Discussion about “Top 5 free online stamp catalogues reviewed”

1. Pablo (yo) wrote:
   

   Great post!!!
   I only knew the first one, I will have to surf the others…
   For stamps issued after 2002, I use http://www.wnsstamps.ch/en

   Depending on which country you search, it may be very updated.

2. Amir wrote:
   

   Interesting post. I was wondering what exactly you found on Colnect to be “pushy marketing”. Currently there’s one AdSense block for ads on some of Colnect’s page.

   As Colnect is not only a catalog, its main purpose is to allow collectors to manage their personal collection and coordinate trades easily, there are some actions which would require a user login. Creating an account and managing your personal collection are, however, always free.

   Thanks

3. Keijo wrote:
   

   @Pablo: I knew I forgot something…WNS website is definitely worth mentioning.

   @Amir… Hi Amir, it’s great to have “The Man” behind Colnect to respond. With pushy marketing I’m referring to Your Facebook activity.

   You may not remember, but we’ve been Facebook friends by your personal request. Few days after my approval I received first Colnect marketing email, some days later another, then third, fourth,fifth…

   I have no problems receiving marketing emails IF I have knowingly signed up to receive them (like with Facebook groups or fan pages), but unsolicited bulk email marketing (or let’s just call it as is- pure spam) from private account is something I take very badly.

   And sadly this was not limited to single time. After I had befriended You, I was foolish enough to give Your friendship (requests) another try later. And same stuff happened again.

   Colnect is a nice site to have, but the marketing practises at FB did leave a bad taste to my mouth… But that’s just my personal experience with You.

4. Stampedia Webmaster wrote:
   

   Hello I appreciate you very much for mentioning our stampedia project on your blog post.

   There are many hints in your post. We want to improve stampedia,so please watch our project for the future.

   Though we have only listed two countries (France&Monaco) now, we think to list three more countries soon. Those countries are UK,Germany and Ireland with perfect stamp images so we hope more and more collectors come to use stampedia.

   Thank you.

5. Keijo wrote:
   

   It was my pleasure James(?),

   I have high hopes with your project, because the results of first few steps look stunning IMHO. Any website that follows such a good quality is worth (at least random) praise IMHO

6. samantha stewart wrote:
   

   Hi keijo,

   I was just wondering if you had any experiance of Stanley Gibbons My Collection and would really like to hear your opinion of it. I am interested in joining but can find no reviews of it on the net.

   I have really enjoyed reading your blogs and have found them both interesting and informative.
   Keep up the good work

   Sam

7. Keijo wrote:
   

   Hi Sam,

   I gave it a test spin last year. As a summary I’d say that If Your collection is organized according to SG “Stamps of The World” catalog, then you’ll like it. But if you’re accustomed to Michel/Scott/SG country specific volumes etc. then you will very likely be disappointed.

   Cons: It’s based on Stamps of the World (SOTW) 2007 – meaning it’s outdated and heavily simplified (omits perforation,watermark etc varieties totally). Pros: Low price, somewhat easy to use invontory management (with some odd quirks), export to excel and other reporting functions are useful.

8. samantha stewart wrote:
   

   Hi Keijo,
   Thanks for your advice, I Think I will leave it a while and see if they update it to a more up to date Catalog before buying. It would be helpful if they put a demo on the website so we could try before we buy.

   Thanks for your help.

   Sam

9. Louella Pettit wrote:
   

   I began to use Colnect as a way of keeping track of my stamps.

   One of the challenges is that it relies heavily on user input – re the catalogue being comprehensive.

   I could not find the majority of my stamps – variations are especially scarce.

   I was excited about having the opportunity to provide them with some information and help them update the catalogue, but after 3 attempts and no responses, I gave up with it.

   I’m still a newbie, and Ive got no idea how to start putting my stamps into some order. I dont even know how to get my enveloped ones off the envelopes!

10. Keijo wrote:
    

    I’m still a newbie, and Ive got no idea how to start putting my stamps into some order. I dont even know how to get my enveloped ones off the envelopes!

    Hi Louella,

    I know this may sound like on “old fashioned” advice in these “everything is online”-days, but… Take a visit to your local public library, and ask for some (basic) stamp related books. Then simply read, digest and play around with proper time and interest.

