Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
There's just some comfort IMO to going through the hard copy and am reluctant to make the switch.
Thoughts?
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For what it's worth, I went from hard copy to online, and then back to hard copy a few years ago. I just find it more enjoyable to have the Cat. open before me. When jumping from regular Issues, to Air Mails, to Semi-Postals, I just find it more convenient to turn a few pages. An exception to this might be a Specialized Cat., like the Specialized Michael Cat., where I have gone to identify some 19th Century Local Stamps from Germany.
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Having tried the Sg Concise online I would say hard copy any day.
Not sure if it was the "reader" or the laptop or combination of both. Trying to use the search facility was awful, trying to jump to a year or page equally so.
The pages still contain all the adverts and scrolling up, down and across made it, to my mind, useless. Never again.
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Here in the UK getting hold of Scotts catalogues are not easy. (One needs Scotts for Stamporama). I accquired a set of 2017 Discs with Scotts Catalogue on it.
To be honest using a set of discs or any other form of on-line catalogue is a right pain in the neck. You spend more time scrolling through pages even if you know what year you are looking for.
A hard copy is a joy to behold compared with computerised.
You can easily pick up the copy you need from the shelf, find the country you need and then flick through the pages for the year that you want and a quick glance gives you the set, the cat no. and the value in a quarter of the time.
Simples!
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An online copy of a hard copy catalog that is little more than searchable PDF is not taking advantage of the medium. Colnect.com allows one to find stamps fast since it far more illustrated than any general catalog. You can check cross catalog numbers. This shows the potential to the online printed book Scott.
Scott has not published a genuine CD product in long time as they offer the online subscription model. I have never tried it.
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Colnect.com is reasonable but the only "values" it gives are what members are selling a stamp at. Sometimes you have to trawl through half a dozen items to find the condition you want and of course the "prices" listed by the members vary considerably.
The online "catalogues" are fine if you are away from home and you are at an auction for example and you want to check a value.
You cannot beat a hard copy.
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I got the Scotts 2017 in pdf format from my real estate lawyer when we bought our new place in early 2020. I love it!
Saves me going to the library, except when I (rarely) need more recent CVs, and saves desk space (which is always at a premium. I use StampWorld as my search engine then just go to the catalogues for numbers/values.
The other nice thing (which adds speed to the equation) is that I can parse the pdfs. For example, I have extracted and saved all of the Germany colonies, offices, occupations, etc as separate small pdfs of a couple pages - so if I am focusing on Saar it takes me 10 seconds to pull up the 8-page Saar.pdf file
I think it's hard for most of us us geezers to switch our long-trained brains from hard copies of any books to their "online" versions. Personally, my bedside table has literally 4-6 books on the go at any time and I mow through them unmercifully. But I still can't wrap my head around reading a book on my phone/tablet/laptop/desktop no matter how much I try. Right now, I have 3 e-reader books out from the library and am just 1-6% into them with less than a week to the return date. In the same timeframe, I've read 4 complete hard-copy books.
Plus ca change!
Dave.
My "online" stamp catalogues are obviously a different beast!
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I now prefer reading books on my tablet over hard copy. I never thought I would get to that point but I did. This is especially true for Kindle books (do not have a Kindle device) since you can enlarge text that repaginates the file so no zooming in and out like a PDF. All my philatelic reading are PDF and uploaded to a cloud drive to read later on a more comfortable sofa.
At some point I do plan to scan some of my hardcopy Scott pages into a PDF but the main challenge I face is identification and this requires images. Many approval sellers do not identify so need a fast way to get a catalog number.
It helps for stamps NOT in Scott as well. Once I have a number, I can always get a value.
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A very intersting thread ,with members likes and dislikes .I have Scott's 2017 on CD which I need to use here on SOR .My gripe with Scott's is the way they price their stamps by sets it's useless when you have odd stamps ,I mean they go to the trouble of listing the value of the stamp and the description then list one price for the whole set???. one thing in their favor they list the Vienna & Philadelphia Printings of Indonesia ,( which SG do not)
I also use stampworld ,as you can go straight to the year (if you know it)
I also use SG Stamps of the World 2010 .
