My Big Blue Journey

 

November 9, 2023

 I started my journey towards an attempt to complete a Volume 1, Scott International Postage Stamp Album, (which henceforth will be referred to as Big Blue, or BB) in January of 2017, after looking at Jim Jackson's Blog for over a year.  I collected the world back when I was a teenager in the 70's, but focused after this time on U.S. only, and then walked away from the hobby for several years.  

After a hiatus of 10-20 years after college, I came back to the hobby and started to specialize in some U.S. areas, as U.S. collectors usually find after some time, that we can't afford everything we want.  So, first I studied and collected the Washington-Franklin series, and when I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get what I wanted, and the offerings were probably fakes anyways, I moved on to 2 other areas that stuck with me, and will be there ongoing-- the One Cent 1851-57 series, which I studied and began to plate, and the various different shades of the Three Cent 1861 stamp and covers.  

So, I spent several years with these two areas, scouring through pages of eBay every night looking for misidentified stamps others were selling.  THUS, the name of my blog, Bottom Feeder Philatelics.

Jim's blog isn't just about collecting the Big Blue album-- it is a masterpiece of a road map to show the student how to complete the BB.  One cannot collect every stamp from the first hundred years of stamp usage, and by using the BB, it is possible, but difficult.  Instead of having every single stamp in the BB from every country in the world, the album has a "representative sample" from each country.  BB was originally the Scott International Junior Stamp Album, which evolved to the BB in around 1941.  So, instead of having every variety, every different watermark and perforation for every stamp in every issue, the BB has a "representative sample".  On his blog, Jim offers a checklist for the BB, which is something that was never offered by Scott, and an in-depth description and blog entry for each country.

The BB that I am using is a 1947 edition.  Sounds kind of like using a 1947 Model A!  The first thing that I did was remove the U.S. pages, because this is not a U.S. collection for me-- I already have a U.S. collection.  I then had to make some changes to the checklist, which is based on a later-dated BB, and many changes have been made to the coverage over the years.  Then a lot of counting....

Ultimately, I have arrived at a total of 34,980 spaces for stamps in my BB.  I began with 2 BB's that I purchased on eBay, and combined the inventory, and switched pages to keep the best of both albums.  I had another smaller world album, and in January of 2017, I began my journey with 11,204 stamps in the BB, needing some 23,000 to fill.

Fast forward to today, and my current inventory is at 29,284, and I need 5,696 to complete my BB.  Those are the tough ones.  Not necessarily the most expensive, but in some cases, just not available online, or from dealers at shows or via the mail.

A lot has happened since the start.  I have purchased many different BBs online.  I have purchased many different box lots in auctions that were in the U.S. and in other countries.  I've also made some strategic decisions on how to pay for this collection-- I decided after about a year that retirement was coming up in a few years (and has passed), and my bank account wasn't going to support the $1000's that it was going to take.  More on this in the next post.....   Ray