Postal Stationery Catalogs (Or Lack Thereof) Rant

I know the vast majority of the people on this group collect stamps only. There are however a bunch of us that collect postal stationery, both of our local country and those from the rest of the world! Since the demise of Higgins & Gage, the writters of the definitive world postal stationery catalog, not much has occured with anyone else taking up the bandwagon on this!

Various countries , such as the US, GB, Germany, France and a few others have nice catalogs, but the rest of the world goes for want of such listing. Yes, One could purchase some insane number of catalogs from around the world, and since they are in whatever country language they are issued in, few can interpret what they are saying!

I live in the US and SCOTT is the worst catalog for postal stationery (worldwide) as it gets. The US Cat is fine, but how hard could it be to list the PS of each country each year with the rest of what countries issues? HUh? They need more people? Hire me!

Anyway, I am becoming disenchanted with Michel as well. The German catalog is fine, until you get to a part that becomes complex, then they refer you to yet another catalog! Appearantly people in Germany have lots of disposable cash! This gets truely expensive!

I could go on, but you get the idea: I am peeved. Oh well, it makes the day go faster! Hah!

Comments and opinions welcome

There does not seem to be enough demand from collectors to support someone producing a world-wide postal stationary catalog. Most stamp collectors are just that -- STAMP collectors. There needs to be enough people who will buy a catalog for it to be worth someone's time to publish one.

So, I am afraid that collectors of WW postal stationary are stuck with separate catalogs for different parts of the world.

For European countries, there are the Michel catalogs: Germany, West Europe and East Europe.

I have recent versions of these, as well as what I understand is the most recent edition of a postal stationary catalog for Norway -- dated 1995/97 :-)

The local club library also has a copy of the H&G catalog, and I have a searchable pdf copy of the old Ascher catalog from 1925/1928.

I feel your pain. I bought the Unitrade last year to cover Canada and I have a few catalogs to cover U.S. I find the Facit catalog to be strange. They cover the stamps of all the Nordic countries, but only the postal stationery of Sweden. It would be nice if they just add the several other countries to the book. I can't see Scott adding the postal stationery to the standard set as it's already sitting at six volumes and too expensive for many to by new as it is.

Who holds the copyright to Higgins & Gage now?

Nothing strange about Facit, they are a Swedish company, it makes sense that, apart from the catalog of Nordic country stamps, they concentrate on Swedish philately.

I do not know who holds the copyright. It used to be a stamp store in southern California, but that was a while ago. I know that Scott would never do it, but one can dream!

It is 2014. Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that can be crowd-sourced?

The lack of commercial support makes it perfect for a wiki.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I have to assume the major publishers have determined there's not enough demand for a worldwide postal stationery catalog. Considering the effort that would be involved, and the relatively small share of the philatelist market that collects postal stationery, it probably isn't cost effective.

I collect German postal stationery, and I find that Michel's Ganzsachen Katalog get's me 95% of the way there. It is a pain having to go to outside sources on occasion, but considering the level of specialization in the remaining 5% (the private postal stationery and private post catalogs are 4 volumes each), it's not realistic to expect that level of detail in the basic catalog.

The devil is in the details. Or rather, the degree of detail.

For the Indian States, there's Ed Dechl's India States Postal Stationery Listing or nothing. Higgins & Gage does cover the Indian States, but it's hardly worth considering.

Ed self-published this book during his lifetime, as a labour of love. I doubt that he even covered his costs. These days, a copy will cost you considerably more than he ever received for it - if you can find a copy, that is.

There's a moral in this, for those who wish to look.

ikeyPikey: A wiki would be nice and ideal. There's one for worldwide meters that's growing.

There is an excellent new PS catalogue for Australia:

http://www.brusden-white.com.au/

As far as the United States Postal Stationery the United Postal Stationery Society (UPSS) offers the most comprehensive postal stationery & postal cards catalog as e-publications for a nominal cost. I find them invaluable in my collecting:

United States 19th Century Envelope Catalog
United States 20th and 21st Century Envelope Catalog
United States Postal Card Catalog thru 2010
For more information see:
http://www.upss.org/code/epublicati...b658d65daaf9

The last GB PostalStationery catalogue was issued by Alan Huggins & Colin Baker in 2007 (now out of print), a new update is due later this year, information from GBPS.
However I produced a British Postal Stationery listing with images in 2016, this is available to any member free by email or GB£6 plus postage (on flash-drive)

Very generous, I would be very interested, could you email me when you have sufficient posts please, Roy.

The Robson Lowe Encyclopaedias covered postal stationery of most of the British Empire but only to 1952 or so. It's such a disappointment that Lowe didn't cover the whole empire.

Way back in the day Stanley Gibbons released their own catalogue for postal stationery. The last issue was 1900 which isn't so bad if you collect 19th century material. It doesn't have the depth of H&G though.

Bright & Sons had a similar catalogue. I'm not sure when they stopped but it might have been before the First World War. It's more simplified than Gibbons.

Ascher is breathtaking in it's scope, but your German would have to be reasonable. Either that or get used to online translating! The reprint is a very thick book but it's light so that's a bonus.

I use Michel for Eastern Europe and I'd like very much to get the one for Germany and one for rest of Europe.

Everything goes online these years, that's for sure. Online PS catalogues follow the stamp ones. There are two or three well organised platforms but it needs a motivation for knowledgeable people to continue working on it.

I have that, too. Since I mainly need a postal stationery catalog to identify 19th-century postal cards, it covers most of my needs. My knowledge of German is solid, so the language isn't a stumbling-block for me.