Brian
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Paper is much easier for me....
In the auto parts world, paper has been almost entirely replaced by online catalogs, yet I have held on to many references in paper form. After so many years, its almost muscle memory to flip to a certain page for info. I find it much easier than scrolling through PDF pages, although I am pretty well-versed in electronic cataloging, and do so daily to order parts for my dealership.
The same can be said for the Scott's catalog... since I only collect to 1969, I still use an older (2006) set, and am growing used to where each country is located by "feel". If you update catalog sets frequently, this is less applicable, I guess.
I have an entire library full of dead trees, and I hate the concept of reading on an e-book. I also tend not to recycle or trade old books, even though I rarely re-read most titles. A coworker gave me a t-shirt a few years ago that reads "It's not hoarding if it's books", and another matched it with a mug that states "Yes I really do need all these books". At least they (kind of) support my quirks.
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06:48:14am
" .... I rarely re-read most titles. ..."
To those of us from the paper generation, books, both read
and unread represent knowledge and like old keys that we
will never use are kept just in case there comes a lock that
desperately needs unlocking and among those keys there just
might turn out to the golden one.
To confirmed book readers the book we read fifty years ago
might just have the answer to some quirky question or solve
a problem on a dark night when the internet is down.
I always keep two or three thick candles in a nearby drawer
along with my emergency nitros just for that night.
Some of the candles are as old if not older than the books.
EVen the nitros are somewhat dated and onkly have about half
the potency of the fresh ones.
Opening a thick book that was read in years past can create a
feeling much akin to meeting a long lost cousin or missing
shipmate.
In the last year, I watched the movie "Greyhound"loosly based
on the book. "The Good Shepherd," by C. S. Forester which meant
that I had to blow the accumulated dust off my weathered copy.
I never served on any US Navy destroyers, but the Coast Guard
Cutters I did sail on had a similar wartime assignment were
there a timely war during my service years. Frequently my ships
drilled during Navy exercises for that eventuality.
And during Vietnam I sailed on the very type of cargo vessels
the books USS Keeling tried to protect. So cracking the Forester
book after watching the Tom Hanks movie version was an exciting
adventure in Nostalgia. Of course, once I finished that tome, I
just had to dig out "H.M.S. Ulysses", Then Warren Tute's "The
Cruiser and "The Cruel Sea'. I do not know what happened to my
copy of. "The Caine Mutiny." I think I may have lent it to someone
ten or twenty years ago.
Well written books books can have that effect on dedicated readers.
They are, or can be, paper time machines both in describing events
that happened, (Histories) or could have happened (Novels) in the
past as well as carrying the reader off to relive past experiences.
Parting with my personal time machines is something virtually
impossible, no, unthinkable, regardless of the fact that I know
I'll never re-read even a small fraction of them.
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For a variety of reasons, we've moved a lot in the last 20 years. At one move, I (almost) tearfully let go of 28 cartons of books. We're in the process of moving now, and apart from all my philatelic books, I still have 12 cartons.
My wife says "they live in boxes!", to which I respond, "only because we haven't found a house with a library yet!".
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05:29:18pm
This isn't so much on whether I use books or on-line, it's an attitude thing that very much depends on age. I was a teacher for 34 years after being a professional student for eight years and also a long time antique collector and seller. All of these things combine in my make-up to make me a huge fan of BOOKS!! I prefer to have the book version of Scott's even though I use on-line searching as well. I don't use electronic books, I much prefer the feel of a real book. I prefer albums or CD's over downloaded music and I collect DVD's rather than streaming. I'm a very old fashioned person who would almost rather die than throw out a book. I'm sure many of you feel "sort of" the same way, even though I hope you're not as extreme as me. I also cannot grasp the idea on NFT's, I'd rather have the object itself than an on-line image! Just me, I guess - an old fart 'till the end!!!
