The collectors material I use

So to complete a stamp album with preprinted pages what does one need as guidance?

As a european and living in France THE catalogue used here is Yvert & Tellier.

I  was made aware by Jim that there exists a special catalogue by Y & T related to 1840 - 1940 period: Classiques du monde.

Very nice but a little bit out of reach for my purse.

That gave me the idea to work with some older catalogues and I came up with the idea of working with catalogues I was able to acquire and were issued as close to the 1840 - 1940 period.

So I was able to acquire an Yvert & Tellier catalogue des Timbres du Monde issued in 1940.

It's the last one which was issued as a hard bound copy with the second world war and paper scarce the 41-45 editions are not very beautiful at all.

The 1940 mentions stamp issues till 1938/1939 so that's ok for me.

Then of course I needed to have a Scott's catalogue because otherwise my classification of the stamps would become more than difficult.

I found a 1943 edition of Scott's Standard Postage Stamp catalogue - Combined Edition.

So here came in an american philatelist and correspondant, John. I let the catalogue be send to him and he was so kind to send it on.

By coincidence I stumbled on a small book containing a  pricelist related to the USA - CSA - Canada stamps and which was released in 1964.

It contains a lot of stamp pictures and has Scott's numbers so that's a nice addition (for me) as well.

Then last but not least there's Big Blue's checklist as established by Jim Jackson and put into a pdf by Chris Whitehouse. My thanks go to them for their work since it really is a wonderful instrument to use when searching / looking for stamps to put in Big Blue.

For anyone interested, the checklist is available here at Big Blue 1840 - 1940.

Here's my copy.

So these are the worktools I will use to check and verify when acquiring stamps to complete my Scott's International Part 1.

Trouble in town !

When acquiring my copy of Scott's International Part 1 - Big Blue my seller told me the pages of the United States and Confederate States were missing;-)

As I was told common practice by american collectors who collect their countries stamps in special stamp albums.

So here I start with a handicap.

Anyone able to help me out with these pages by any chance?

Thanks in advance.

Why a blog dedicated to Scott's International Part 1 Big Blue ?

This blog is dedicated to Scott's International Part 1 aka Big Blue, containing space for 33.933 stamps issued between 1840 - 1940.

My goal is to complete it as much as possible, well to complete it to say it bluntly.

I wish to show you the process how my collection will grow (at least I hope) and eventually some more in-depth posts depending of course of the time available.

I discovered the existence of the Scott's International Part 1, thanks to Keijo Kortelainen and Jim Jackson who collect worldwide and have excellent webblogs (see the links on the left side).

My curiosity was aroused and I bought a 1969 edition of Big Blue on ebay.

Not containing a lot of stamps but at least it was available for my limited purse.

I'm at the moment making an inventory of the stamps in my Big Blue thanks to the excellent checklist made by ChrisW and will post the results.

My Scott's International Part 1 will be completed steadily by stamps I own already and are for the moment in my stampbooks.

And on the other hand by ongoing acquisitions, I bought some pages of two south american countries, as well another stampbook with older stamps, and acquired some stamps at some online swap/sell site.

And you too can contribute by proposing stamps (which you have multiple times) from your feeder albums for swap, sale.

Wouldn't it be nice if other collectors of Big Blue would join in and we could exchange stamps so all our Big Blue books would fill steadily.

Other stamp swaps communities exist of course, but here it's reduced at or specifically for stamps present in Big Blue.

I also created a Facebook Group which could make swaps perhaps easier?