11. Keijo wrote:
    

    Just to update the information about SG MyCollection… I just read/heard that SG is in the process of redeveloping it, and the upcoming version of MyCollection will be based on ‘live’ data (meaning it will be constantly up-to-date with most recent catalogs).

12. Amir wrote:
    

    @Keijo – Sorry for my belated reply. I didn’t get a notification email from your site and so I didn’t get to check it again.

    I don’t send people any marketing messages using my Facebook account. You might have done “like” on Colnect’s Facebook page http://facebook.com/colnect which sends regular updates to page fans. You can, of course, unlike the page at any time if you find the stream of updates pushy.

    There was a single event of a competition where I requested help from all my Facebook friends to help Colnect. I’m very sorry if that was interpreted as marketing spam. If there was any other such event, which I currently don’t remember, please accept my apologies.

    If you wish, I’d welcome an update to your post here, or perhaps even another post as Colnect’s stamp catalog is now getting closer to 150,000 UNIQUE stamps (you won’t find listing of the same item over and over again as in sellers inventory) and TONS of information has been added since you last wrote about it. The catalog is being maintained by volunteers and it’s really been showing amazing growth in recent months. Yes, we don’t have all the stamps of the world there just yet, but we’re getting there

    If you reply here, please feel free to alert me via email for a quick response.

    Thanks and happy collecting

13. Keijo wrote:
    

    Hi Amir,

    Re, the FB issue… I do know with certainty that I did not like the Colnect fan page (as I’m very picky with what I Like). And If I recall properly, the situation occurred before FB introduced fan pages… But let’s just call it water under the bridge.

    Re, updates on article… that’s the reason the articles have open comments. Anyone’s welcome to add new information, updates, questions etc. For example I have no objections if You (or someone else at Colnects marketing staff) decides to post new stamp figures every now & then (say 2-3 times a year).

    best,
    -keijo-

14. Louella Pettit wrote:
    

    Hi again Keijo, I heard from Klaus since the last time I visited you here. I have since contributed many stamps along with their specifics and it has been a fantastic way of me learning about them and their history. Not to mention, Im now counting perforations and measuring them by the mm *beaming smiles*.

    I working backwards and so far so good!

    Cheers Lou

15. Keijo wrote:
    

    hi Lou,
    great to hear You’re having a good time. And congrats for becoming an editor

16. FRED MUGURUZA wrote:
    

    Very weird…did you notice on the top of this page (or any other in this blog) appears two advert for trade stamps?…I think is not all the time but eventually…oi Keijo is a new patron? good boy! LOL!

17. FRED MUGURUZA wrote:
    

    ah…OK, reading the previous comments, I see that we aware of this spam?…chiky monkeys!…on the other hand…if they give some dosh, good!

18. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Fred… Actually all the pages on this blog have had 3 “Google AdSense ad units” (one on top of page, one on bottom, one on right side) for about as long as I can remember. They are a form of contextual advertising (meaning that every user is displayed somewhat different ads based on their location and interests). Every time somebody sees an interesting ad and clicks it, Google contributes a small sum of money to me (which I use to cover the running costs of this blog).

19. FRED MUGURUZA wrote:
    

    Well Keijo, nothing wrong with that…it happen that, was the first time I see them…never notice it before, thought had been since years ago…sorry for that, but if you say they do that to you…I will contribute to the cause…clicking now and then…for sure, L O L!!!

20. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Fred… I think you are suffering from “ad blindness” (see this Wikipedia entry about it). It’s somewhat common, and definitely nothing to worry about.

21. FRED MUGURUZA wrote:
    

    Amazing yes! but no, no worries…as they say I’m just looking for the things I really want…the rest don’t make me move…
    that’s why you can see things on the stamps, (unlike me)that make this site unique!…L O L!

22. William (hadashi) wrote:
    

    I happened to find this website when searching for a good free online catalogue. I think that you may have saved me some time! I then enjoyed reading one of your posts about what makes a happy stamps collector. I found myself nodding my head. I then read a series of comments (above) and I appreciated the ongoing dialogue. Great, I’m on board, and I’ve signed up for the weekly newsletter. Now to try your IQ test below. Hm, isn’t that second image from Korea?

23. Keijo wrote:
    

    @William – Welcome aboard. I hope you enjoy the blog contents and company
    PS. The Yin/Yang symbol can be seen on several places. But true, on (South) Korean stamps you’ll see a plenty of it.