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Hard copy,besides I don't think there are any electronic Minkus catalogs available for my Germany collection. I use a 2011 Scott for my US collection that I purchased for $ 7.00 for all seven volumes at the local library discard book sale.
My position as the senior most building code compliance manager for a very large housing company has me attached to my paper code books. The younger guys in the company are hooked on the electronic versions and rib me for my "old school" ways, however I can usually smoke em all when accessing a particular code section with my hefty 5 pound paper code books.
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There was another thread about this topic sometime in the relatively recent past, if I recall correctly. I wrote about my own experience with "e-Scott" catalogues, and it was, well, 
!
I had hoped that I'd never again have to use those huge dead-tree catalogues because of my arthritic hands, but the effort was doomed. I found the searches to be so slow as to be tedious, and the search function wasn't even close to being functional. I finally gave up, found a reasonably priced used set of "non-digital" catalogues, and dumped the digital versions. One thing in my favour is that I don't care one whit about the value of stamps. I'll likely never sell my collection, and I have enough disposable income so that I don't have to worry about spending it on my hobbies rather than on cruises, gasoline, etc.
Bob
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I prefer PDF's over hard copy. When I buy Scott pages from everyone-knows-who, I scan them, make a PDF of it and add a TOC at the front to make getting to what I want a lot easier. For instance, here is my cropped TOC for Michel & Scott's DDR catalogues...
That makes life so much easier!
Why Scott's never did this with their's is beyond me! Computers are supposed to make life easier & save tree's!
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Pete,
Scott used to issue their catalogs in PDF format but then pirated copies were everywhere on ebay. Now, they have the online version that is essentially the PDF but cannot be saved locally.
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@BrightonPete: I've also bought country-sets of Scott pages, which is certainly economical compared to buying an entire catalogue with X number of countries that you don't collect. My "problem" (solved by buying used, relatively inexpensive Scott catalogues) is that almost any country in the world is likely to have issued a few stamps that dovetail with my various collections. If I collected just two or three countries, there's no way I would bother buying Scott catalogues if I could avoid it.
Bob
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07:17:33pm
"... the only "values" it 'Colnect') gives are
what members are selling a stamp at. ...........
of course the "prices" listed by the members
vary considerably...."
Since Scott does not sell (or buy) stamps and Colnect
members do both, is it not fair to say that the average
between several willing, knowledgeable Colnecteer's buy
and sell numbers are a much better "value" than Scotts
all too often fanciful pie in the sky" listing" number.
On the face of it if I wanted to know what something is
actually worth, I'd choose real offer and buy prices for
accuracy. That would seem a better choice than adding
together Scotts listing numbers and then estimating what
percentage of discount to apply.
Of course if all I wanted was a big inflated number to
make me feel better. Scotts might be the way to go.
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"is it not fair to say that the average
between several willing, knowledgeable Colnecteer's buy
and sell numbers are a much better "value" than Scotts
all too often fanciful pie in the sky" listing" number."
I would question the use of the word "knowledgeable" in the above phrase.
The reason being for example 2 folks are selling a stamp at 15cents and 2 are selling the same stamp at 50cents.
Average selling price 32.5 cents.
What then is the value of the stamp?? Is it 15 cents or 32.5 cents? or 50 cents?
The answer is none of the above as value is abstract.
The "value" of the stamp is what a seller is willing to sell it for and the amount a buyer is willing to pay for it.
As in all selling the seller decides their price and places it on the market that is how a frying pan selling in a shop is $19.00 and in another shop it is $24.99. It is the buyer who decides whether to pay $19.00 or $24.99.
In other words value is in the eye of the beholder.
Here on Stamporama I have listed an item at X It has not sold.
I then relisted at X-20%. It has not sold.
I then relisted it at X-20%-20%. It has not sold.
I then relisted it at X and it has sold.
What then is the value of that item??
Is it X?
Or is it less than X-20%-20% ?
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03:19:18pm
" ...I would question the use of the word "knowledgeable"
in the above phrase. ..."
