My question is - were additional multi year volumes sold by Minkus? Or was the only option for pages for 1977 and later the annual supplements?
The Minkus worldwide album was adopted for sale by Amos/Scott some years ago after Minkus had gone out of business. Apparently Amos/Scott thought there was enough demand to offer it for sale in addition to its own Scott International album which they'd been publishing since the 1940s or so. There is some irony here as Scott and Minkus had been competitors for quite a few years. Both companies published "specialty" (country) albums and a worldwide album. Scott albums were generally viewed as the more elegant (and more expensive) albums. That was my experience, anyway. Minkus albums sold at lower prices and originally had thinner paper (now made thicker by Scott). Minkus were fine albums but a little less prestigious than what Scott offered.
Scott International pages included spaces only for stamps you were likely to get, omitting higher value and less common stamps. Minkus included spaces for more stamps than Scott. From the 1950s and '60s onward, the pages in both albums are equally comprehensive as Scott began providing spaces for all new stamps from then on. The difference in coverage is only in pages covering the previous years. To include so many stamps without adding hundreds more pages, Minkus pages are significantly more crowded. The Minkus worldwide album sold for less than Scott. To do this, Minkus seems to have crammed as many pages as possible into very large binders. As a kid, I remember being unable to even pick them up. I still can't pick them up. Scott's regular International binder is large, but not quite as large -- meaning you can actually pick it up. The result is the Minkus worldwide album is very thick, very heavy, and has very crowded (you may prefer "full") pages with spaces for more stamps compared to the Scott International album.
Unlike the Scott International, the Minkus Global originally came in two flavors, the Master Global and the Supreme Global. The latter was more comprehensive. The Supreme Global album consisted of two volumes in the 1950s when it was first published. I'm not sure about the Master Global. A third volume was added in the 1960s for more recent stamps. I don't think the pages in the previous volumes were changed in any way when this third volume was added. Vol III was basically a "supplement" to the previous volumes. After that, Minkus continued to publish a new supplement annually.
So the answer to your question is "no," Minkus did not publish a further new "volume" after Vol III. But they did publish annual "supplements" which are basically the same thing. It's the same with Scott which publishes a new "volume" every year. Scott has always called its new pages "volumes" -- whether they covered a decade of new stamps or just one year. But, unless I'm missing something, it seems to me they're the same thing. By the 1970s, Minkus was in decline, by the 1980s the company had been sold and soon after it went out of business. Scott/Amos appear to have bought the Minkus worldwide albums in this period some time.
Scott's International album initially was an 1840-1940 volume. Scott added a 1940s volume a decade later, then a couple of 1950s volumes, a few more volumes to cover the 1960s, and so on -- ad infinitum (apparently). Each new volume is a "supplement" to the older volumes. Scott did not go back and revise the older volumes of its International, if that's what you're wondering. Well they did in minor ways -- but not much. I wish they had done some revising since some omitted stamps should have been included, and so on.
In other words, Minkus and Scott basically do the same thing. Minkus calls it a "supplement". Scott calls it a "volume".
Or maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by "additional multi year volumes"?
As you've noted, when they become aware of a problem on previously-issued pages, Scott will include a revised page in the next supplement (or is it "volume"?) to replace the offending page. That's the extent of revising that I've ever seen.
The three additional Minkus volumes you have, IV, V, and VI, are groups of supplements. I don't think Minkus ever sold them as new "volumes" – probably because Minkus had gone out of business by that time. You say your pages seem to have been revised. That might be because the older Master Global pages (with fewer stamps) are not published anymore. I imagine you have the more comprehensive Supreme pages that are now being published. Or maybe Scott/Amos is constantly fixing problems with the older Minkus pages. If they are, I've never heard of it.
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Posted 05/29/2019 12:46 pm