24. Alan wrote:
    

    Thanks a lot!!!! I found your review very helpful.I am rekindling my childhood hobby and all those days of sitting at the British Council Library poking through the SG stamps of the world catalog have been wonderful. I had no idea of the Michel or the Scott catalogue!
    If i wanted to get my hands on a used Catalog of SG or others for stamps prior to 1980 which edition should i look for. I would appreciate any hints which would help me search for a comprehensive used catalogue of the stamps of the world. Thanks and have a great day

    Alan , India

25. Keijo wrote:
    

    Hi Alan,

    Re, second hand catalogs… My advice would be to focus on local sources whenever possible. I know that this approach is challenging, but I have good reason for my recommendation. Most international online auction sites (such as eBay or Delcampe) do have a wide range of used stamp catalogs at cheap prices. But… Most of these items are from international sellers (USA, UK , Germany etc). Once you add international postage costs, custom fees etc. on top of the paid price, your cheap 2nd hand catalog costs pretty much the same or even more as a brand new catalog straight from the publisher.

26. Amir wrote:
    

    Colnect’s stamp catalog now lists over 208,000 stamps and it keeps growing everyday. Only in the last 30 days, over 10,000 stamps were added!
    You can easily browse stamps by themes (tags), years, countries and more.
    I’d be happy to see you take another look at the catalog and perhaps change your review for the better

    Thanks and happy collecting

27. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Amir… Similar growth has occurred for pretty much every entry on this list. If I have the time/interest, I’ll try to make an update to this entry sometime in early 2012.

28. jpotgieter wrote:
    

    HI There

    Any new developments on stamp collection programs?

    Please could I have a copy of your excel spreadsheet…would love to try it out…

    GREAT SITE….THANK YOU!!!!!

29. Keijo wrote:
    

    @jpotgieter…

    Any new developments on stamp collection programs?

    Yes and no.

    The free alternatives are pretty much the same state as they were when I wrote the original piece in may 2010. More stamps are included to their listings, but they are still very much incomplete if thinking the big picture of 600,000+ stamps issued worldwide. Only the commercial offerings from publishers (=Michel, SG and Yvert) can provide over 90% coverage with images and proper catalog details.

    SG managed to launch a new version of their MyCollection tool late last month. I’ve read some mixed reviews about it. Likely they’ll need at least another 4-6 months to take out the worst rough edges.

    As for Michel… Likely there will be a new version of MichelSoft sometime next year. The progress with their online catalog is dead slow (it would have so much potential if done properly).

    I’m not sure what’s going on with Scott digital catalog. I would have expected them to hit the holiday/Christmas sales (it would have made a very nice gift), but nothing available so far. Not sure what’s going on there. Maybe early next year Amos will announce some news.

30. Robin Hislop wrote:
    

    Thanks for the good round-up. I am really surprised there isn’t a complete user-contributed catalogue out there. There’s a great music discography site called Discogs which is entirely built by user contributions and that has millions of entries. I would have thought that there is a lot of similarity between stamp and record collectors, and I’m sure if the site was easy to contribute to, it would grow very fast.

31. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Robin…

    I would have thought that there is a lot of similarity between stamp and record collectors, and I’m sure if the site was easy to contribute to, it would grow very fast.

    True, there is a lot of similarities between record and stamp collectors. But… One of the major obstacles standing in the way of public/open online catalog is that stamp collectors/philatelists use mainly copyrighted/proprietary catalog numbering systems on pretty much everything they do. In order for such site to prevail, either collectors should have to abandon the use of existing numbering schemes (very unlikely), or the catalog publishers would have to give up some of their copyrights and allow more than ‘fair use’ (again very unlikely). So in a way it’s catch-22…

    And true, there are some user powered sites (catawiki,colnect etc) that state catalog numbers (Michel, SG,Yvert – but no Scott due to different copyrights on EU and US). But I seriously doubt their future and usefulness. Right now they nothing more than ‘a collection of pictures’ (=highly incomplete). They have a very long road ahead before becoming truly usefully references / catalogs. But I have the time, and maybe in 10-15 years time, they have matured enough to be a true option for traditional catalogs.

32. Collector wrote:
    

    Keijo,

    Colnect has recently announced over 222,222 stamps on our catalogs: http://blog.colnect.com/2012/02/milestone-222222-stamps-featured-on.html

    There were nearly 7,000 stamps added during the last month. It’s not only that the catalog is growing but that it’s growth rate is growing big time.

