When Buying, How Important Are Catalog(Ue) Numbers To You In Listings?

When you are looking for a stamp on ebay et al, do you search using a catalogue number, or key words?

Is it important to you that the Sc, SG (or other) Catalogue number is in the title?

All my listings (mainly Pacific stamps) for example on ebay, have the SG catalogue number only. So, am I shooting myself in the foot for not including Scott as well?

I am extremely "narrow" in looking for the items that I collect. So yes, I search for a particular Scott number and do not even know the SG number ( or Yvert for that manner ).


Peter

If I want an item, but there is no catalog number, I pass 7 out of 10 times unless there is not doubt about the stamp. For example, I don't care if a US commemorative stamp has a cat # listed, but I do care if its regular issue definitive that has 2 or more variations, hence catalog numbers.

I search for the Scott numbers of the stamps in the title. I'm not schooled on the SG numbers.

For serious interests, I use both Scott numbers and key words in detailed Boolean searches. For casual searches, I use Scott numbers.

If you list by SG only, I would never find any of your lots matching my true search interests and the mismatched hits to the SG numbers would only aggravate me as chaff. I believe the time you invest to include the Scott numbers in your lot title or description will more than pay for itself.

For pages, collections, sets, naturally by country name

For my better collections, always Scott when filling gaps.

Oh Oh, looks like I'll be adding Scott numbers to all my listings, I see a couple of months work ahead. Baby steps, one Country at a time...

Thanks everyone.

I search by seller more than catalog number, but having the catalog number in the listing gets me to click on it. I'm not usually near my collection when shopping online, but I have my want list in a Google spreadsheet, so I can access it from any device (including my phone). I'll pull up my want list and see if the seller has anything I need and buy/bid accordingly. I also save some searches by catalog number for harder to find and more expensive items.

I pretty much know what I am seeking, so catalog #s are only important when there are perforation, watermark, paper, tagging, or other differences. Even so, when there ARE these kinds of varieties, I greatly prefer examining them in person before buying. With ebay, the quality of the pictures (both front and back), accurate descriptions, and price are most important to me.

Catalog number search should work better on Hipstamp than ebay. Try searching for Scott 500 in Stamps > United States. Very few hits will be the actual stamp. Most will be on a catalog value in the title, or worse, an inventory number in the title. The search engine on ebay has no concept of catalog numbers.

Still, I rarely search on anything other than the Scott Catalog number. Now, that doesn't mean that the seller got the right catalog number....

Good points bookbndrbob, hopefully I have those covered. A bit off topic, but would also appreciate thoughts on these aspects too. See my website http://koalastamps.com and feel free to comment on the good and the bad, including your thoughts about the site. Many thanks, Rod.

Just to complicate matters (after reading cfrphoto's post), ebay doesn't recognise Sc500 and Scott500 as being the same, whereas HipStamp does.

So to search on ebay with a Scott number, two searches are required, and lots of mismatches are returned. For example, Scott 27 with a price of $500 is a match.

I think I will include my Scott numbers in this format: Sc500, which also returns Sc 500, Sc#500 and Sc #500 on both sites. What do you think?

and what about Yvert, Facit, Michel and another 100 different catalogs that the various lookers on ebay use,

Scott's catalogue and its numbering plainly have meaning if you're selling US stamps, and/or selling primarily to US buyers. But to the rest of us, aside from Rod, they're an irrelevance. I've never seen a Scott catalogue, and have no reason to. If you're having a blitz on HipStamp, it's doubtless potentially worthwhile, but, elsewhere, the logic is that you'd be referring to SG, Yvert etc for other markets. Unenviable!

For Poland, it's Fischer or Michel particularly on Delcampe which is more Euro-centric than ebay

Going by some of the posts, your workload should be minimised somewhat, by offering the Scott numbers on your examples with a CV $5 or higher, maybe $10 or higher.

I am not sure penny stamps, that sell by the singleton, would gain any advantage by offering Scott numbers, for sets or pages of random stamps, for that you perhaps do not need Scott.