That Killer App

ikeyPikey - was not thinking a geolocation app, but I am sure you would have a better chance licensing the Grindr platform then catalogue numbers ;-)

PekingDuckDog - I do not think your post is pessimistic, everything you are saying is realistic. Some of your points could be addressed by having some controls put in place. I think if there was a serious desire to do this kind of project one could speak with one of the groups already doing a crowd/open sourced project. A number of projects like this already exist. In the spirit of such a project that may be willing to share their resources to help something like this.

Don - you also make very valid points as well, and you have a unique perspective with your experience in the stamp smarter community based projects. I do agree with you that the TKA is more likely to come from a commercial entity. As you and others indicated this would be a huge undertaking for any group to pull off. In my opinion owning property, and a multi-million dollar headquarters should really never be the goal, because those resources could be deployed more effectively to reach far more people. I know this is how things have been done, but this seems to be an old paradigm and is shifting.

I was just responding to the initial post of what such an app might look like. I know there are hundreds of reasons why it probably won't happen. Was just dreaming of what I would love to see and find. As a new collector I find myself spending lots of my time looking for these resources and it would be great to find them in one or a few places as opposed to so many different spots. There seems to be so many different people, groups, organizations, etc doing good things and it would be great if there was a venue that brought everyone together. Probably not realistic.

I think collecting in a general sense is thriving and will continue to do so. Those that seem to do best embrace technology and maximize it's use to reach more people.

The cost of a full set of new catalogs in both money and sheets of paper is high indeed, and I keep rooting for better digital offerings from catalog publishers for the reasons you mention. However, keep in mind that for identification purposes, older editions of the catalog work just as well as new ones (at least in about 99.9% of cases, and except for new issues) and can be purchased for a small fraction of the price. Whereas brand-new 2017 editions would cost you over $100 per volume, you could probably buy a full six-volume set that's 5 years old for less than that, and the catalog values wouldn't be all that different in most cases. It's pretty difficult to collect "seriously" without catalogs, simply because without them it's difficult to know what even exists.

Exactly. I've got lots of catalogues, including some dearer, recent ones, but most of the time I can get by with an SG 1960s Europe, an early-70s Commonwealth and an early-70s four-volume "Rest of the World". Total cost, around £10.

I know I've written this before, but the biggest issue with TKA is not the implementation or technology, but the fact that very few collectors would be willing to pay the price for it to realize. Technology in itself is relatively cheap but the human part for it is not (even open source and crowd-sourced project have realized this). For each person working 'full time' (say 9 to 5) you are easily looking at $100,000 expenses per year.

So TKA would be facing the paradox of 'must sell 30,000 copies at $10 per year' vs 'must sell 3000 copies at $100 per year' in order to be sustainable (and in order to make some level of profit, the prices should be doubled). I guess it is obvious which path the major publishers have chosen, and which we collectors would prefer.

-k-

A word of caution about Open Source project, in model railroading we have a nice software name JRMI , it's open source , but the owner of a small software company sue the main contributor and he spent over $ 100k in layers and others fees. JRMI win and they will get refund the fees over a 5 years period, so the main contributor have to shoulder a lot of money.






Yes some catalogues are frustrating because of the lack of information to help ID the stamps, ,,,,,, stampworld ...really, are you serious ?