Question Regarding Scott Internal Blue Album

I have Scott's International Blue Album with all sections through 1975 in 18 binders. I'm currently using a 2010 Scott Catalog to compile a spreadsheet want list by Scott number for the stamps I'm missing. I'm continually surprised by the differences between the album and the catalog and between which stamps are included and which are not. It's hard to believe that the album and catalog were produced by the same company - do they not speak to each other?

Here are a couple of issues that have been puzzling me:

Unlike the rest of the album, all the pages for 1970 through 1973 have the Scott numbers beneath a smaller version of the stamp image, and often with the incorrect Scott number. Is this the case with all Blue albums? Or just an issue with mine?

Another example - Paraguay has no stamps at all for 1963 through 1965 , 1967, 1969 through 1970, 1972 and 1974 in the album but the catalog shows maybe hundreds of stamps. How do I know I'm not just missing pages?

And why does something as simple as the sequence of countries not match, Persia (Iran) in the album and Iran (Persia) in the catalog as just one example?

Although I collect with Minkus albums, I can answer part of your question.

The following notice appears in an old Scott Catalog (1971) that I happen to have:



Scott at that time was acting like the "stamp police," and put hundreds of questionable stamps into their For the Record section. I think most of the stamps in those lists have finally been added to the catalogs. The only exception I know of in my 2020 catalog is Equatorial Guinea where you will find a list similar to the old For the Record section.

My surmise is that if they didn't list the stamp in the catalog, they weren't going to be in the album supplements. The catalog entries for Paraguay are seriously skimpy for the years you mention. I don't know if they issued pages for Paraguay in later supplements or just left it like your album pages.

Hope this helps.
Bill

Iran used to go by the name Persia until a certain point in time. Not sure exactly, but certainly by 2010 it was Iran so the location in the catalog changed. There are many more examples of countries that changed name so what you see in the old albums might be listed under the modern name in the catalog. The catalog numbers are sometimes changed over the years as well, but there are also definitely mistakes made. Your best bet is to use the newer reference for the want list.

The Shah changed the internationally used name to Iran in the mid-1930s. Presumably the Scott pages predate that, whilst the catalogue has been appropriately amended.

In general, catalogues list far too many dubious issues, rather than too few.

There'll also be the odd error in the albums - for example, Scott invented an Anglo-American Military Government for France that didn't exist.

Big Blue is not intended to be a complete collection album. It is intended to list stamps that are attainable for regular people. You need the Specialized International for more issues. You really need country-specific albums if you want to go in-depth, Scott is a US company and won't go into the detail that SG will for British Empire stamps, for example. Similar for Yvert, Michel, etc.

https://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/ is the resource for the pre-1940's stuff, which is where most of the stamps are left off. There is a spreadsheet available that I use for the pre-1940s stuff.

I collect Big Blue 1840-1940 and hit 30,500 this week.
I have copies of all of the Brown's, and I have the 50's edition of the Minkus Supreme Global.

But, I haven't heard of a "Specialized International" album. Are you referring to the Brown's or the Vintage Reproductions? That would definitely get a more complete representation, but yet not totally complete.

Just curious. Thanks! Ray

I think he means the numerous Scott individual country albums with the green binders, which do have spaces in many instances for minor number listings not included in them Blues. Scott has been through a number of owners over the years, and Amos has picked up Minkus and now sells Shaubeck, which offers more detailed spaces in their supplements as well. Different owners explains some years having the Catalogue numbers printed in the space or not. The Minkus numbers differ because they had different treatment of numbering definitives, commemoratives and airmail issues, etc. over the years, mainly to avoid copywrite problems with Scott. As others have said the blue albums were not meant to be comprehensive, the Browns in their day more so, the Green Country Specialty albums the most in line with the Catalogues. Editorial decisions on what or what not to list have changed over time against the purists to the thought that in most cases inclusion of suspect stamps is better than not. Though some old timers and purists probably view additional listings for Paraguay and many others countries as DEI today. And the Scott editors for both the catalogues and albums face the problems of internal country situations affecting postal operations and stamp production both in and out of countries, such as European printers releasing " stamps " for various topics and omnibus issues on contract and without approval of who ever is running the countries at the time. And finally the gross scarcity of comprehensive new issue dealers now, leaves the editors with even less or much delayed info on the validity and actual postage use of new issues appearing.
With the US collecting base contracting, the rising cost of printing, marketing and enough sales to justify both catalogue and albums production, even with print to order, it is amazing anyone is still producing what Amos/Scott does. In another few years, who knows.

