By What Year Does The Scott International Album Stop Omitting (Harder To Find) Stamps?

This question concerns the Scott International ("Big Blue") albums. These albums were designed for the average collector, so for the early years of stamps, they are very selective about which stamps got included for 1840-1900 and later. Stamps which were not available to the average collector or just too expensive are omitted. The general idea was to include spaces for stamps most collectors would encounter. This isn't done perfectly. Some common stamps are omitted; some hard-to-find stamps are included, but that was their intention, anyway.

So in the early years of most countries, a lot of sets often lack spaces for higher value stamps, and in some cases entire sets are left out. The first 75 stamps of a country might have only 25 spaces for the more common stamps.

But as the years in the album go into the 20th century, the album includes a higher percentage of stamps. By the mid 20th century (presumably because more and more stamps were available fairly easily), the Scott International album becomes pretty comprehensive. By the 1950s, 60s, 70s, it seems to contain spaces for all -- or nearly all -- stamps issued. Or at least I think so.

Does anyone know -- or think they know -- at what point the Scott International becomes a comprehensive album with spaces for all (or most) stamps? At what point does it stop omitting many (or any) stamps? I'm guessing it's not until after the classic era of 1840-1940 sometime. Does the the Big Blue album become a complete album after 1940? Or only by the 1950s? Or is it earlier in the 1920s or 30s? Or later?

I own Parts I through V of the Big Blue; Part V going through 1965. My impression is that beginning with Part II (1941--), Big Blue does become more comprehensive. Bear in mind that once past the immediate post World War II years with all the occupation stamps, few stamps are scarce or rare.

A major exception is for souvenir sheets. Except for US, Big Blue does not generally provide spaces. Several of my specialty areas issued souvenir sheets in the 1940s and beyond (Portugal & colonies, Poland, Mexico). No spaces present, so I use blank quadrille pages. Have a few of the 1940s vintage Japanese souvenir sheets. Same story.

Any stamps I might have past 1965; like for 1965-1974 Portuguese colonials, go mostly on blank quadrille pages with a few pages from collections I've purchased being filtered in. Hope this helps.

Thee seems to be little reason for some of the omissions in part one. When I used it I noted there was no space provided for Switzerland B1, the first Pro Juventute issue of 1913, not an expensive stamp by any means. I could find other examples. My guess is that this was due to an editorial decision made 60-70 years ago for reasons no one now recalls.

Drew-

Big Blue covers about 35,000 stamps out of 75,000 possibilities from 1840-1940.

The Minkus Supreme is perhaps 20% more comprehensive during this era.

From 1940-49, Big Blue is increasingly more comprehensive, but not 100%. Neither Big Blue nor the Minkus Supreme have spaces for souvenir sheets.

Big Blue and the Minkus after 1950 or so seem to be equally comprehensive, close to if not 100% coverage ( again minus the souvenir sheets).

Scott needs a do-over for the 1840-1940 albums.

Just another reason why I use Steiner pages.

It does seem like the Scott International is pretty close to comprehensive from about 1950 or so. I wonder what stamps they still left out from that point on? I'm sure rarities are left out. And I'm sure perf varieties are omitted. The Swedish standard is to collect one of each perf variety. Booklet stamps are collected with perfs on the right side of the stamp and on the left side -- two stamps required for each booklet stamp. Big Blue doesn't do that. I wonder if Scott continues to omit the high values of sets after the 1940s as they did for the earlier period?

It would be interesting to have real numbers showing how inclusive the Scott International is for each decade from abut 1900 onward. (So someone get right on this!) Does the comprehensiveness kist get steadily greater? Or does it take one giant leap at some point?

If the Big Blue album for 1840-1940 includes 35,000 of the more common stamps out of 75,000 issued, that's under half!. (47% to be more precise) That does seem awfully skimpy.

- For those 35,000 stamps, the 1840-1940 Volume I includes 2288 "pages" (each double-sided sheet is two pages) using 1144 sheets of paper.
- That averages 15 stamps per page. I'd say that even a casual browse through the album supports that average per page figure.

- Subway Stamp's "Vintage Reproduction" reprint of the brown version includes a huge 5152 pages (printed on one side of the paper). That's 2288 Blue pages vs 5152 Brown pages with the Brown having more than twice as many pages.
- For sheets of paper (which matters in housing all that paper) it's 1144 Blue (two sided) vs. 5152 Brown -- an enormous difference. The Brown has more than 4x the number of sheets of paper as the Blue.
- Brown pages will need about 12+ binders to hold them (at 400 pages per binder) compared to the Blue's 4 or 3 binders (if you cram them a bit).

That ought to make you think long and hard before trying to tackle the whole enchilada of the Brown-VR version of this album!

I wonder how comprehensive the Brown-VR album actually is? How close does it come to the 75,000 stamps? (Anyone in the mood to count this, also!!?) And even the Brown must leave out some stamps, so I wonder which stamps are left out.

- The Brown album averages 14.5 stamps per page, almost identical to the Blue album. That seems to confirm the 75,000 figure as close to the actual number of stamps in the Brown album. I'm assuming that any album publisher has some kind of stamps-per-page standard as part of the "look" of its albums. Most album publishers do this from one album to another. I don't know this, of course, but it seems reasonable to assume that Scott would want pages in both albums to look similar. Compare Scott to Minkus. Minkus' style was to really cram stamps onto most of their album pages -- the Minkus Supreme compared to the Big Blue album if you need a visual of this.

