Sg Victoria Specialized Catalog Vs. Sg Concise Catalog

I am moving my GB stamps to a SG Windsor springback set that I bought
(after inquiring here as to what those were!) and if I understand it correctly the Windsor has different plates spaces for those that are visibly numbered on the stamps, no those able to be plated by other means. Anyway, in trying to differentiate these for say a SG #93 stamp I consult the Victoria Specialized for pointers and find that there is no SG #93, they are all lettered as J1, K4, etc. based upon stamp design. Why on earth did they adopt a secondary identification scheme? It makes cross referencing from their main catalog to the specialized much more difficult to determine if you are even talking about the same stamp. Am I imaging this? I'm sure I will eventually overcome the issue, but its sort of shooting yourself in the foot for SG.

The GB Concise covers Queen Victoria's reign in twenty-five pages, the Specialised in close to five hundred, with considerable detail about each issue. I think the assumption would have been that anyone buying the Specialised would be familiar with the basic catalogue numbers, and that a different approach was needed to organise the much greater level of information. You can always annotate your Specialised with the Concise catalogue numbers!

Looking more closely, the Specialised includes a cross-reference to the Commonwealth catalogue when the basic stamp is first listed - see also the introduction to the catalogue.

Thanks for the hint Geoff, a little 2 pager cross-reference in the Specialized would be handy. Worse comes to worse I'll annotate things, just odd that they'd adopt a completely different scheme to identify the same stamps. I'm a neophyte with the GB stuff so I'm sure I'll have lots of more questions on the quirks, like why that SG 93 is listed as having plates 4 and 5 in the Windsor but mine is labeled as plate 6! hahaha

Good luck! What is the #93 in the Windsor (by description, I mean)?

Hi svensson,

My old edition of the QV Specialised has a very useful one-page summary table of the surface printed stamps near the beginning of section J.

This lists the Specialised and SG numbers, value and colour, watermark, date, plates, and page number in the catalogue.

Thanks Nigel, I will look for it! I'll admit I didn't go through the Specialized with a fine toothed comb yet, I got lost amongst the pages of J1, J2, J3, J4.......
Haven't got the Windsor in front of me, but I think SG93 equates to the Scott 43? 4d Vermillion? Hopefully I'm not confusing that with SG 103. I'm at work...don't tell the boss.

According to the Specialised, SG 93 and 94 are found in plates 7-14, so you may be thinking of something else!