You are, as usual quite correct, Ian, in your implication
that not all sellers, either quasi-dealers or general
collectors, are equally knowledgeable. However my comment
specifies "knowledgeable" buyers and sellers. I could have
left the qualifier out and in that case your observation
would be spot on. That raises the question as to how one
determines whether either the buyer or the seller, both or
neither, is qualified.
Seeking that answer is like the tale of building a causeway
from San Francisco to Honolulu. I am not really sure who is
qualified, but when I meet someone so endowed, I usually
know it.
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In my opinion Scott's is a pretty poor catalogue.
In some cases they only give a value for a set not the individual stamp.
For earlier stamps they give a value for a single mint stamp and then give a value for the set and then a value for the set "Never Hinged". If the set contains several stamps they never give the individual stamp value for "Never Hinged".
They list a stamp with the description "European Redshank" yet these two words never appear on the stamp. The stamp has the latin name on it, This makes it difficult if there are six stamps of the same value in the set.
They give the watermark on a set and then the next set has no mention of the watermark for it even though the second set has the same value and colour.
They do the same with perforations.
They are pretty useless at times.
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"They give the watermark on a set and then the next set has no mention of the watermark for it even though the second set has the same value and colour.
They do the same with perforations."
Somewhere in the introductory notes I think that I read that the watermarks /perfs are only given where they change from the previous entry,- that could be a couple of pages previous!
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Scott should list the watermarks for each set. It reduces any possible confusion. It does not add much to the heft of the catalog since it is on the same line as other text. They are more likely to make a mistake in editing.
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09:37:59am
All of the foregoing makes me wish that some
diligent philatelic publisher had taken over
the Minkus catalogs and continued their print
run. I think a bit of competition would have
made both the Minkus and the Scott catalogs
better for the average US stamper..
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Every 5 or 6 years, I have purchased a fairly recent used set of Scott catalogs. I am wondering how many of you have gone from hard cover to online, and how you like it.
There's just some comfort IMO to going through the hard copy and am reluctant to make the switch.
Thoughts?
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Approvals
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
For what it's worth, I went from hard copy to online, and then back to hard copy a few years ago. I just find it more enjoyable to have the Cat. open before me. When jumping from regular Issues, to Air Mails, to Semi-Postals, I just find it more convenient to turn a few pages. An exception to this might be a Specialized Cat., like the Specialized Michael Cat., where I have gone to identify some 19th Century Local Stamps from Germany.
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
Having tried the Sg Concise online I would say hard copy any day.
Not sure if it was the "reader" or the laptop or combination of both. Trying to use the search facility was awful, trying to jump to a year or page equally so.
The pages still contain all the adverts and scrolling up, down and across made it, to my mind, useless. Never again.
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02:16:45pm
Auctions - Approvals
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
Here in the UK getting hold of Scotts catalogues are not easy. (One needs Scotts for Stamporama). I accquired a set of 2017 Discs with Scotts Catalogue on it.
To be honest using a set of discs or any other form of on-line catalogue is a right pain in the neck. You spend more time scrolling through pages even if you know what year you are looking for.
A hard copy is a joy to behold compared with computerised.
You can easily pick up the copy you need from the shelf, find the country you need and then flick through the pages for the year that you want and a quick glance gives you the set, the cat no. and the value in a quarter of the time.
Simples!
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
An online copy of a hard copy catalog that is little more than searchable PDF is not taking advantage of the medium. Colnect.com allows one to find stamps fast since it far more illustrated than any general catalog. You can check cross catalog numbers. This shows the potential to the online printed book Scott.
Scott has not published a genuine CD product in long time as they offer the online subscription model. I have never tried it.
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07:13:15pm
Auctions - Approvals
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
Colnect.com is reasonable but the only "values" it gives are what members are selling a stamp at. Sometimes you have to trawl through half a dozen items to find the condition you want and of course the "prices" listed by the members vary considerably.
The online "catalogues" are fine if you are away from home and you are at an auction for example and you want to check a value.
You cannot beat a hard copy.
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08:53:51pm
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
I got the Scotts 2017 in pdf format from my real estate lawyer when we bought our new place in early 2020. I love it!
