What's Your Favorite Stamp Catalog?

What's your favorite stamp catalog?

Different catalogs are better than others for different purposes. One that has fallen by the wayside that I especially appreciate is Minkus. It included more depth of historical context for stamps, marking major changes of government. Also, semipostals and other back-of-the-book issues were placed in proper chronological order along with the regular issues.

Scott. For the U.S. market it is the most widely used.

For Ireland, I bought the Scott 2015 pages from ebay and then ordered the Ireland 2011 catalog from Stanley Gibbons. I much prefer the Stanley Gibbons catalog.

Scott's catalogues for the USA Specialised and Classics, Balian's catalogue for Egypt, Stanley Gibbons' catalogues for early Great Britain, Australia and Canada.

Terry

Unitrade for Canada

For the Indian States, it just has to be Gibbons.

As a worldwide collector,my vote goes to Michel. Sometimes (as with Indian states) Stanley Gibbons is a better choice though.

The appropriate section of Higgins and Gage.

And if you disqualify that as being not actually stamps, I'll take - the appropriate volume of Barefoot.

Because? At a pinch, if my back is against the wall, I can find what I want to know on postage stamps using the web. But try that with PS or fiscals!

Tony, I'm amazed you didn't call Koeppel and Manners.

For general Poland, Fischer Vols 1 & 2 are the only way to go. It includes stamps, postal stationery, plebiscites, occupations, even Zeppelin mails.

For specialised Poland, " Polskie Znaki Pocztowe", the 5-volume set published between 1960-67 still holds up, particularly for pre-war stuff as there's been nothing new published since then.

For post-war specialised then the massive "Podrecznik Specializowany Polskich Znaczkow Pocztowych 1944-1999" is a must have. It's out of print now so they have posted it ALL ONLINE as jpegs, wonderful stuff. I don't know of anyone else who has said "sorry, we're sold out, but look, here it is, you can download it, for free..."

http://www.phila.pl/podstrony/ksiazka/spis.htm

Ah yes, I should have mentioned, all of the above are in Polish

Is there some kind of master list of catalogs anywhere?

Bamra1, I steer well clear of revenues: the postal issues are enough of a handfull! (In fact, I'm in the middle of a polite exchange with an ebay seller at the moment, about a revenue use of a postage and revenue item he offered for sale, but omitted to mention that it was used as a revenue.)

On the other hand, if a cheap copy of Koeppel & Manners came my way, I'd certainly snap it up.

For me, it is Unitrade for Canada, Scott for US, Michel for Germany, Gibbons for GB and the Hibernia Catalogue or Ireland.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Let's look at this from another perspective. What's your favorite catalog in terms of appearance, layout, and ease of use, regardless of content.

Unitrade

For GB stationery Huggins & Baker