I Bought An Interesting Scott Collection

I bought a Worldwide collection in 20 volumes. It seems the collection was assembled in the mid 1940s by purchasing regional Scott Specialty Albums ie;




I was surprised that it was possible to assemble a WW collection in this manner but so far I have not found any missing countries.

Most of the collection was housed in old green Specialty binders that were in excellent condition in spite of their age, but the best part for me were the 5 volumes in Brown Binders;




I've never seen these before and I really like them.

Is anyone else familiar with these Scott items?

Great purchase. I wrote about the annual albums a couple of times on my blog. They started with the "Provisional" albums in 1929. The dates for the stamps in the annual albums match the corresponding Scott catalog coverage and thus are not complete years. One of Scott's ads mentions the "annual albums which provide spaces for stamps issued between publications of the Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue." The big question is whether there was an album for 1939-1940. The Vintage Reproductions edition of the Browns covers 1939-40, but it is possible that the pages were reconstructed from the Green Specialty series.

Those are very interesting - thanks for showing them!

The history of Scott albums can be traced fairly well through the ad section in the back of their catalogs. There is a bit of a lag in publishing updates for the recent years back then. The first listing I see for the "Provisional Album" is in the 1927 catalog:


And continuing through the 1934 catalog:


The 1937 catalog announcing the first "Annual Album". Interesting to note that a previous owner has penciled-in additional dates through "1939-40":


1941 catalog listing 5 Annual Albums available through 1938-39.


I do not have a 1942 Scott catalog handy to see if a 1939-40 Annual Album is marketed, but on an album publishing tangent, the 1942 catalog announces the discontinuance of another series:

Those albums were $100 and up in today's dollars. They were well made though.

Very Nice Albums!

John Becker, thank you for posting those images.

Nice stuff! Thanks for sharing.

Back to Ken's original comment about assembling a worldwide collection in Scott Specialty albums. Around 1940, 1941, or so, Scott stopped selling its bound International album in its hardbound brown covers, as can be seen in the "To Be Discontinued" advertisement among John's wonderful scans of album advertisements above.

For remaining worldwide collectors, Scott soon after began selling the blue covered worldwide album we know as the Scott International album. It was created from pages that had formerly been used in their Scott "Junior" International album, meaning that it had spaces for only more common stamps for a "representative" collection of the world's stamps. That's the same blue-bound International album we have today which has now grown to a huge number of volumes. It was now published in a two-post loose leaf format, allowing adding of later pages.

You couldn't do that with the earlier hardbound brown albums which seem to have turned into somewhat of a publishing mess. After 1900 or so, new hardbound volumes had to be issued every decade or so. A second volume was published covering 1900-20, another for just the 1920s, then two or three volumes for the 1930s alone. You can't keep that up for long. Adding annual page supplements is much easier. At first, Scott tried quarterly supplements (again thanks to the ads), then they tried binding annual supplements into hardbound volumes, then they gave up entirely on the Brown album, tuning it into the green Specialty albums series.
Taken directly from the old Brown International pages, Specialty albums have the very same comprehensive page layouts.

The new blue International which began as the earlier one-volume junior worldwide album, was soon providing spaces for all new stamps by about the 1950s. It became entirely comprehensive from that point on. Scott did not go back and add spaces for stamps that had been omitted when it was the "Junior" album, unfortunately. Too complicated to redo all those pages, I imagine. That means the current International album's 1840-1940 pages can be a bit spotty in coverage at times. But from about 1950 on, it's pretty complete coverage.

In any case, the collector of these 20 very early Scott Specialty albums purchased some of the first of their kind. They covered stamps comprehensively from 1840 to their publication date in the mid-1940s. They wouldn't have the large number of pages or the number of binders modern Specialty albums require. Most were in one volume.

As the ad said, "Specialty albums had replaced the (worldwide) International albums in popularity". But not for this collector, apparently, who wanted to collect the world!

The larger regional Specialty albums which covered groups of countries eventually became albums for the separate countries. You can still collect much of the world in green Scott Specialty albums, but not all. Scott has discontinued some of the early Specialty albums.

Drew M wrote: "That means the current International album's 1840-1940 pages can be a bit spotty in coverage at times."

That's an understatement. I've phased out the Part 1 International pages for my advanced collections. But there are even omissions in the post 1940 International parts. As an example, the three semi-postals issued by Poland in 1946 for education do not have places in the International, even though the recent catalogue is only $15 each for mint. I found some blank spots on the 1940s semi-postal page for the stamps, but have had to use blank quadrille pages for the miniature sheets.

There are indeed quite a few omissions in the 1940s coverage, although much better than pre-1940 of course. For the 1950s, I've found really only the officials consistently missing. Not sure about later, as don't collect past then. So for any country I'm quite interested in, now doing my own pages or Palo.