That's my math homework for today. Plus a few more questions. Cheers!

Interesting assignment, Drew. I know of the Brown albums in passing. But at this point in time, I am for better or worse "married" to the Big Blue. I know some posters here swear by the Steiner pages, Timm. They don't fit my Big Blue binders and I have no desire to switch systems now.

If I remember correctly, the Big Blue Volume I grew out of what was originally called the International Junior Postage Stamp Album. I assume junior because the Brown albums were the top of the line albums. The Junior albums were hard bound and included a portion of all of the stamps from 1840 to the year of the edition. These were printed every few years (?) up to at least 1939. Somewhere along this time, Scott made the decision to make the International Big Blue albums loose leaf. The last Junior album are very close (maybe identical) to the Volume I. So Volume I was never very comprehensive.

During my first philatelic life before I sold out in 2004 to support a business venture, I had a setup of vintage browns to 1940 then blues up to I think 2000. Basically after the early 1960s the pages are more like yearly supplements and include all stamps (but not souvenir sheets or minor varieties) for that period. After 1949 its is prob 95-98% complete, a few things missed on occasion but not like pre-40 Blue.

So, for those who collect world and only really use scott for a catalog, vintage brown + blues gives a pretty complete coverage of main number varieties.

When I came back to collecting the second the second time after I inherited my dads collections and part time dealer stock, I decided printed albums weren't for me between both lack of dedicated spaces and cost of stamp mounts (I collect mint, and hinged stamps a I would mount rather than hinge again to prevent risk of future hinge damage).

I eventually settled on Vario F binders and pages for my collections, since I can then include whatever minor varieties I want in any order I want (chronological, with back of books positioned where they fit time-wise rather than at the end) and not have the constant cost of stamp mounts eating into my budget. You can get vario pages in packs of 25 double sided off ebay or Amazon for @US$20-25, and can use either lighthouse binders or just regular 3-ring binders. It is a system that works for me, in the end its all a matter of trial and error til you find what system works best for you.

The gold standard for following the current Scott catalogue (spaces for all the current major numbers) is ironically not the Browns, but Steiner/Palo.

The Brown spaces are frozen in time - based on a Scott catalogue from 1920-1940.

Not that they aren't still a nice choice - but not a perfect choice.

I noticed that Michael Rogers ( well known China dealer etc), when he recently. retired, he had a desire to collect WW 1840-1940. He chose the Browns in 19 binders ($2000) as sold by Subway.

@jkjblue - does steiner/palo follow the general scott catalog for 1840/1940 or the Scott classic specialzed 1840/1940 and include minor varieties etc?

If the former, might make a nice new alternative version for Steiner to move into that included all varieties major and minor listed in classic specialized.

Overall, Steiner is content to just provide spaces for Scott's major numbers.

Steiner does, at times, include spaces for Scott minor numbers. It tends to occur where the "Scott minor numbers" are, in fact, treated as major numbers by those that collect the country.

For instance, Steiner includes, for Bosnia and Herzegovina, nine spaces for the major number (Scott 1-2, 4-10) 1879-94 (All Type I, except 1/2n) "Coat of Arms" issue, and ten spaces for the minor number 1894-98 (All Type II except 6b (Type III))"Coat of Arms" issue.

I use blank quadrille pages for minor numbers, as part of the same sets of major numbers. Good example are the Portuguese colonial surcharged values from early 1900s. I don't use the printed pages for colonials from the earlies into the 1920s unless I got Specialized pages from a purchased collection.

Climber Steve says he adds quadrille pages (to his Big Blue album, I assume) for "minor numbers". That makes me wonder why Scott doesn't publish a set of supplemental pages for missing stamps that could be added between existing Big Blue pages where needed. If each country in the blue album had one, two, three, or four of these additional pages, that would go pretty far toward making the blue album fairly comprehensive. And it would "only" add a few hundred more pages. I'd buy that supplement. Amos would make a little more money, too. Obviously I'm assuming that hell would have to freeze over before Amos/Scott would ever undertake a redesign the "frozen in time" pages of the Big Blue albums. This fairly simple (and cheap) solution might be the most practical solution to Big Blue's lack of inclusiveness.

This, and re-manufacturing Scott's earlier narrower Big Blue binders so you can actually pick them up with one hand would be a real help.

I'm going to designate 1950 as the beginning of the "comprehensive" era of Scott International pages. Certainly by 1960, pages in that album provided spaces for virtually all stamps issued by every country.

It may be a little ironic that Scott abandoned its comprehensive worldwide album, the brown album, moving its name, "Scott International," to its junior album (which was anything but comprehensive), turning it into a looseleaf album with far few spaces than any brown album collector had been used to, but then that junior album gradually became comprehensive again with each supplement of new pages which included more and more spaces for stamps -- since nearly all modern stamps were affordable for most collectors. What started as a junior album to a much bigger album took over the name of the comprehensive album even though it was hardly comprehensive, then gradually turned back into a comprehensive album again--at least after about 1950.

Of course the comprehensive brown album pages weren't abandoned. They became the Scott Specialty albums we have today.