Scott Catalogue Reconfiguration?

There was a mention in Linn's Stamp News last fall about a survey the Scott editors had sent out. They mentioned increasing the number of volumes and examining whether to continue presenting countries in alphabetical order. Has anyone heard anything about the results of this survey? I'd welcome a move to a geographical arrangement of countries.

I thought that increasing the number of volumes was a "no go." (But what do I know?)

I read somewhere, but can't remember the source, that Scott's is also considering publishing some separate country editions as well?? I cannot confirm this though.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Yes, I think Scott is behind the curve on this. Stanley Gibbons and Michel have been doing regional and single country volumes for a long while. It's a better way to reach collectors. The SG and Michel specialized catalogs are not put out every year, but on a 3-5 year schedule, I believe. If Scott were to do this, they could include more information that would be of interest to specialists (booklets, postal stationery, etc.).

"Chirokmd", a seller on ebay, has made a nice business of selling single countries from Scott. Who knows, maybe they'll never see the light.

Actually, Scott has tried single country catalogs on/off since at least the early 1980s without much success. I still have a 1982 Scott Specialized Catalogue of Canadian Stamps & Covers -- and get this, it's in COLOR!

Also, until 1998, Scott actually had US+UN+British Commonwealth in a single volume separate from the other countries. A couple years ago, Scott issued a British Commonwealth catalog in ADDITION to the worldwide set. But as with the other products, it didn't sell well.

I think in part, Scott just had lousy timing. Also, trying something for only one or two years doesn't do well in establishing a new catalog. It's not that easy to change collector habits overnight.

Scott has a lot of pressure to do something . What they do is going to be upsetting to some and others will praise the change . But a major change is coming and the least likely move is to stay on the present course .

Scott Publishing is reaching the maximum binding thickness on nearly every volume of the Catalogue. With the sheer number of stamps being issued worldwide, a seventh or even an eighth volume will be inevitable.

What's the probability they move more to eCatalogs and away from paper? I bought their eC for Canada and it is usable but could be made much more so with some investment in presentation.

Terry

My guess is to keep the 1840-1940 Classic as a hard copy and then have a 1941-1980 hard copy and call it the Golden age ,then everything after 1980 put that as a eCatalog . I am sure people will start the 1941-1980 as a serious collecting field and sales of hard copies will grow .

I'm hoping they go with regional editions, and they wouldn't need to be updated every single year. Scott could sell a new issue supplement just for new values for a given region pretty easily and economically. I might actually buy a brand-spanking-new Scott Catalog if I could get all the countries of Europe in one volume, for example, assuming they would even fit. A multi-year release schedule might also help Scott kill off the market somewhat on older copies. If they only do a full update every 3 years, for example, many collectors will want a new copy right away rather than waiting 3 years for that edition to become out of date and thus cheaper.

Scott's eCatalogues are horribly broken. They promised offline access for their catalogs for the 2016 release and completely failed to deliver on that. Plus the quality of the catalogs is awful. They don't support pinch and zoom on tablets. Each page is an image file, so when you zoom in the text gets all distorted and pixelated.

I'm buying the countries I need from CHIROKMD and scanning them into a PDF, and OCRing them.

I bought the 2015 US section and when I found all these flaws, I asked for a refund. They would not give me one.

Agreed, if they had a decent e-catalog offering, I wouldn't care how the print versions were arranged. A good electronic catalog with all the features we've come to expect in this day and age is definitely the long-term solution.

I just emailed them again and asked if they plan on offering offline access and pinch and zoom. I would love it if SG came in with some aggressive pricing for the US market, along with a permissive license to see if Scott could be unseated.

Their only value as currently designed is for getting current CV.

Terry

I use ebay to get current stamp values. I don't need Scott for that.

For the e-Catalog, I'd just like to be able to order countries a la carte and be able to access it from any device with internet access. Pinch and zoom would be key, of course, as I'd probably access it from my iPhone most often. There are a lot of other features I'd like, of course, but that would at least be a good start.