putting in about 800 pages -- I think. Don't take these numbers too seriously. That will require another binder or two, but that's not too bad. I think the entire set of VR pages requires maybe 13-14-15 of the "small" Scott binders (which I think are actually quite large). Just for 1840-1940! It's hard to believe, really.

As an aside, I wish Scott/Amos offered a genuinely "small" International binder instead of their current small binder which is actually pretty large. They also sell an enormous binder which they call "Jumbo" but when that's filled with pages, it's an anchor you can hardly pick up with two hands. And if you ever drop it, good luck not ripping the binding. These two binders are just too big for comfort. I find it impossible to even pick them up with one hand the current "small" binder when it's filled with pages. But since I have two hands, what's even worse is that the pages curve so dramatically that it's hard to even use the pages to mount stamps on. A binder that matches the size of Scott's old medium-sized Specialty binder (about 2.5" wide) would be ideal. They'd be much easier to use. And they'd sell more binders. I'd certainly buy a dozen of them.

I do most of my collecting in single country albums for countries whose stamps I really like. Many of these are Scott Specialty albums (my basic albums), a few Lighthouse albums (so expensive!), Lindner, Davo, a few old Minkus albums, even a couple of old Yvert & Tellier French albums. I purchased many of them used (but in good condition). Everything else (the other 80% of stamps) I'm putting into my set of Scott International albums, including duplicates. So I'm not concerned about empty spaces or even empty pages. My Big Blue album is my "warehouse" for the world's stamps that I have extra copies of or for countries I don't want a specialized album for. That's still a lot of stamps, though. A lot of pages will be end up empty, and that's fine.

Since there are quite a few countries I don't buy stamps for, I had thought at one time of removing those pages. But, I've decided to leave all pages in the albums in case I end up with some stamps for those countries, anyway. Who knows, maybe I'll suddenly be seized with a desire to buy a pile of "Sand Dunes" stamps or stamps from those awful Caribbean and African stamp factories that issue (but never actually use) Marilyn Monroe, Lady Diana, and endless sets of birds, trains, and puppies stamps! I do own eight Jerry Garcia souvenir sheets issued by Mongolia, a country he most likely never visited and where most people probably don't know who he is. Stamps can be strange. Also it's kind of fun to look even at the empty pages. And if I ever sell my Scott International albums it will be much easier if all pages are still in them.

Thanks for the good advice. Whatever I do, it will be fun. All I really need to do is buy about 50,000 more stamps!

Haha - I echo that