    Yes, I agree it will take time to list all world stamps on Colnect’s catalogs but mind that other community-generated projects have not reached their achievements in a day.

    As a community we have the power to improve our catalogs much better than traditional catalogs have done in the past and we will.

    Colnect is already a very worthwhile alternative to traditional catalogs as it enables you to easily have a common language with collectors around the world when you manage your own collection, wish and swap lists on Colnect easily.

    So no, it’s not perfect yet and never will be perfect but it’s an incredibly easy and useful resource and will become a strong name in the collectibles world as we progress together.

    Amir @ Colnect

33. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Amir…

    I agree it’s growing nicely, but still a long road ahead. Of the 222,222 stamps how many do have full philatelic details (perforation, watermark, print method etc)? And how many of those details are accurate? I don’t mean to undermine what You have accomplished, but I’m simply stating that there’s an enormously long road ahead before reaching the level of traditional stamp catalogs, and even longer road if trying to surpass them.

34. Mark S. wrote:
    

    I think i finally figured out what’s driving me batty with the colnect site… (I do think it has a ton of potential… but I’m only in the basics of it so far – as I only started with a few of the countries that i have a limited number of stamps.).

    Don’t remember which country I was working on or which stamps (I want to say it was Czechoslovakia, but don’t quote me)

    I had some stamps that fell in a certain set (no ifs, ands, or buts, it was definitely the same set.)… so I pull up the tags.. and most of the stamps in the set are in that tag, but the two i have aren’t… yet the same stamps that aren’t in the tag show up under the “year” category (along with the stamps that are IN the tag)… makes it EXTREMELY tedious to get through an entire set… i can’t volunteer to add the stamps, since they’re “officially” in the catalog, just not in all the appropriate locations… and there’s no way to offer updates other than their excel form (which the way it’s set, I’m not a fan of).

    it just seems to be highly inconsistent (i can live with slightly inaccurate info.. providing it’s fixed at some point.)

35. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Mark S… I fear all the free “non-publisher online catalogue attempts” (Colnect, CataWiki, StampData, Stampedia etc) suffer similar issues to some extend. At least that’s my personal experience. Lack of completeness, lack of accuracy and lack of consistency are three major reasons I don’t use any other than occasional checks.

    I would hooray if all the “non-publisher” projects simply combined their forces, and put it all together to create one “master catalog” that anybody could use. But I think it would be too much to be asked (after all, most of these are commercially oriented ventures that attempt to ca$h the potential of millions of stamp collectors worldwide).

36. Toby wrote:
    

    Hi Keijo,

    The Philippine dealer Poppe Stamps has an excellent world stamp image encyclopedia on the home page. I use it often when I can’t find a tricky stamp in my SG catalogues.

37. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Toby… I would not rely too much on PoppeStamps (or any other stamp dealer) website for identification/information purposes. There’s just partial data (compared to print catalogues), and lots of inaccurate information / falsely identified stamps.

38. Toby wrote:
    

    Keijo,

    The Poppe stamps encyclodedia is good, but his helpers often mis-catalogue the actual stamps for sale. Have a look for yourself!
    As they are images, the encyclopedia can be invaluable for narrowing down the year of issue for a difficult stamp. (eg: Stanley Gibbons don’t show every stamp of an issue: even issues where every stamp can be utterly different. I find the encyclopedia useful as a first stop in this situation.

    It has now catalogued images of 249,000 issued stamps, sorted by nation.

39. arun tendulkar wrote:
    

    I am a beginner. its a nice informative blog .I would like to know if any one has prepared list corelating SG, Michel, scott Nos. need not provide any details. which can b accesed else where. this would b a great help to stamp collectors .
    regards and happy blogging

40. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Arun… Due to copyrights, such cross-reference lists don’t exist (publicly).

41. Amir wrote:
    

    Mark S. – It’s very easy to improve Colnect’s catalogs – please see our explanation about collector comments on http://colnect.com/help/collecting/comments
    You can volunteer to become an editor and thus improve Colnect very quickly.

    Keijo – all the questions you have asked can easily be answered by viewing the information on Colnect.

    When you check the stamps section http://colnect.com/en/stamps you can choose to filter stamps by Countries, Emissions, Formats, Printings, Perforations, Years, Currencies, Tags and Catalogs.