Thanks so much for all the replies. I now have a better understanding of the history behind the catalog vs the album. I do have the specialized albums for the countries that I collect in-depth. I wonder why Scott, or someone, doesn't issue corrected, updated or replacement pages? I always worry about someone spilling coffee on one of my pages, in an album which I have over $3,000 invested!

Here's another question - how can I tell if any pages are missing from my Scott's International Blue album? I've noticed that some of the major gaps are entire ranges of numbers, rather than scattered omissions. It just makes me wonder.

I don't think there is a way to identify missing pages in a Big Blue. The pages are not numbered. The first problem you're going to run into is, what edition? There are probably at least a dozen different editions (for volume 1 at least) with minor to major changes between each. Sounds like your collection has the pages reordered by country which makes it even more confusing because most likely it is mixing different editions of different volumes. Maybe that's why Scott doesn't number those pages. One thing I do is scan the pages into a PDF before I start putting stamps. So I can figure out the page number from there.

Did anybody solve the Paraguay 1963-65 mystery? I just checked a couple different copies I have of Volume 5 (which is supposed to cover 1960-65) and neither of them had 63-65 for Paraguay either (only -62) For all the inconsistencies with Scott International, I think Volume 5 is the most confusing. Scott currently sells volumes "5" and "5A" which are both A-Z (unlike other years where there is "4A" and "4B" etc organized A-L and L-Z) and they both cover 1960-65 but the years are not evenly split some countries have 60-62 in "5", and 63-65 in "5A" but others are reverse or others are only in one but not the other. So I suspect you have "5" but not "5A" and that's where the Paraguay 1963-65 pages are, (but I cannot fully confirm because I don't have 5A either).

tsmatx, I believe you are correct. There was a V and then later it was broken up into two parts, although there are oddities since my 5A says stamps from 1960-65 and it is really 63-65. No Paraguay in VA either and I made a blank sheet to stick those in. I do recall some conversation about this somewhere.

I do have both part 5 (1960-1963) and 5A (1963-1965) so I can't explain the missing Paraguay stamps. I have all 20 parts through part 10 (1975) reordered by country. I have had to number the pages within each country, lightly in pencil in the bottom corner of each page, so that I can connect them to a spreadsheet containing the Scott numbers that I'm missing. I wish that Scott had printed the pages with serial numbers. I can imagine a system whereby you could purchase print-on-demand individual pages, either replacement, updated or corrected.

Unlike the rest of the album, all the pages for 1970 through 1973 have the Scott numbers beneath a smaller version of the stamp image, and often with the incorrect Scott number. Is this the case with all Blue albums? Or just an issue with mine?
I'm not sure about the incorrect Scott numbers, but that may be because Scott later had to renumber some stamps in their catalogue which they do sometimes, though fairly rarely, but of course the earlier incorrect numbers remained on your pages. Just a guess, though. In fact, I've never seen Scott International pages with catalogue numbers in the stamp boxes, but my pages are at least a decade old now and maybe that's a recent thing? They now add catalogue numbers to their Scott Specialty albums after years of not doing so, and they may now be doing the same to their International pages. Not sure.

Another example - Paraguay has no stamps at all for 1963 through 1965 , 1967, 1969 through 1970, 1972 and 1974 in the album but the catalog shows maybe hundreds of stamps. How do I know I'm not just missing pages?
Paraguay is one of a group of countries that flooded the stamps market with endless amounts of stamp "junk" for many years as a source of revenue – like a tax on stamp collectors. Paraguay, if I recall, issued an enormous number of souvenir sheets collectors might feel obligated to buy. This approach to issuing stamps has rightfully been condemned, but I suppose it is every country's right to issue whatever it wants. Scott in its catalogue tried for some time to refuse to list these issues, believing them to be non-postal in intent (seems about right to me as you hardly ever see these items used). If non-postal, do they belong in a stamp catalogue? Maybe not. Scott still does this in its catalogues, choosing to include lists of stamps without images or comment when it thinks they are not postal in intent. There are some pages for Congo-Zaire like this and for many other countries, too. I assume your pages were published in the middle of all this. And Scott which was refusing to consider them actual postage stamps, also left them out of their albums. So, I doubt you're missing pages. You can contact the publisher at AmosAdvantage.com, Scott's website, and inquire. Someone there will be able to offer an explanation.

