How To Use Color Guides

Somewhere in the bottom of the box I have a color guide for stamps. Since I have never actually used it, are these guides reliable for foreign as well as United States stamps? I mean is Apple Green for Korea going to show up on the gauge. I know this is really general but I am curious how I use these guides effectively.

No easy answer to this question. Before I address color gauges, first a little on color terminology. Each calalogue uses different terminology ie Scott and SG are different.

There are 3 basic types of color gauge.

1. General (such as the Wonder Color Gauge) break down color shades in a general manner and are not good at determining rose red from bright rose.

2. Catalogue specific (such as Scott color guide) are more related to colors within that specific catalogue but are limited particularly on actual shade varieties such as pink and bright pink for the U.S. 1894 issues.

3. Issue specific (such as White's Encyclopedia of colors on U.S. Stamps) are very specific to a given issue such as pink on the 1861 3 cent as opposed to the pin on the 1894 2 cent.

The question is the degree of color discrimination you are looking for. As you move from type 1 to type 3 gauges the discrimination improves the the area of application becomes smaller

Now that Scott's has been in colour for a few years, it would be lovely if they printed colour guide info in their catalogue. Nothing a page of Washington/Franklin stamps printed in various sample shades wouldn't help with. Yes, there is fading to deal with, but it would be a great help.

I have an SG colour guide (the one with various colours printed on each tab), but sadly as you pointed out, they don't match scott's colours that well.

White's Encyclopedia of colors on U.S. Stamps - $730.00 It should be spot on for that price!
as opposed to Scott color guide- $50.00 This seems more reasonable to me.
Wow those are expensive! Talk about the hobby of kings!

yes I see what you mean by catalog specific guides...my S.G. isn't worth a darn in the world of Scott cat.

This is the bane of my existence at the moment. My color guide does not believe there is such a thing as gray-violet. My favorite part of this is I am looking at a page of blue, purple or bluish purple faded stamps wondering why the Scott catalogue is so vague with the 4 variations of certain Special Delivery stamps... It almost makes me feel like the action of cataloging is up to the discretion of the collector...but in that assumption all of my stamps would be worth hundreds of dollars each!