    In most these lists, you can see what is yet “Unknown”, meaning the information haven’t been added to Colnect yet. For example, as of today the catalog has 259,348 stamps listed, of which 140,053 have “Unknown” perforation which means 129,295 do have that information present. With time and the assistance of more volunteers (currently over 450 collectors have helped on Colnect), all the gaps are being filled and additional information is added. Colnect does offer services that printed catalog cannot offer such as listing collectors who have or want a specific stamp and evaluating its rareness with the unique “Colnect score”.

    In regards to your remark on joining forces, I would be more than happy to do that with any party who would be interested. Colnect’s catalogs are the base of its power but it’s real specialty is in the UNIQUE services offered such as “Auto Matching” and “Best Matches” (explained on http://colnect.com/help ). It seems Colnect existed long before the other services you have mentioned and, as you can check on Alexa, seems to be getting much more traffic. I’ve not been aware of stampdata and stampedia before and I have NOW contacted them hoping to initiate cooperation for the benefit of stamp collectors worldwide. I’m unfortunately familiar with catawiki since they’ve sent me baseless and absurd threatening letters from lawyers ridiculously alleging to Colnect using material they claim to own. Trying to get more specific information about what they claim to see if it has any shreds of truth just got me more threat letters. I would have publicized this story but don’t think they deserve the free advertisement. I dare to suspect that they don’t want to cooperate but rather hurt Colnect with business practices I consider immoral and unethical.

    To conclude, while Colnect’s free stamp catalog isn’t perfect, it is becoming better all the time with the fantastic help of many devoted volunteers. They are adding more listings and better the current listings all the time. Bashing Colnect on its current state rather than trying to join in and make it better isn’t helping the stamp collectors community which is getting a free catalog that will continue to be free for use without any need for registration. What will help is to point out what Colnect can do better and trying to get more collectors to join the project and make it better. You are welcome to see how many conversations on Colnect’s forums are meant to improve it and how many progress is being made.

    Amir @ Colnect

42. Amir wrote:
    

    Keijo,

    Looked again at the last con you wrote about Colnect. The search had problems that were now fixed and you’re welcome to check it again. About your difficulty to “move around”, could you be more specific on how you’d think it’ll be easier to browse the catalog? Currently there are very versatile navigation options.

    Following your request, I’ve also contacted “Stamps of the World” to see if we can help the collectors community.

    Any other suggestions for improvements?
    Have you checked the “Auto-Matching” and “Best Matches” unique features of Colnect? The info about them is at: http://colnect.com/en/help/collecting/auto_matching and http://colnect.com/en/help/collecting/best_matches respectively.

43. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Amir…

    About your difficulty to “move around”, could you be more specific on how you’d think it’ll be easier to browse the catalog? Currently there are very versatile navigation options.

    Let’s say I want to locate a stamp from Tanzania that I know is printed in 1990. In order to see Tanzanian stamps of 1990 I have to:

    Step 1. click on Catalog (on top menu)
    Step 2. scroll down a very long page to find Tanzania on list of countries
    Step 3. Select year from a list
    Step 4. Browse several pages to find the stamp that I’m looking for

    As for how to make simpler? A simple form could replace steps 1-3 (dropdown or AJAX list to select a country) + another similar for the year)
    And the final step could be simplified by making a page with infinite scroll (similar to what twitter, FB etc. are using).
    Simple, elegant (and even search engine friendly if implemented correctly).

44. Amir wrote:
    

    Thank you very much for the detailed example and suggestions. While I completely agree with you that drop-down with quick AJAX update and infinite scroll would be fantastic when searching for a specific stamp and will be implemented in the future for item list pages, please note the following meanwhile:
    1/ Members of Colnect manage their personal collection and view others’ collections. Going through the lists as it is now on Colnect gives you much more information than a simple list of stamps as it includes counters and allows flexible sort and filters. You can easily see which countries/years/other things the other member is interested in (Ex: http://colnect.com//en/stamps/countries/collection/saintluc ) and you can easily see how your own collection is progressing.
    2/ Step4: you can easily change the amount of stamps you see in a single page (upto 250) so you won’t have to scroll that much. See: http://colnect.com/en/account
    3/ Step2: you can either use your browser’s “Find” (CTRL+F) or show only some of the countries. Additional, you can filter country names for your list so you’ll see, for example, all countries which have “tan” in their name: http://colnect.com/en/stamps/countries/sort/by_name/name/tan
    BTW: if you search for “tanz” Colnect will find a single country and automatically continue to the years list.

