What Would You Think Of An Electronic Scott Catalog?

I was thinking the other day that it would be nice if Scott offered an annual subscription to an electronic version of their catalogs. Maybe a base fee for their WW catalogs and options to add their US Specialized and Classic Catalog. Would you be interested in this? How much would you pay.

I buy a new US Specialized each year but every other Scott catalog I've bought has been older. Right now I use the WW Classic and don't even own a full set of the WW catalogs, but I would like to have easy electronic access to their full catalog library. What do you think?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

By way of example, these are Yvert's electronic subscription offerings. The "everything" package is €99, the others are cheaper.

https://www.yvert.com/CT-1571-bibli...n-ligne.aspx

Sign me up. I would look for the ability to 'mix and match' certain countries and US specialized. I would also be looking for other features such as filter in place, complex filtering, and strong search capabilities. Depending on the feature set; I would hope for a subscription of <$100 per year.
Don

Scott already has online catalogs:

http://www.scottonline.com/allproducts

I have the 2016 US Specialized. The functionality is Horrible!!

Dan

$75 per catalog is way too expensive for me, but I think If Scott got $100/yr from me for a subscripture it would be better than the 0$ I spend now.

I would be very interested in an electronic catalog if it had some functionality to it. If the data in it could be quickly searched, sorted and manipulated (and preferably exportable as well), I'd be all in. However, I would not be interested in something with little to no functionality, such a simple PDF version, for example.

Hi guess I'm just old fashioned. I've collected for over 60 years now, when I started I was given an old Scott Catalog from the 20s. I learned by using the small black and white images, and they all had a while line drawn thru them. So, I had to become a detective when trying to ID a stamp. Was still collecting foreign stamps back them. There wasn't any internet, we did not even have a phone back then. So collecting is different today, just goes to show that everything is always changing, maybe in this case better than it used to be.

Scott still requires detective work. The old black and white reproductions were sometimes inaccurate, likely never really intended to be accurate, nor were the overprint pictures. And they were often not (Argentina portrait issues from the 1870s were semi-crude drawings for the longest time). Very confusing to this beginning collector.

Today, we have color pictures, but in their haste to get them, Scott sometimes replaced the old pictures with photos of reprints and fake overprints. I recently ran across (in the 2003 Classic) the (new) color picture intended to show the large PAPUA inscription for the lakatoi/sailboat issues (#41-48); it's wrong. Overall, the colors and image quality are pretty good but the images are too small. Someday, they'll catch up ...

So an e-version with big(ger) pictures of genuine ones would be the thing, but then creates the problem of being a reference for fakers. With full manipulation of pages, all you would need is updated prices and any new discoveries once you had the basic catalog from any year. Theoretically, updates would be cheap, more collectors would be encouraged to update if it was cheap. I would like the pick-and-choose country option, too. Full manipulation of pages would allow your permanent notes. It would allow your replacement of pictures including shades and varieties you may have scans of (Scott could also offer scans of varieties]. You could do correlation with other catalogs. The catalog can be made your permanent wantlist or checklist.

A move to this kind of catalog platform is, I think, necessary. Whether Scott or anyone else has the money to do this is another question.

One of the things I'd look for in an electronic Scott is for every stamp to be pictured, particularly for commemoratives with different designs within the type. I understand why they often just picture the type in the print version as the catalog would be much larger if every single stamp was pictured. There wouldn't be such space limitations with an electronic version, however. With some long running commemorative sets, finding the exact Scott# of a given stamp can be laborious. They wouldn't necessarily need to do this for definitives that only differ in color or denomination, but it would be a great help for commemoratives.

I would suspect that Scott uses the same source file for both products so limited by what has been done. However, this task does not always have to be done by Scott. Country and specialist societies could fill the void to great degree.

Ugh. This topic has been discussed before. Scott just doesn't understand digital. Last I spoke with them, they don't even have a database of all their stamp data. The catalog is still a big giant desktop publishing file, and when they add a stamnp, they need to do it by hand.

Even the major players in the desktop stamp software game are forbidden by their license from making a web based app. The only way you're going to get a decent offering is to use a third party tool and import Scott numbers into it.

I've been hoping for years that people would slowly start using an alternative numbering system of some kind, partly to get a numbering system that can be used with online tools without getting an Amos cease and decist letters, and partly because I HATE Scott's numbering system.

Andy hit the nail on the head. Scott's inability and/or refusal to go to a relational database style catalog is killing their ability to produce a decent digital offering.

I like what Michel has done with their online catalog, though they could use some improvement in a few areas -- the number of searchable fields could be improved and some of the accompanying text in the catalog gets ommitted in the online offering. They're slowly doing a better job of including large color photos of every stamp. Plus, you always get current WW catalog data.

