I Think The Scott Catalog For Ipad Has Been Discontinued

I can't find it in the apps store, and the app on my iPad doesn't show any of the 2015 Catalogs for purchase.

It's dead Jim.

I sent Amos an email.

Charles Snee recently hinted about an online, subscription-based, searchable Scott catalog to come sometime this year. Maybe the launch of said service is imminent and they've discontinued support for other electronic catalogs. Just a theory.

Ah, like Michel does. And hopefully as economical as Michel.

I don't know anyone that subscribed to it. It was very expensive each album was broken into up to 7 sections and each section was 30 bucks. I just looked. I can still get 2014 on the I-phone

Funny. This is Amos we're talking about.

There is a reason my catalogs were four years old when I bought them, and am only considering upgrading to a newer US Specialized catalog this year.

What does Michel charge per month for access to their catalog?

So, I just did the math. 6 volumes at $119 a volume is $714. Divide that by 12 and you get $59.50/month for a subscription. It would not surprise me they wanted to charge $50/month for access.

How much would you be willing to pay for a subscription to Scott?

Email back from Amos:

Andy,


Yes, the product has been discontinued.


Thank you,



Nicki Ingle

Customer Service Representative

Amos Publishing

xxxxxx@amospress.com

xxx-xxx-xxxx

I would hope that in Scott's case they'd allow you to subscribe to certain sections and wouldn't make you pay for the whole catalog. If I had to pay $50 or $60 a month I'd just keep buying 1-2 year old catalogs on Amazon when I thought it was time for an upgrade. If I could subscribe to a handful of countries and pay in the $10-$20 per month range, they'd have a customer.

Next email from them says they're working on an eReader version. Scott catalog for Kindle, I guess.

A nice ePub3 book would probably be a good idea.

But they need to realize, people want a searchable database. At some point, they're going to need to deliver that.

In my opinion ebay already has the database which includes hundred of thousands of stamp images, descriptions and a substantial amount of historical pricing data which reflect true market values. And of course ebay already has the infrastructure (hardware, software, and developers)to support it all.

If Amos and other catalog publishers can't develop this quickly and on their own, they will be faced with having to cut a deal with ebay.
Don

PS - whenever anyone uploads an image to ebay they give them the right to use that image and listing content in any way ebay chooses.

Supposedly the searchable database is in the works. It's got to be expensive and time consuming to get the data into the right format, but it should only need to be done once. Supposedly Scott's data isn't (or hasn't) been in any kind of such database thus far and they kind of have to build one from scratch. Charles Snee posted about it on another board once and I was frankly amazed at how technologically primitive their operation seemed - Scott editors make their notes on paper (!) for cryin' out loud. Scott editors don't (or heretofore haven't) actually enter data into a database when they add new listings or change valuations. Again, I'm sure getting a solid database up and running isn't a trivial expense for Amos, but it's one they must do or it'll be the death of them.

Michel charges €7.99/month for the basic catalog, and another €5/month for the premium version, which adds some additional search capabilities and better photos.

It's not bad, considering you get all countries. The listings are pretty basic, so it's not a substitute for a specialized catalog, but it's handy if I'm trying to ID other issues.

ebay could, but do they want to? If they thought it was worth their while (if they've even thought of it at all), they'd probably already be working on it, regardless of where Amos was at in the process. I just don't think ebay, being the behemoth that they are, will want to mess around with niche hobby tools and publishing. I could be wrong.

Now...selling their images and data would be another thing, but ebay's raw data would hardly be clean and would need a considerable scrubbing, at least for some countries. They don't have a field to input a catalog publisher and number, so I assume they couldn't query by Scott# and they'd have to go off of information in titles and descriptions.

This is where their lack of subdivisions within stamp categories is a problem. For example, in ebay's Germany category, just searching for Scott 25 could pull up Scott 25 for Germany, GDR, Danzig, Memel, Saar, and any number of states and plebiscites, occupations, etc. Not to mention you might also find results for Michel 25 or SG 25 for any of those stamp issuing entities. Searching for a specific stamp by Scott# in ebay's Germany category is a total crapshoot, even with advanced search features, and scrolling through dozens and dozens of unrelated stamps is par for the course. I'd think that the data within the Germany category would be among the worst examples of problematic data, but I'm sure there are many other areas of philately that would be similar.

If ebay were serious about something like this (or indeed just improving their stamps category in general), they'd have a field where you could input a catalog number and a catalog publisher. Then they'd be able to capture and filter that data easily. I wonder if there might be a copyright issue with this or else I'd think ebay would already ask for this information to help with search results.

Actually they've got 3 price plans nowadays for online catalog: 7.99€/month, 12.99€/month and 17.99€/month.
Cheapest is the barebones, the rest provide better images, enhanced search tools, and the most expensive has personal inventory (i.e. MichelSoft Europe)

Additionally they've got the eBooks priced 50-100€ a piece (though it seems they're selling half price right now). I recall you get 5 years reading permit per paid license. These are precise copies of print catalogs, so they're much better equipped than online catalog itself.

Their latest innovation is single country catalogs on USB-stick. I recall they sell it for 19.90€/country.

And then there's MichelSoft.

And...

So Michel is going full steam ahead... They've got bunch of more or less great products, but IMHO they still need to learn/adjust their pricing.

-k-