    Looking forward to more suggestions.

45. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Amir…

    BTW: if you search for “tanz” Colnect will find a single country and automatically continue to the years list.

    Looking forward to more suggestions.

    Actually this brings us to what I consider the greatest downside of Colnect:

    

    The reality is something more like 45 years, 4634 stamps. IMHO You should really provide some kind indicator of the completion level of country specific databases. Whether it’s empty placeholder (like with StampData) or something else, it’s up to You entirely. Just a thought…

46. Amir wrote:
    

    If you consider the incompleteness of the catalog as “the greatest downside” then I’m very happy. The more people help us fill in the gaps, the faster Colnect’s catalog will be completed. WikiPedia didn’t become a valuable resource in a day. Stamps are now added to Colnect faster than ever before and any help you would like to offer would be welcomed.

    In the picture you attached, it seems like Colnect has 24 stamps of Tanzania which is NOT the case. Today there are 790 stamps of 38 different years (if you’re navigating Colnect when not logged in, you might see older cached pages rather than the freshest content. This helps Colnect with the load from bots but a serious stamp collector like yourself would probably prefer to see the more up-to-date info that is added every day).

47. Alexus wrote:
    

    and what about http://www.findyourstampsvalue.com/ catalog?

48. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Alexus… First, it’s not a free service (and this page is about FREE services).
    Secondly… Considering the price (even the reduced price/current offer) vs. content, it sounds like a very bad deal to me. For the same (annual) price I could get much more from catalog publishers.

49. Mark S. wrote:
    

    Keijo, i’ve wondered, you ever think about reviewing some of the online “individual country” inventory sites out there?

    Or did you ever think about keeping a ranking/listing of those usable sites as you saw them?

    I only ask when I found a post with a comment about VietStamps.net at one point, and you remarked how much you liked that one (don’t remember which post), and i gotta say… I’m glad I found that comment

    And i know there’s a good sized listing, with variations included, at RomaniaStamps.com even though it’s not user friendly to search – as it looks like it’s hardcoded and not database enabled.

50. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Mark… I haven’t thought much of writing reviews of individual websites, as they tend to change at least every few yeas, and keeping the content updated/ever-green would prove very difficult. In a way this post is a good example of that – I think I’ve made 8 or 9 revisions after my original write up.

    But I do have kind of public listing of stamp related websites that I “recommend”. It can be viewed at http://stampcollector.stumbleupon.com
    Pretty much everything I’ve put in there should be more or less non-commercial.

51. Peter Galbavy wrote:
    

    OK, I have scanned much of the comments here now after being directed here and I was reading the exchange between Amir and Keijo. I looked briefly at colnet but I could not see the “openness” policy so I declined to go any further. On Discogs you can download the entire database in XML and do what you like. When a site uses users to build content and then wall that off and somehow claim ownership I baulk. Crowdsourcing is just another hip name for farming; Not my kinda thing.

52. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Peter…

    When a site uses users to build content and then wall that off and somehow claim ownership I baulk. Crowdsourcing is just another hip name for farming; Not my kinda thing.

    Can’t wait to see what kind of comments / discussion this will create (but I hope it will remain polite, respective and in topic)
    But I do share your view…

53. Mark S. wrote:
    

    I’ll be honest, i haven’t seen anything on there where Colnect claimed “ownership” of the information on there (but I may have missed it), but I do agree with you Peter.. It always scared me when a site claims to own the hard work that other people put into the information.

    It’s one of the reasons I haven’t offered some of my collection to many of their incomplete listings there. (that and I did make one small upload weeks ago, and still never saw stuff go on the site [true as of earlier this week.])…

54. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Mark & Peter… They do have terms of service, which pretty nicely puts all the rights and restrictions of user: http://colnect.com/en/help/collecting/terms_of_service

    If I read the legal jargon right, key information (=user contributions with stamp details) remain as property of the contributors (chapter 6). But Colnect website does not allow any external use or extraction of that information (chapter 4F). So basically if you wish to use any information, you always have to access it through Colnect website (and other Colnect services)…. Combined to rule 4H that is a pretty scary combination… But what else can you expect. They are not running a charity, but a business service.

