Catalog Recommendations

I do not believe that there has ever been a time in this hobby when hobbyists were NOT told what to, and what not to, collect.
Don

From December 1968 American Philatelist

The battle between APS and Stolow, a dealer. It reads like a religious exhortation.



Image used Fair Use - For education purposes.

I will add that if you plan to buy stamps you will need to use the catalog that the dealer uses. In the US this means Scott. Printed albums are usually organized by a catalog even if they do not use catalog numbers.

Sorry, but just not seeing the negative regarding warning collectors about Dunes. We are always informing collectors, especially newbies, about bad sellers, fakes and counterfeits, deceitful practices of all kinds. Why was it bad to inform collectors that Dunes were not an "investment"? When they were first issued you paid full "face" value for Dunes but as time went on they could not be given away.

Yet, ironically - Dunes are now sought after, especially in Europe and the Middle East. MNH and overprints, errors, postally used on cover etc. bring decent prices. Anyone who was buying boxes of this stuff in the 80's to early 2000's for next to nothing is now sitting pretty indeed...

John

Guilty as charged.

Always find it hard to the "sitting pretty" angle
I buy for fun, and don't envisage selling before I pass on,
So any advantage fiscally, is lost

The benefactors are the one to benefit.

Rod, me too! Sure makes it easier to fill those holes, though.

John

Things do go up and down. I knew someone that had hundreds of Beanie Babies in their packaging. Don't know what happened there.

There are always people telling other people what and how to collect. I consider many of the modern issues no different than the "Dunes" since they have the same intent - mostly for collector purchase. Will the current glut of pop culture stamps be worth something in 50 years? All those that purchased sheets during the 50s and 60s are not seeing much return.

APS was front and center during the 60's with the Black Blot program. Now Scott English (does not appear to have been a APS board driven concern) wants to deal with "bad" dealers supposedly damaging the hobby just like the issues and dealers like Stolow.