And why does something as simple as the sequence of countries not match, Persia (Iran) in the album and Iran (Persia) in the catalog as just one example?
But what is the "correct sequence" when countries change their names. German Southwest Africa became just "Southwest Africa" for many years and then became independent as "Namibia". Initially, it would have been listed with Germany as its colony, then listed with South Africa as its "mandated territory," and only later put in the "N's" as an independent country. In my Scott Specialty Namibia album (yes, there is one!), I have all three groups of pages with their different names which makes it that much more interesting. I wouldn't want them all renamed with the current name since that would misrepresent the history.

You'll know other examples of this, I'm sure.Persia-Iran is one well-known example as is Burma-Myanmar and others. Should Taiwan be listed by that name or by Republic of China, it's actual name, or as "Formosa," its much older name?

If catalogue and album publishers changed the names of countries immediately, there's always the concern that the "new name" might not stick for long and then all the listings in catalogue and album would revert to their old name which would get confusing and messy. So catalogue and album publishers seem to prefer to wait until the new name kind of "settles in" permanently before they change names in their publications.

[continued]

[continued from above]
I inquired a couple years ago to Amos Advantage (the Scott website) why half my Thailand pages said "Siam" and the others said the newer name, "Thailand" and they were happy to send me the few early replacement pages with the newer name on them – but I don't think they should have had to, and I don't know why I even cared? I certainly don't mind now if the early pages say "Siam" and the later ones "Thailand". After all, those were the names the country used, so it's historically accurate to do this.

As for why your catalogue has one name and your album the other, mine don't. My Scott catalogue has all Persia-Iran stamps under "Iran" and all Siam-Thailand stamps under "Thailand". Is your catalogue an older one, by any chance?

As for Scott's very strange volume numbering in their International albums, who knows why? Once they labeled an album with a number, they seemed unwilling to change it. At times consecutive page years would be included in the album the normal way with the later pages in a later numbered volume, but sometimes they'd split the volume into a volume "V"A and a volume "V" B or some such thing with something like A-M pages in the former and N-Z in the latter. Which seems quite odd to me. Maybe over time different editors preferred to do things differently? It's hard to renumber a volume later because you confuse everyone that way. My International albums have been completely rearranged into alphabetical order from A's in the first volume and Z's in Volume 39 or 40 which seems vastly more logical, and is much easier to deal with. I hate the idea of a country's pages being in multiple volumes. That would drive me absolutely nuts. That's not Scott's fault, of course, as they issue new pages for all A-Z countries every few years and you can put them all into one binder or distribute them into many binders, as you wish. My Scott International albums end at 1975, a pretty arbitrary date I chose "just because" I needed to have an end somewhere.

Also, as ray.mac mentioned about the term "Scott Specialized International Album," there is no such album. It may refer to Scott's separate country albums which they call their "Specialty" albums. It's probably not a good idea to invent a name since someone is going to start looking for the "Specialized International Album" that does not exist. It's either (a) the Scott worldwide "International" album in many volumes or (b) Scott's "Specialty" (country) albums. Combining the two names gives me whiplash.

And, as noted, the International was not originally designed to include spaces for all stamps issued, but only a "representative" collection, meaning the stamps collectors were most likely to get (the less expensive ones, including the lower values in as set, but not the more expensive higher values). That policy began in the late 19th century when the album first was published and pretty much continued well into the period when the Specialty albums were first published in the early postwar era. Those separate country albums include spaces for all stamps from a country. And, by then, nearly all modern stamps were readily available, so Scott's International pages published after the war include spaces for all stamps, though not for the earlier pages which were left "as is" with spaces only for the more common stamps as they were first designed. Scott never edited the 1840-1940 pages in any way, as far as I know. Probably not economical to do that.

Anyway I hope this helps a little.

I currently own an eight volume set through 1972; I haven't done much with it for quite awhile; one major drawback is no pages for Russia. I never used them and have a Scott album for them, I put those pages aside and now cannot locate them. I'd like the bookcase space back but shipping is over $30 for two volumes which comes to $120 plus.

These have a market but missing some pages, I just don't know. Suggestions?

Stamps1962, I search ebay daily for pages for Denmark with the second set of waves on p.3 so there is at least some demand for country-specific pages. My interests go to 1960, and I bought all mine used by volume (I combined the post-1940's to be by country not by volume, but left the pre-1940 in its own). I would buy an entire volume if it had the pages rather than pay $150 for a new set.