Stamp Prices In Catalogues

I agree with GeoffHa in terms of "valuing", taking into consideration the quality, the period and the number of issued stamps. Obviously I would pay more for a scarce stamp.

Another issue that deserves to be taken into consideration as we are talking about the value, the catalogue itself.

French stamps are higher valued by Yvert Tellier, English stamps by Stanley Gibbons, Italian stamps by Sassone and so on...
So which catalogue should we use for valuing our stamps as the stamps market is international?

I did a little comparison last year on this - and for classic worldwide material Michel, Y&T, Edifil, Sassone were consistently 25-40% higher CV compared to Scott for the same stamp/set in similar condition. Obviously there are variations and individual outliers to that.

Haven't done the same comparison with other catalogues (e.g. SG, Mundifil, FACIT, NVPH), but will at some point.

~Greg

And actual sales prices are still far below catalog no matter which one you choose to use.

I have a general idea of what I want to pay -- usually some percentage of Scott. However, if I want the item badly enough, I'll pay up.

Indeed! I found one of the biggest discrepancies is between Sassone values and the modest % of CV Italian material sells for on the market.

And as I mentioned in another thread some time ago, there is huge variation as to what % of CV market values average out at for different countries/periods.

Requiring 'special knowledge' to understand actual market values hardly inspires me to pay hefty price for a catalog. But more importantly it is not helpful to our hobby in terms of attracting new hobbyists.
I thought the solution was an online, database-centric digital catalog was the solution. Technically it is possible to harvest 'sold' prices across multiple sources in real-time resulting in values which are much closer to the actual market. But I now think that 'the forces that be' (dealers, publishers, advertisers, and hobbyists) do not want this.
Don

I have been looking at some of the more expensive Dutch sets. There are some very expensive sets issued in the period 1940 - 1955. One such set is the 1949-1951 permanent series known as 'en face.' It is catalogued by NVPH at ca. € 350 (low values) and € 1,300 (four high values). You can buy the low values for € 75 - € 100. The high values will set you back € 200 - € 300. I regularly see these offered by Italian sellers at around € 600 and US sellers at € 800 - € 1,000. I doubt they will be able to sell those stamps.

I have seen similar instances for the Queen Wilhelmina high values set of 1946.

As far as international markets go, for my own area of interest I am not convinced. Non-British sellers often are completely incapable of correctly identifying watermarks and even simple things as discerning between Spanish and French currency overprints for the Morocco Agencies are too difficult for non-British sellers.

Also, if I buy an expensive set of Dutch stamps abroad, I get charged 22% import duty. When I buy it from a seller in the EER, I do not.

You might also struggle to find certain stamps outside the home country.

It is international but with a lot of obstacles.

Indeed, when I first started out and was looking at prices in Scott, I assumed that vast swathes of the catalog would remain forever out of reach for me. It was kind of disheartening, actually. I didn't even really shop for whole sectors of the catalog, simply because I assumed prices would be far out of reach. It was only a couple of years later when I came to realize how inflated catalog prices really were and that I could indeed afford to own many stamps I thought unreachable. If catalog prices were in any way realistic (at least for the vast majority of material on the market), my collection would be a pale shadow of what it is today. I have to imagine that at least a few collectors look at those prices and just give up, assuming they'll never be able to own anything other than modern, common stamps that they don't find interesting.

I am from Belgium and for Belgian stamps we use the COB catalogus. The rule among collectors in Belgium is that the value of a stamp is about 20% off what the catalogus suggests. And even then you are lucky if you get this percentage.