Saves me going to the library, except when I (rarely) need more recent CVs, and saves desk space (which is always at a premium. I use StampWorld as my search engine then just go to the catalogues for numbers/values.
The other nice thing (which adds speed to the equation) is that I can parse the pdfs. For example, I have extracted and saved all of the Germany colonies, offices, occupations, etc as separate small pdfs of a couple pages - so if I am focusing on Saar it takes me 10 seconds to pull up the 8-page Saar.pdf file
I think it's hard for most of us us geezers to switch our long-trained brains from hard copies of any books to their "online" versions. Personally, my bedside table has literally 4-6 books on the go at any time and I mow through them unmercifully. But I still can't wrap my head around reading a book on my phone/tablet/laptop/desktop no matter how much I try. Right now, I have 3 e-reader books out from the library and am just 1-6% into them with less than a week to the return date. In the same timeframe, I've read 4 complete hard-copy books.
Plus ca change!
Dave.
My "online" stamp catalogues are obviously a different beast!
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
I now prefer reading books on my tablet over hard copy. I never thought I would get to that point but I did. This is especially true for Kindle books (do not have a Kindle device) since you can enlarge text that repaginates the file so no zooming in and out like a PDF. All my philatelic reading are PDF and uploaded to a cloud drive to read later on a more comfortable sofa.
At some point I do plan to scan some of my hardcopy Scott pages into a PDF but the main challenge I face is identification and this requires images. Many approval sellers do not identify so need a fast way to get a catalog number.
It helps for stamps NOT in Scott as well. Once I have a number, I can always get a value.
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Auctions - Approvals
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
A very intersting thread ,with members likes and dislikes .I have Scott's 2017 on CD which I need to use here on SOR .My gripe with Scott's is the way they price their stamps by sets it's useless when you have odd stamps ,I mean they go to the trouble of listing the value of the stamp and the description then list one price for the whole set???. one thing in their favor they list the Vienna & Philadelphia Printings of Indonesia ,( which SG do not)
I also use stampworld ,as you can go straight to the year (if you know it)
I also use SG Stamps of the World 2010 .
Brian
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
Paper is much easier for me....
In the auto parts world, paper has been almost entirely replaced by online catalogs, yet I have held on to many references in paper form. After so many years, its almost muscle memory to flip to a certain page for info. I find it much easier than scrolling through PDF pages, although I am pretty well-versed in electronic cataloging, and do so daily to order parts for my dealership.
The same can be said for the Scott's catalog... since I only collect to 1969, I still use an older (2006) set, and am growing used to where each country is located by "feel". If you update catalog sets frequently, this is less applicable, I guess.
I have an entire library full of dead trees, and I hate the concept of reading on an e-book. I also tend not to recycle or trade old books, even though I rarely re-read most titles. A coworker gave me a t-shirt a few years ago that reads "It's not hoarding if it's books", and another matched it with a mug that states "Yes I really do need all these books". At least they (kind of) support my quirks.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
12 Jan 2022
06:48:14am
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
" .... I rarely re-read most titles. ..."
To those of us from the paper generation, books, both read
and unread represent knowledge and like old keys that we
will never use are kept just in case there comes a lock that
desperately needs unlocking and among those keys there just
might turn out to the golden one.
To confirmed book readers the book we read fifty years ago
might just have the answer to some quirky question or solve
a problem on a dark night when the internet is down.
I always keep two or three thick candles in a nearby drawer
along with my emergency nitros just for that night.
Some of the candles are as old if not older than the books.
EVen the nitros are somewhat dated and onkly have about half
the potency of the fresh ones.
Opening a thick book that was read in years past can create a
feeling much akin to meeting a long lost cousin or missing
shipmate.
In the last year, I watched the movie "Greyhound"loosly based
on the book. "The Good Shepherd," by C. S. Forester which meant
that I had to blow the accumulated dust off my weathered copy.
