Scott Pricing Policy

In a discussion elsewhere we noticed that the Scott catalogue has stopped pricing individual stamps for many countries. When you look at recent stamps they only have a price per set. Does anyone know the reasoning behind this? In many cases the stamps in these sets are printed together in blocks or booklets, but this is not always the case.
It seems halfhearted and random because it is not for all countries.
We have not gone through all listings, but this is the case for many recent british commonwealth, Aruba, Argentina, Lithuania, Latvia, Swaziland, Luxembourg...

Jan-Simon

Jan-Simon I have been noticing this pricing by sets..when I try to catalog stamps from some of the British areas like Cayman Islands..if I want to trade a stamp I do not know how to do the division to figure the catalog value...certainly the lower denomination stamps will catalog lower than the highest..i also wonder what their reasoning is ???

I agree with philb said "certainly the lower denomination stamps will catalog lower than the highest".

I guess that the local philately market price of many recently issued stamp sets do not have a representative philately price segmentation for each stamp of per set according to the market itself.So the philately price segmentation can not be provide to the catalog editors temporarily,I believe this is conscientious attitude for readers by catalog editors.

Not necessarily so. In the 1990s there used to be different rates for cards and letters in the Netherlands (70c and 80c). There were much more letters sent than cards, so the lower value in sets (70c) is harder to find and has a higher catalogue value. There are other countries as well where the highest nominal value is not necessarily the most rare one.

Jan-Simon:

In doing my want lists for Costa Rica and Indonesia, I notoced the same thing. For eample, they are listing a set of three stamps as 781 (a-c). I suspect, but it's only conjecture, that this is being done in an attempt to save space in the catalogue.

David

Possibly too recent to established detailed values, lack of detailed documentation from issuing postal administrations.

that could be true if it were a temporary thing, only for stamps issued less than a year before the closing date of the new catalogue, but for instance for Argentina, this has been the case for 8 years. I still find it a very strange policy. Perhaps the editors of Scott think that stamps only get traded and sold in complete sets???

Maybe thats why my newest issue of Scotts in'96.
Also the parent company of Scotts is not philatelicly minded. Scott's is just another catalog in a group of catalogs!

Can you expound on that? Isn't Amos the parent of Scott? What other catalogs do they publish?

KirkS

Amos Press besides Linns, Scotts Monthly & Scott Catalogs. They press 4 coin and paper money catalogs & mags. Four publications dedicated to crafts.
Finally six automotive enthusiasts publications. So I don't believe stamps are their first priority. Check www.amospress.com for more detail.

in that respect they are rather different from Stanley Gibbons and Michel... both are specialized in stamprelated publications, afaik

Thanks, warrehouse.

I have purchased from Amos and I knew about their coin business. But I never really paid attention to the auto and craft stuff. I'm not sure what their priority is, but I get the contrast Jan-Simon made with a company like SG which is 99% philatelic.

KirkS