Trucial States : Michel Catalogue : A Roadtest.

Well it arrived this morning, in all its glory,
even my Postmaster said he remembered the parcel.


First Impressions, what a fine piece of Literature
small desk footprint
heavy, over an inch thick, but nice to handle.
Straight out of its bubble wrap smells good
and looks good
For the Trucial States collector..heaven has arrived.

It's new so need time to appraise,
two faults spotted immed.
I complain about Gibbons having an Index at the back
Well, this Michel no index at all :)

The big test for any jam jar label catalogue are the Ajman
"Roses" set, there are squillions, and they all look the same
Michel only supplies one image, so it will be a test
if we can ID them all.

$47 from ebay
Vendor supplied supplementary information on catalogues
a welcome letter and "if any problems" letter.
Very Impressed so far.
Famous German quality.

is that an Isetta stamp I see??

I Think it is Kuhli :)
fantastic little cars, know the shape, that's all.
The "Wartburg" on first sighting, I thought to be an early Skoda.

@Rod...




Just wait till you get to 1973 issues of Ajman (or any other of dune state). Then the going gets though, as there is usually no illustration at all (and very little of other assets too).

But true - this is the best printed resource for identifying and cataloging these. Despite some of it's lacks, I can only praise the high quality and details it provides.

Michel always puts the index on the back cover. At least, it's there on the German-language 2004 copy I have.

That's quite useful for me - I struggle to remember in which volume some of the countries go. Where's Lithuania? No need to look inside the books, I just slide the most likely volumes out of the bookcase and look on the back cover. There it is, Northern Europe (not Eastern Europe).

In that regard, where the heck did Tajikistan / Uzbekistan / etc go in 2008? I have the overseas volume 9, Middle and Eastern Asia. In 2006, it was a single volume that included a bunch of these ex-Soviet states. In 2008, it was split into 2 volumes, one for China and one for Japan / Korea / Mongolia. Except for Tuva, all those ex-Soviet states just disappeared.

Ryan

Ryan,

I believe they're in the Japan, Korea, Mongolia volume you mentioned. See here.

So there it is...

That's just too smart!

PostmasterSG is correct. Here's the backcover for my 2010 catalog:

Hmmm, I wonder why the choice was made to release an "unfinished" catalogue in 2008. The 2008 volume 9/2 contains only Japan, Japanese occupied WWII territories, Korea unified, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, Ryukyus and Tuva. Everything else was left out. There's nothing mentioned in the foreword, but it makes me think perhaps they were planning a Volume 9/3 that was never released.

Ryan

edit - unlikely on the notion of Volume 9/3 - it would have been only about 250 pages, not worthy of its own issue, I don't think.

Still have the "L" plates on my back,
I reckon it's (the catalogue) bang on with their Airmail,
NOT back of book but in sequence, with an aircraft icon...super.

Do not like the "Block" listings :(
not sure what is going on there
no individual numbers for minisheets.

Would have been nice to have MS images.

Rod222, congratulations on your new catalog! You stated finding two 'faults' with it? I suppose that depends on which side of the world one is from. Growing up in Holland I always knew the index was supposed to be in the back. Been in the States for almost 50 years, and still in a 'senior citizen' moment I look in the back for an index!

Rod and others: I thought I read a review several years ago, when Michel started issuing catalogs again in English, that they were not as detailed as the German ones, so I've always just suffered through the German ones whenever I needed to see some detail, and I only have German ones. (By that, I mean only German-language ones.)

Is there anyone who would be in a position to compare a German-language one with a comparable English-language one? And, just curious, for the Trucial States, is there a Specialized ("Spezial") one? (I'm assuming in German. Has Michel issued any specialized in English yet?)

-- Dave

Zeppelin and Germany, at least...not sure of others.

Here's a complete list of English Michel titles straight from their 2012 release program (some of these, such as the Gulf States 2012 are due later this year):

-Michel Colour Guide
-Michel Germany Specialized Vol. 1
-Michel Germany Specialized Vol. 2
-Michel Gulf States
-Michel Northern Europe
-Michel Valuable Stamps of the World
-Michel Zeppelin Specialized

But using the original German editions is not that difficult - especially as they do provide a free translation booklet containing philatelic terms (it is a "must read" if you have never used Michel before, or struggle with German. Here's a link to free PDF-version: http://www.briefmarken.de/pdf/Englisch.pdf )






????
Rod, could you please give an example.

I'm assuming he's referring to the fact that Michel doesn't number souvenir sheets in sequence with the stamps, but instead numbers them sequentially as "Block #".

That's right Postmaster,
scb any minisheet is given a "block" number
which appears agian at the B.o.b.

The Block listing is an irritation easily overcome
by ascribing the previous Michel number and adding "a" "b" etc

I do like the complete listing of the blocks, that is a nice
addition for a completionist.

Michels "Type" is a new one to get used to, each image
is anscribed a letter "aa" "ab" etc
In Gibbons there is a type "number", an improvement in my view.


Indexes on the back cover is a fantastic idea.
Indexes at the back of a gigantic swollen block of paper
with a weak spine, as in Gibbons, shows lack of thought,
forget custom.
If one is going to list say Jordan..see Volume 3
surely it wouldn't have been that much harder for Gibbons
to say Jordan...V3 page 33

Now there's two spines to bend, and two doorsteps to handle.