Tale of Two Big Blue Editions:1969 and 1997

 I received the 1997 edition that I had on order today, and had the opportunity to compare it to my 1969 edition. Specifically, I compared the 27 countries from Aden through Basutoland that have been evaluated to date. That is a relatively small sample. But I'm ready to make some general conclusions. :-)

1) There were NO changes in 25 countries. Nil Nada Zilch. So much for major substantive editing.
Note: I took a peek at Denmark , and the wildly out of place image cut Scott 26 4 "ore" slate & blue from the 1875-79 numerals, and it is still in the 1933-40 Engraved Caravels.

2) As I suspected earlier, the country Anjuoan,and it's seven stamps- is gone.

3) The presentation has been s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d. What took 36 double-sided pages, (72 pages) in the '69, now has 62 double sided pages (124 pages) in the '97. Each stamp category has its own heading. Barbados's War Tax stamp-(singular,not plural)- gets its very own page.

 The result? Since Big Blue doesn't provide coverage for the ~10,000 "inexpensive" stamps that are still left out, one will at least have some empty space to put those extras .  :-)  I understand Scott has done this to "integrate" the coverage with volume 2 and beyond. But I collect 1840-1940. And I would like a well edited comprehensive album.

 The good news is the paper does seem better than other editions and presumably archive friendly.

Big Blue Bottom Line
With 28 years between editions, I would have liked to see more substantive changes-specifically more stamps and more enlightened stamp coverage. Scott, don't you think you could revisit your choices from 70 years ago to see if they still make sense? How about a "real" change next time? Sadly, perhaps the era of standard printed albums is over anyway, with the  "design as you want" computer printed albums available today.

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/