I never served on any US Navy destroyers, but the Coast Guard
Cutters I did sail on had a similar wartime assignment were
there a timely war during my service years. Frequently my ships
drilled during Navy exercises for that eventuality.
And during Vietnam I sailed on the very type of cargo vessels
the books USS Keeling tried to protect. So cracking the Forester
book after watching the Tom Hanks movie version was an exciting
adventure in Nostalgia. Of course, once I finished that tome, I
just had to dig out "H.M.S. Ulysses", Then Warren Tute's "The
Cruiser and "The Cruel Sea'. I do not know what happened to my
copy of. "The Caine Mutiny." I think I may have lent it to someone
ten or twenty years ago.
Well written books books can have that effect on dedicated readers.
They are, or can be, paper time machines both in describing events
that happened, (Histories) or could have happened (Novels) in the
past as well as carrying the reader off to relive past experiences.
Parting with my personal time machines is something virtually
impossible, no, unthinkable, regardless of the fact that I know
I'll never re-read even a small fraction of them.
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
For a variety of reasons, we've moved a lot in the last 20 years. At one move, I (almost) tearfully let go of 28 cartons of books. We're in the process of moving now, and apart from all my philatelic books, I still have 12 cartons.
My wife says "they live in boxes!", to which I respond, "only because we haven't found a house with a library yet!".
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
12 Jan 2022
05:29:18pm
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
This isn't so much on whether I use books or on-line, it's an attitude thing that very much depends on age. I was a teacher for 34 years after being a professional student for eight years and also a long time antique collector and seller. All of these things combine in my make-up to make me a huge fan of BOOKS!! I prefer to have the book version of Scott's even though I use on-line searching as well. I don't use electronic books, I much prefer the feel of a real book. I prefer albums or CD's over downloaded music and I collect DVD's rather than streaming. I'm a very old fashioned person who would almost rather die than throw out a book. I'm sure many of you feel "sort of" the same way, even though I hope you're not as extreme as me. I also cannot grasp the idea on NFT's, I'd rather have the object itself than an on-line image! Just me, I guess - an old fart 'till the end!!!
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
Hard copy,besides I don't think there are any electronic Minkus catalogs available for my Germany collection. I use a 2011 Scott for my US collection that I purchased for $ 7.00 for all seven volumes at the local library discard book sale.
My position as the senior most building code compliance manager for a very large housing company has me attached to my paper code books. The younger guys in the company are hooked on the electronic versions and rib me for my "old school" ways, however I can usually smoke em all when accessing a particular code section with my hefty 5 pound paper code books.
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
There was another thread about this topic sometime in the relatively recent past, if I recall correctly. I wrote about my own experience with "e-Scott" catalogues, and it was, well, !
I had hoped that I'd never again have to use those huge dead-tree catalogues because of my arthritic hands, but the effort was doomed. I found the searches to be so slow as to be tedious, and the search function wasn't even close to being functional. I finally gave up, found a reasonably priced used set of "non-digital" catalogues, and dumped the digital versions. One thing in my favour is that I don't care one whit about the value of stamps. I'll likely never sell my collection, and I have enough disposable income so that I don't have to worry about spending it on my hobbies rather than on cruises, gasoline, etc.
Bob
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
I prefer PDF's over hard copy. When I buy Scott pages from everyone-knows-who, I scan them, make a PDF of it and add a TOC at the front to make getting to what I want a lot easier. For instance, here is my cropped TOC for Michel & Scott's DDR catalogues...
That makes life so much easier!
Why Scott's never did this with their's is beyond me! Computers are supposed to make life easier & save tree's!
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
Pete,
Scott used to issue their catalogs in PDF format but then pirated copies were everywhere on ebay. Now, they have the online version that is essentially the PDF but cannot be saved locally.
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
@BrightonPete: I've also bought country-sets of Scott pages, which is certainly economical compared to buying an entire catalogue with X number of countries that you don't collect. My "problem" (solved by buying used, relatively inexpensive Scott catalogues) is that almost any country in the world is likely to have issued a few stamps that dovetail with my various collections. If I collected just two or three countries, there's no way I would bother buying Scott catalogues if I could avoid it.
