Scotts Catalog New Vs Older Questions

"Fool by those ......learn a little " REV are you talking about me ?

64 years ago ,I had a paper route in Chicago and made less than dollar a day delivering newspapers . I saved $10.00 . Went to the stamp store ,told the stamp dealer I want to buy early U.S. stamps because I had a lot of newer U.S. but the front of my album was empty . Told me he would give me a great deal and had it in the store and give me a deal at 1/2 of catalog
Two years later I brought my W.W. album to the Ogden Hills Stamp Club {this is the club that started COMPEX , at the time the biggest stamp show in the Midwest with lots of great guys } Told them look at my early U.S, . shocked by what they said ,all stamps damaged and worth nothing .
So yea ,had a lot to learn and dealers are not the place for me to buy .

The original size means the size before they reduced the printed image size to keep page count down. I do not know the how the size compares to the actual stamp. Gibbons prints on better paper so images tend to be better paper.

Scott with 12 volumes per year and the cost continues to climb , this method of printing has to come to a end as the numbers continue to fall for retail sales .
They will try on-line access but that is not the same as having a set of books on your desk that you paid a set price for . The on-line access is a new cost each year . Believe it or not my 2015 catalogs of 6 volumes works fine 90% of the time I need a catalog .

I have a 2017/18 set and a 2018 classic and not looking for any either. But if I did run across a deal, I may consider upgrading and dismantling mine,

Mistake number one was deciding that they were going to include every single new issue from every single Country every single year. That is THE driver behind the bloated and wasteful set of catalogs we have today. Publication costs have gone through the roof in the past six years from materials to labor to transportation and speaking of transportations , I can't imagine what the actual freight cost is to ship these complete sets when diesel is over six buck's/gallon.

Legacy philately has a nostalgia problem that leads to poor decisions and lack of vision. It has never been good at adapting to the changing expectations of successive generations becoming the new population of the hobby to please.

How about some courage from Scott and they stick to publishing their classic catalogs and stop producing the soon to be two hundred pound, eight volume, sixteen part whale.

The biggest culprit in the explosion in size is Stamperijia, who produces for countries like Mozambique. Page after page of huge souvenir sheet sets, often with nothing in common besides being "topical" (Scott titles like "People, Events and Anniversaries), with massive catalog values.

I was told by an old time collector to update Scott's catalog every five years was a good rule of thumb. Keep the older ones as they have information no longer in the current catalog. As I keep them for identifying stamps mostly back of book items of the United States as that is what I collect.

What's the difference between the older, smaller stamp illustrations and the newer, restored picture? How much bigger are the newer illustrations?

Same size as they used to be before they shrunk them

Here are comparisons of the 2020 and 2024 Scott Specialized US photos, showing an actual Churchill stamp for reference. The 2020 pictures look almost exactly the same size as the actual stamp. I thought it was illegal to reproduce color photos of stamps in actual size !?

The 2024 photos are about 3/4 the size of the actual stamp which are just a little too small for my tastes. I keep the 2020 catalog for daily use and only look at the 2024 when looking for current prices.

Hearing that the new catalogs would restore the original picture size, I went to the Amos Advantage web site to see if they have published a release date for the next Specialized yet.

When scrolling through the list of Publications, I was shocked to see how many current catalogs were "No Longer Available" or "On Back Order - No Estimated Rcv Date".


I couldn't even find the US Scott Specialized in this long list of titles. When the list was sorted "by Relevance" I'd expect this would be one of the first listed. So I switched the list to sort "By Date" and the list didn't change. Strike two.

Finally, I clicked on the "Shop Now" button on the left panel below the picture of the Scott Catalogs (pointed by my green arrow above) and I got a Page Not Found error! Strike 3. Buh Bye.