Scott Stamp Catalogue has hit the nail with their current ad campaign running (at least) in Linns. IMO the simple question “Which of these stamps went up in value?” summarises a whole lot of the driving forces in stamp catalogue business.

Scott's current campaign hits the nail

I admit that as a younger collector I was quite keen to follow the catalogue values; thus I also bought new stamp catalogues almost annually.  But as I’ve grown older my interest towards changed catalogue values has declined year by year.

These days I find myself very little reasons to buy a new set of printed stamp catalogues unless my old one falls apart physically. Or when was the last time you heard about a stamp that had jumped from 0.20€/$ to 200€/$ in catalogue value?   Heck, even a jump from 0.20€/$ up to 20€/$ is very, very unlikely in timespan of 5-10 years, not to mention in one year… I admit that there are some exceptions, but for the life of normal collector they have quite a little meaning.

So , sorry Amos/Scott. Your ad doesn’t appeal to me. In fact, it does pretty much the opposite… Sadly the same can be said about any recent stamp catalogue advert I’ve seen…  Personally I’d be more than interests to know about the other changes included in latest and boldest editions.  Besides new issues are there new additions or changes in older listings?  Are there any other enhancements like better quality (or possibly even larger) images etc.

Recently I’ve been cherishing an idea I wish some stamp catalogue publisher would pick up… Why not to make loose-leaf stamp catalogues where the informational part and prices would be on separate pages?

As a collector I’d be more than openhearted for such a stamp catalogue… I could buy only the years/pages I’m interested. If I wanted new catalogue values, I would need to buy only the price pages for the catalogue etc. If there is new information about some type, I could simply buy that specific page etc…  But alas, I fear the publisher will not find this idea commercially sustainable and it will never happen.

And finally, for the question in the title of this post… I’d be very amazed if any of the stamps displayed on ad decreased in catalogue value. Most likely all of them went up (some notably) because that’s the image what keeps the catalogue sales strong…

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