As has been discussed on other threads, Amos Media is using an obsolete business model. I just picked up the new Parts A and B, in all their two volume glory. The other volumes are more current. My Scott Classic is 2016. I don't expect to buy another Scott catalog until the Classic that comes out in 2020 or 2021.

I am OK with the Scott numbering system; much more efficient than the old Minkus system. Living in the US, I don't need to rely on Gibbons, Michel, etc., except in limited circumstances.

Amos/Scott, I think, is losing a lot of potential business by not having a reasonably priced electronic version of the Scott catalog.

Moving to the electronic world costs a lot. Consider that someone like Amos has to continue (and would likely continue) with their print operations, but needs to spend more money to add personnel, equipment and resources to expand beyond just a digital copy of the catalogs. Do they have that?

Having spare cash around for major projects is not what's done today (companies that did pre-2008 got bought out to be drained of that cash and left to die). Interest rates aren't horrible these days, but banks won't loan you the money to go electronic unless there is clear evidence your business will have major growth by getting an infusion of cash, rather than just surviving. How else are you going to pay back the loan with interest?

The population of the stamp collecting world that bought Scott catalogs and bought them regularly was never a huge part of the total population. That's what Amos would have to look at, even though they would get some of the old regular buyers back. But how many would that be at $90 per volume? The price may drop some with a better e-version, but specialist publications, don't come cheap nowadays any which way. But even dropping to $50/volume, how many could they sell today? And added features raise prices back up anyway.

Old times had large discounts from wholesalers for new catalogs. No more. I'd reluctantly pony up today's $90 per volume if it were an e-version with all or most of the features on everyone's wish list above. That would be contingent on if I could get yearly electronic updates (or monthly as in the magazine) for not too big of hit.

The issue is that Amos did not hire a $50k per year IT person 12-15 years ago. (They could have done it at half this cost if they outsourced off-shore; but the value is in growing an internal resource.) Instead they stayed their 'safe' legacy course, never moved their IP to a SQL database, and are now far behind the technology curve. Frankly the move of all their content to a SQL database would have increased their IP value more than the cost of the IT person over the years. For example, try selling the company now without the content in a SQL database.

There are many other reasons why moving to an SQL database (like every Fortune 500 company did a decade ago) was the right move, folks can Google the reasons if they desire to learn more.
Don

Amos' first attempt at a digital offering was a CD-ROM with the catalog as PDFs. I believe Amos was using Adobe FrameMaker as their DTP app, and all this required was a simple export to PDF. Quick and easy. Then in 2009, they discontinued this offering under the belief that it was too easy to pirate and they were losing money.

Their second offering was the first Scott Catalog app, which was nothing more than a wrapper around some password protected PDF files. And the app showed banner ads on your paid catalog volumes. It was iPad/iPhone only. Since the iPad supported PDF natively, you got the benefit of native pinch and zoom and clear clean text.

I actually liked this offering. I was not fond of the fact that the catalog was forever trapped on my iPad, but it was OK.

Amos actually created a company called Amos Digital and tried to sell this solution to other companies to use. That company ended up folding.

And Amos' magaizne digital offering was through a company called Mattercast. The Mattercast solution was less than ideal, but it could have been worse. Mattercast ended up going out of business. leaving Amos between a rock and a hard place.

Now we have the current offering. Amos' magazines now use a product by Olive Software and are actually quite good. But when they decided to use Olive Software's eBook offerings, that solution fell flat on it's face.

Each catalog page is picture. So when you pinch and zoom the text and images get distorted. Native pinch and zoom is not supported. Instead, you need to click on + and - buttons in the catalog. And there is NO offline access. Dream of walking around a stamp show with iPad in hand with your Scott catalog on it? Sadly, that's not going to happen.

And then, Amos' Android offering pretty much fell apart. The Linn's Stamp News app on Android hasn't worked in I don't know how long. Has to be easily 6 months now, if not longer. My last communication with Amos was that they had a beta app from Olive that they were trying to get into the Google Play Store, and to wait till the weekend and I should see something. Well, that was 4 months ago. When I emailed them last, they said they had no comment on the Linn's Android app.

Scott is simply a print business in a digital world. I think it's cool that Linn's is around. But you can get most of what's in Linn's by reading a half dozen stamp news sites. The only thing Scott really has that is of value is their numbering system. And they grant very limited use licenses for their catalog numbers.

Scott doesn't want to spend the money to build an online database of their catalog, and they won't let anyone else do it either. I spoke with the maker of a desktop stamp cataloging software that uses Scott numbers and he told me his license only allows him to use catalog numbers on one operating system, and can't be used for an online offering.