I also think the Minkus pages, at least in their worldwide album(s), are much too crowded to look good. I've made my peace with their also fairly crowded country albums which don't bother me as much as they once did. But I don't use them, either, except for one or two countries for which there is no Scott album.
The reason for this goes back to the beginning of Minkus. It's worth remembering that when Minkus began to publish albums, they were competing mainly with the high quality Scott albums which had been around a long time and were the accepted standard in this country. Minkus tried to undersell Scott's albums in order to get some traction in stores. Minkus did that by charging less for their albums, and that meant cutting back somewhat on what made an album cost more -- using lighter weight paper, packing more stamps on a page than Scott did, and so on. Some Minkus albums were only issued as three-ring albums, the cheapest format possible (I think Switzerland was one) which also saved them money. Even the Minkus catalogue sold for less than the Scott catalogue did.
There was no question about this back in the 1960s when Minkus and Scott competed with each other. Scott albums were more expensive but a bit more elegant, their pages less crowded, and they had better quality paper. Scott seemed to be the album of the serious, successful collector who had some money while the Minkus albums were for young people and the "common man" collector. Well, something like that.
The albums we see today are a product of Minkus trying to publish this more "affordable" and less fancy album. I don't dislike Minkus albums, but Scott albums always looked better to me. That may result partly from my youthful disdain for Minkus albums as the "cheaper" choice that didn't look as good, had thinner pages, and so on.
The Minkus worldwide albums, Master Global and Supreme Global (now the same album since only one type of page is issued in supplements these days) were intended to offer collectors two choices: A basic worldwide album that had those discount qualities but made up for it by cramming more stamp spaces into the album (Master), and a less discount album (Supreme) which looked just the same (which I always thought was odd) but had even more stamp spaces than the other one. Minkus albums were designed to be less fancy, and the crammed pages were what allowed Minkus to advertise that its albums had room for more stamps than even Scott's worldwide International album, the standard high quality world stamp album of the day.
If Minkus had had the same, or fewer, spaces for stamps, their less elegant world albums might very well not have sold well at all. And, course, in the long run Minkus did end up not making enough money to remain in business, though they were around for 30-40 years, I think. Scott albums have been in print for well over a century.
The Holy Grail of worldwide collectors, by the way, is the hope that someday someone will expand the Scott International album to include "most" stamps, omitting only the really rare stamps, instead of providing spaces for only "representative" stamps that omit many fairly common stamps. Never going to happen, though and clearly Scott missed the chance to do that a long time ago when they phased out their completely comprehensive original International album which morphed into the separate Specialty country albums and was replaced by Scott's existing "Junior" International that was rebranded as just "International".
It was a sad day in Worldwide Collector Stamp Land.
Also worth mentioning, for well over 50 years now, Scott Specialty (country) albums and Scott's international volumes have contained spaces for every stamp issued, at least the pages which cover the 1950s onward. It's the earlier pages covering 1840-1940s where a Minkus worldwide album will have more spaces for more stamps. If you can stand those overcrowded pages.
For about 1950 onward, a worldwide Scott International album will have spaces for all the stamps a Minkus Global Whatever has.
Posted 04/14/2018 7:17 pm