55. Clive Strutt wrote:
    

    I agree with the initial analysis regarding the 5 online catalogues: they do not compare with the “hard copy” book catalogues, but these are so expensive (especially for a whole world collection) and they go out of date so fast. The information that I like to have when writing-up my collection is as follows:

    1) Precise date-of-issue (this is where Gibbons “Simplified” is useless – they just give the year);
    2) the designer’s name (sometimes it is in very small print at the bottom of the stamp itself, but not always by any means);
    3) the printing process and name of the printer;
    4) the quantity printed and/or sold (this is relatively rare information, even in a printed catalogue: but MICHEL is excellent in this respect, but of course it’s all in German!);
    5) a description of the design is helpful, though it is one of the things, like perforation and stamp size, that you can deduce for yourself. (For perforation you need a special gauge; for size of stamp or sheet obviously a ruler with millimetres).

56. Clive Strutt wrote:
    

    I wish someone would publish a free online catalogue which gives the information outlined in my first comment: but it would be a huge task as there are now so many stamps available.

57. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Clive… I don’t think that a free service would survive, unless it was run by major charity organization (like “Wiki Foundation” which is running Wikipedia).

    The idea of having everything “for free” is nice thing about the web, but in reality there’s no such thing.. Somebody always pays the bill (for example this blog is free, because I pay all the costs it creates). Running a large scale website, such as worldwide stamp catalog, would be deadly expensive (if including labor costs, I’d estimate $100-200,000+ per year minimum)… So there are very good reasons why websites either charge a fee of some sorts, or they host advertising on their pages.

58. Albert wrote:
    

    You state: “PostBeeld: it does not list/contain every issued stamp.”
    I am currently going through my Finland collection, and have not found any item missing 1980-1999.

59. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Albert… Like with most products, some parts may be more complete than others. If you want to see gaps, try Gambia, or Ecuador, or…

60. Amir wrote:
    

    Seems some comments here require my attention As I don’t get email notifications about new comments and don’t visit here frequently, this might long be overdue.

    First though, I’d like to happily mention how Colnect’s stamp catalog is growing, now listing 313,268 stamps and much more detailed information than before. Many editors have made tremendous efforts to improve information on colors, themes, perforations, issue dates and quantities and other details.

    Colnect’s stamp catalog is freely available to anyone without the need for registration and it will remain this way. We also support export of information to CSV file so you can use it offline. More importantly, Colnect has also announced the availability of its API which allows development of products on top of Colnect’s information – http://blog.colnect.com/2012/11/new-collector-products-with-colnects-api.html
    This means you can now get the permission to extract all information and use it to create something better for collectors.

    Colnect’s terms of service are meant to protect Colnect and its community. Instead of talking about the legal aspects of the terms, you can simply ask for written permission to do anything you want to do including scraping, crawling, archiving and so on. If it helps collectors and doesn’t directly hurt Colnect’s community, it will likely be approved and encouraged. I will personally try my best to assist in the development of any service that helps collectors.

    For further discussions about these important issues, I urge you to log in to Colnect’s forums and voice your opinions. Colnect has always been community driven and everything on it can change as the community desires.

61. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Amir…

    As I don’t get email notifications about new comments and don’t visit here frequently, this might long be overdue.

    You could always subscribe to comments feed of this particular page.
    Email is very likely to get caught up as junk mail, but RSS always delivers.

    …now listing 313,268 stamps and much more detailed information than before.

    I hooray for adding the detailed information and making it more uniform… But 313K items means still less than 50% completion from perspective of worldwide collector

    Colnect has also announced the availability of its API which allows development of products on top of Colnect’s information…to do anything you want to do including scraping, crawling, archiving and so on.

    I’ve been aware of API (as I subscribe Colnect blog feed), and it’s definitely good news. Hopefully it will push some of the big boys (=catalog publishers) also to open up their databases.

62. Amir wrote:
    

    313K is surely more than what we had when you first wrote this post and I commented updating the number up to 150K Colnect doesn’t aspire to catch up with other catalogs but to supersede them and we’ll get there. Colnect’s growth rate is growing with 25,290 stamps added during the last 90 days.

    We will soon announce a competition to the best application developed using CAPI (Colnect API) so that should be a great push forward.

63. Keijo wrote:
    

    @Amir… I have no doubts that you’ll reach completion (on simplified level) in not so distant future; hopefully sometime around year 2016/2017 if you keep up the current pace.

    Looking definitely forward to seeing what kind of entries the CAPI competition brings up.

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