Changes Being Made To Scott For Roosevelt Presentation Album Proofs

Some of you may recall a discussion about a year ago and maybe some prior to that regarding some work I had done on proofs from the Roosevelt presentation album. I had pointed out a number of shortcomings in Scott. It was suggested on here that I contact James Lee and see if he can help me connecting to the editors at the Scott catalog. I did that and I'm happy to say there are a number of changes being made in the upcoming 2023 US Specialized catalog. I haven't gotten an exhaustive list of the changes, but at least it sounds like they are fixing some of the more egregious oversights like not differentiating between the two Scott #1 proofs. I'm excited to see these changes. It's good to know it is possible. James Lee is continuing to work on some of them - especially some of the 1861 issues. He is apparently doing a more comprehensive look at proofs and essays of the August and regular 1861 issues. So there will likely be some further changes in the 2024 catalog.

Don, once the new catalog is out I'll want to get back to the Stamp Smarter article to make some updates: https://stampsmarter.org/proof/Home_proofs.html

Great work on that and excellent news. Way to go!

Applause

For those of us who missed that conversation can you give us some links or keywords that aren't too broad? When I searched on "Roosevelt Album" this is all that came up from 2018:
http://goscf.com/t/60600&SearchTerm...sevelt,Album

BTW you might want to consult B.I.A Research Paper #7 by Ron Burns: title: A Study of the Production Records for the 1903 and 1914-15 Printings of the "Roosevelt" and "Panama-Pacific Small Die Proofs I think it may still be available from the USStamp Society, but if not you can check with the APRL.

Ron had also been running into "clean Panamas" and wanted to look into the records of their development.

I think I've read everything written on the Roosevelt album, including very detailed research etc. I did a lot of digging before writing the article. The write-up on stamp smarter (link above) is focused on trying to make sense of Scott numbering. It was never intended as a replacement or correction to that research. As it turns out, Scott numbering has a number of oversights. Most of it is because the existing numbering scheme tried to get all the proofs to fit into existing numbers. But in many cases different and modified dies were used and most of the colors are also not exact matches. So new numbers are really needed. The article includes most of the issues we discussed with the catalog editors.

Here is the thread containing that original discussion. It started on a different, but related topic about an incorrectly listed proof at an auction: http://goscf.com/t/79342

Because it involved a picture I resurrected that thread and added a comment. FWIW

Got my new catalog today. I detected four changes in it that I suggested. However, for the cases where there are more than one color/type of a stamp in the Roosevelt album no change was made yet to address. So the 1847 reprint proofs have not changed. There is still more work to do - especially in the 1861 area - and James Lee has a project to work on that for future editions.

This was a very rewarding exercise. Glad to see a few errors fixed. I'll be updating the Roosevelt Proofs section on Stamp Smarter over the next few weeks to reflect the Scott changes.

Again, I commend you for your work on this. Kudos!

I have to say that I am puzzled as to why Scott's could not just make the changes to everything that you and James Lee noted. How hard can that be?