Do Catalogue Values Represent Scarcity/Availability?

I just managed to purchase the last stamp I needed to complete my Malta 1938 definitive series. Surprisingly enough it wasn't the 10/- high value but the 2/- value. With a Gibbons catalogue value at £7.50 I reckoned it wouldn't be too difficult to find, I was wrong. Its taken five years to find a decent used copy at half catalogue. I had the same problem (3 years) with Basutoland SG16a (catalogue £18)and seem to be having the same problem with some of the types in the 1953 British Honduras definitive set some of which are catalogues at just a few pence????
Has anybody else experienced this or am I the only one finding it difficult to add apparently 'cheap' stamps to their collection?
I can't say much for other countries as I tend to work on one or two projects at a time but from what I have seen, catalogue values at times are quite misleading with regards to availability. I even went as far as going to Stanley Gibbons looking for the Malta 1938 2/-, attended two Stampex exhibitions in London, a host of local stamp fairs in the UK, drove the vendors at the Charring Cross collectors market crazy and trawled the on-line auction sites for ages before eventually finding it.
I have seen a similar trend with a host of other Commonwealth stamps where a seemingly 'cheap' stamp is extremely difficult to find in a decent used condition whereas mint examples are plentiful and a fraction of catalogue value

There usually seems to be a missing trump stamp that is hard to get because it has been overlooked and it has been given a low catalogue value. Sometimes it seems that most dealers have the expensive stamp available because they can make more from selling it rather than from selling a less expensive stamp.

Catalog value is more reflective of demand than of supply. If 5000 people are competing for 1000 of a certain stamp, price goes up. Now, if 5 people are competing for the same 1000, price will plummet, even though the item is still rare. It is no longer scarce, as supply far outstrips demand.

Yes, catalogs in general follow the "logic" that higher face values reflect higher value or scarcity...which, of course, is nonsense. Some lower value stamps are only available for a short period of time, or they are passed over by postal clerks as "make up" stamps. So, years later you never see them, and stamp collectors wonder why they have minimal value...at least in the view of stamp catalogs.

Part of the fun of being a specialist is that you have a little more insight into the shortcomings of stamp catalogs.

When I collected GB QE2 there were some plate blocks that had low values but that I hardly ever saw. In general the scarcer the stam the higher its value but there are a lot of exceptions. It also applies the other way round any large GB stamp show you can easly buy tens of the £1 PUC but you wll have to pay £100s for each while you will struggle to find one of certain low value stamps.

AQ

I can find many US 292's every day but it is a mother to find some of the $1.00 catalog value stamps. Just saying.

In US Scott listed revenues, there are several reds and greens that catalog less than $10 that are very difficult to find used. I have been chasing RD179 (1944 $20) for years. Cats $20/$9/$5.50 (used/cc/perfin). None on ebay or EJ. Several dealers have been unable to supply one. Had an offer last week of a very off-center (perfs well in the design off center) perfin copy. It was the first copy I have ever seen.

R291 (1940 4 cent) was another. Cats at $27.50/$5.25/$4.25) I just filled that hole a few months ago!

Also depends on your collecting area. 1,000 copies of a state revenue stamp is called wallpaper while 1,000 copies of a Zep set is a different thing all together!

This is actually one of my favorite aspects Of collecting. Really learning about series of stamps vs just filling spaces. looking for all the various paper and color varieties of first issue revenues has been enlightening and enjoyable

What we got here is a total misunderstanding of catalogs and how they establish pricing . This misunderstanding is being explained by people who never created or establish a price for anything .

Prices that are posted in catalogs come mostly from Dealer price list .

bookbnderbob: "part of the fun of being a specialist....shortcomings of catalogs"

southpaw: "this is actually one of my favorite aspects...."

Agree about the shortcomings. The Scott Classic Specialist is decent for some of the older Portuguese colonial material and semi-decent for classic Mexico; both of which I collect. But to really "know which way is up," one needs the 2015 Mundiphil catalog for the colonials and Follansbee for Mexico. Fortunately, I now have both current editions. "Favorite aspects?" Again, agree fully. Both of these groupings have multiple opportunities to learn about perfs, papers, forgeries, etc.

Elsewhere, with my other two specialty areas, don't try to figure out Poland without the Fischer catalogs nor British East Africa without the Gibbons catalog.

Another factor is whether catalogs react to changes in the quantity of stamps available in/on the market.

A perfect example is US wine revenues (Scott RExxx). The Smithsonian sale dumped 10s or 100s of 1000s of mint stamps into the market. You can now buy entire sheets of many issues, yet I am not aware of the catalog values dropping significantly, if at all. Pretty much every day large lots of these are active on ebay at steep discounts from Scott.

To the unaware, they seem like a great deal. The reality is they are probably still way overpriced. Simply not enough collectors to absorb that many mint stamps!

Most worldwide catalogues are compiled based on other catalogues. Thus if I was making a world catalogue, I would start by getting the home-grown cat. of every major stamp collecting country. So, the OP's original grouse, about a hard-to-find Malta 2/- stamp, maybe applies for someone asking UK-based dealers, but the Gibbons cat he is suing was prolly created using a Maltese cat. to establish prices for that country, and it could be that 2/- stamp is by no means hard to find in Malta.

The last comment about the home grown catalogues works both ways. One anomaly I have noticed is in the Netherlands Antilles. Scott 116, 117, and 118 catalogue used as $1, $7, $1. You would think that 117 is much harder to find, but in fact the reverse is true. In my duplicates stockbook I have 5 copies of 117 and only 2 of each of the others. When I look through a dealers stock, I often see 117, but more rarely the others.

Why is this? Scott 117 is the 12½ cent value, which was the special international rate to the USA only. Thus all used copies ended up in the USA and not in the Netherlands where the catalogue is published. It is not uncommon to find 117 in kiddie albums of that period (1934).

I should note that the numbers sold (respectively 90, 156, 180 thousand) of these three values are not different enough to account for the difference in values.

Jan

On the subject of catalog pricing ,try and find Spanish Colonies at catalog prices . Each Colony has the same 2 or 3 dozen stamps that are common and found in all the different W.W. collections but try and find the stamps from the long sets. It is impossible without paying over catalog for the whole set .It took me 5 years to finish off CAPE JUBY in my Internationals. Looked at dozens of auctions for the high values .