Bob
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
13 Jan 2022
07:17:33pm
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
"... the only "values" it 'Colnect') gives are
what members are selling a stamp at. ...........
of course the "prices" listed by the members
vary considerably...."
Since Scott does not sell (or buy) stamps and Colnect
members do both, is it not fair to say that the average
between several willing, knowledgeable Colnecteer's buy
and sell numbers are a much better "value" than Scotts
all too often fanciful pie in the sky" listing" number.
On the face of it if I wanted to know what something is
actually worth, I'd choose real offer and buy prices for
accuracy. That would seem a better choice than adding
together Scotts listing numbers and then estimating what
percentage of discount to apply.
Of course if all I wanted was a big inflated number to
make me feel better. Scotts might be the way to go.
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07:57:38pm
Auctions - Approvals
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
"is it not fair to say that the average
between several willing, knowledgeable Colnecteer's buy
and sell numbers are a much better "value" than Scotts
all too often fanciful pie in the sky" listing" number."
I would question the use of the word "knowledgeable" in the above phrase.
The reason being for example 2 folks are selling a stamp at 15cents and 2 are selling the same stamp at 50cents.
Average selling price 32.5 cents.
What then is the value of the stamp?? Is it 15 cents or 32.5 cents? or 50 cents?
The answer is none of the above as value is abstract.
The "value" of the stamp is what a seller is willing to sell it for and the amount a buyer is willing to pay for it.
As in all selling the seller decides their price and places it on the market that is how a frying pan selling in a shop is $19.00 and in another shop it is $24.99. It is the buyer who decides whether to pay $19.00 or $24.99.
In other words value is in the eye of the beholder.
Here on Stamporama I have listed an item at X It has not sold.
I then relisted at X-20%. It has not sold.
I then relisted it at X-20%-20%. It has not sold.
I then relisted it at X and it has sold.
What then is the value of that item??
Is it X?
Or is it less than X-20%-20% ?
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
24 Jan 2022
03:19:18pm
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
" ...I would question the use of the word "knowledgeable"
in the above phrase. ..."
You are, as usual quite correct, Ian, in your implication
that not all sellers, either quasi-dealers or general
collectors, are equally knowledgeable. However my comment
specifies "knowledgeable" buyers and sellers. I could have
left the qualifier out and in that case your observation
would be spot on. That raises the question as to how one
determines whether either the buyer or the seller, both or
neither, is qualified.
Seeking that answer is like the tale of building a causeway
from San Francisco to Honolulu. I am not really sure who is
qualified, but when I meet someone so endowed, I usually
know it.
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06:03:33pm
Auctions - Approvals
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
In my opinion Scott's is a pretty poor catalogue.
In some cases they only give a value for a set not the individual stamp.
For earlier stamps they give a value for a single mint stamp and then give a value for the set and then a value for the set "Never Hinged". If the set contains several stamps they never give the individual stamp value for "Never Hinged".
They list a stamp with the description "European Redshank" yet these two words never appear on the stamp. The stamp has the latin name on it, This makes it difficult if there are six stamps of the same value in the set.
They give the watermark on a set and then the next set has no mention of the watermark for it even though the second set has the same value and colour.
They do the same with perforations.
They are pretty useless at times.
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
"They give the watermark on a set and then the next set has no mention of the watermark for it even though the second set has the same value and colour.
They do the same with perforations."
Somewhere in the introductory notes I think that I read that the watermarks /perfs are only given where they change from the previous entry,- that could be a couple of pages previous!
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re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
Scott should list the watermarks for each set. It reduces any possible confusion. It does not add much to the heft of the catalog since it is on the same line as other text. They are more likely to make a mistake in editing.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
25 Jan 2022
09:37:59am
re: Catalogs.....hard copy or online?
All of the foregoing makes me wish that some
diligent philatelic publisher had taken over
the Minkus catalogs and continued their print
run. I think a bit of competition would have
made both the Minkus and the Scott catalogs
better for the average US stamper..
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