How About A Big Blue 1840-1940 Thread?

On the subject of "Schoolboy binder crowd " yes include me in that group .

I want my money on the pages of my albums ,not have a lot of fancy book binders on a overloaded bookshelves .If you want to get laughed at try going into any stamp auction firm and tell them how much you spend on stamp supplies and albums ........you will get a negative respond and a laugh .

Floortrader:

Actually, in the sense that I meant, you definitely would not be in the schoolboy binder crowd. What I was trying to say (which I obviously did not make clear) were those purists who consider anything sized 8.5x11 to be in the "schoolboy binder" category, something to be frowned upon. I believe that 8.5x11 is the best practical choice for the average collector. It requires no large format printer and you have a host of paper/binder possibilities.

I agree with your excellent points regarding the resale value of fancy albums, and etc.

John

GeoffHa:

Generally, my idea is to replace the Big Blue/Deep Blue/Whatever Blue 1840-1940 First Century of Philately with Final Blue, the only easily editable solution.

You can do the same thing with Steiner (almost 7,000 pages) and with the high end versions of the Blue - both of which are quite expensive brand new or when printed.

The capacity to fiddle (easily) would be the main reason to do it...

John

I've been using a modified version of one of the spreadsheets on Jim's Big Blue Blog to track my counts. I added a bunch of rows to split larger countries up into their various parts: regular issue, airmail, semi, etc. The inventory piece and the checklist piece of this journey of mine AIN'T easy!!

2 problems I run into:
-- The bigger one- is failing to cross something off of the checklist when I've acquired it. I try to be so vigilant with this, but I must miss some from time to time. The end result is that I've accidently bought the same stamp twice, and this has happened a bunch of times.
-- The lesser of the problems is that the Inventory count can be off. So about once a year, I make sure to go back and recount everything. It's a monumental task, but I really want to know where I stand. This also brings out the total nerd, OCD, ADD in me!

So, the good news is, that somewhere I missed adding over 150 stamps to my Inventory spreadsheet, and I've crossed the 27,000, and needing less than 8000 milestones without knowing it.

For those trying to complete BB #1, have you run into any of this?
Thanks for all of the responses thus far!!!!

I had a look at the Big Blue many years ago when I acquired one (or one containing the foreign pages) as part of a box-lot. It didn't work for me, largely because of the artificial separation of air-mail and charity stamps, and also because the previous owner had added some post-1940 pages, which made it even harder to follow.

What I bought several years ago were Gibbons reprints of its old Ideal and Imperial albums. These were fastbound albums that Gibbons had abandoned because of the increasing impracticality of use.. In 1936 (the death of George V), it produced "permanent" editions of each, and abandoned the worldwide approach. The reprints were based on these permanent editions.

The Ideal originally appeared in various forms - all world, Empire only, foreign only. The reprint groups the foreign countries. Its coverage is wider than the Big Blue, in that it includes all issues, although it excludes officials and dues. I've come and gone with using it. I used to have the bulk of my pre-1936 foreign collection there, but much of the contents migrated to individual country albums. But I enjoy using it to put in miscellaneous stamps I find in general auction lots. Here's a page



The Imperial was a much more thoroughgoing album. It too was originally available on a worldwide basis, but the permanent version is restricted to the Empire. This is still where I keep my main QV-GV collection, although the albums are rather too sophisticated for my collection. My post-GV Empire/Commonwealth material is on quadrille in springbacks. In recent years, Gibbons ahs revamped its Commonwealth range, and expensive, multi-volume albums are available for the period from 1840 to 1962. This is one of my better pages



The fastbound albums often appear at auction, and are an attractive, traditional way of presenting a collection of classic and middle-period stamps. Albums with similar coverage were produced elsewhere in Europe, by Schaubek and others, and these too sometimes appear at auction.

The drawback of much of the A4-type material available on the web seems to me to be its poor design and small page size. It is, of course, for each collector to decide whether s/he cares about the appearance of a collection. I agree with Floortrader that expensive albums cut no ice at auction. Where I differ from him is that, if I acquired lots in such albums, I'd keep them and ditch the Steiner pages.

Ray, I haven't run into any of the accounting issues you mention - but only because I'm not a stickler for said accounting, at least not all the time. I'm planning to go through all of my accumulated backlog, sort through duplicates, then put everything into the album. Only then will I attempt to go through and update my spreadsheet, and doubtless then I'll encounter some of the same problems then!

GeoffHa ----I like your pages ,very neat and with the added notes on the pages makes it easy to follow what is being displayed .

As you said ......"of course for each collector to decide " how to hold and display their collection. You know me over the years and I have every year have gone off into a different subject . Right now working on Belgium and printing up Steiner pages {I have very limited computer smarts } for the Belgium "T" postage due stamps and those "-10% " stamps and filling up about four pages . Last year did the same thing for the Bangaldesh overprints on Pakistan stamps ,what a crazy puzzle that was ,I got those on 15 pages but nobody knows what is out there or how to display them or even catalog them correctly .
I just want them all displayed in a uniform manor in binders on my bookselve .

As an aside to floortrader. What are those -10% overprints on Belgian stamps all about. I can't seem to find a reference to them in Scotts or on the internet

Deflationary overprints "-10%" on older stamps, after liberation of Belgium (1944-1945).

Edit: below link dates the official issue to May 1946, where Wikipedia suggests 1944-1945.

Images from Dutch Wikipedia site that does mention this.

Thank you NSK. So the Belgian postal authorities were doing this? Was local or centralized. Are they in the European catalogs like Micro?

I do not know, I would expect "if any", then OCB.

The following may be of interest (requires being able to read Dutch, take a Dutch course, or use Google Translate ;-) ).

https://www.postzegelblog.nl/2009/0...ent-korting/

Edit:
Using the information from this website that the stamps were issued in 1946 the site that may not be mentioned lists them with Yvert & Tellier and Michel numbers. So, the usual European catalogues should list them (mid 700 numbers).

I believe the Belgium -10% overprint was done by the local post office with some of the more common ones being the large post offices .

This is the opposite of what Bangladesh did, where the post office did it ,plus the branch offices made their own stampers to overprint stamps . Then the government let commercial businesses create their own overprints . Now you got a wild west show of government and private firms like banks ,shipping companies ,retail stores all issueing their own overprints . How do you make a inventory or a price catalog when no one is sure who issued overprints .

I can see stamp dealers around the world buying up used and mint Pakistian stamps and creating their own overprint . Welcome to the circus . .

To answer your questions:




Yes. It was a ministerial order and local postmaster had to source the stamps (that applied the overprint).




The execution of the order was localised. 350 different overprints are known. There also are forgeries around.
Also, some values not mentioned by the order were overprinted on request.




I do not know which that is.
As posted above, Michel and Yvert & Tellier assigned numbers, but I am guessing they do not list all overprints.
The blog mentions there are catalogues but does not name them. Suggestion: contact the blog's editors if you want to know which catalogues.

Thank you again NSK. Very helpful. When I typed my last post, autocorrect changed Michel to Micro, and I did not proofread before I hit submit reply.

NSK ---- Said there are "350 different overprints are known " ok , as a worldwide collector or even a Belgium collector you may get 20 or 40 of these -10% overprints and then there are forgeries in that group .

What I been doing is to write up a seperate page for these and mount them on the page . I leave that page for a future specialist to make sense out of all the variations and which are fakes . Much like the Bangeldesh stamps ,sort them and write up a page then mount them . Again leave it to someone else to figure it out .

All comes down to your goal and what your trying to achieve and where your interest is .