My Scanner - A Love Hate Relationship

My scanner is probably the most useful tool I have for collecting stamps. Like many of you, I am sure, my eyesight is not what it used to be and even years ago it wasn't that great. To be able to scan a stamp at high resolution and display it greatly enlarged on my computer monitor makes it so much easier to identify and critically examine the stamp. I'm not sure I could even come back to collecting after all these years if it were not for such technological improvements. So much for love.

Sometimes I hate my scanner. I am going back through my US collection reacquainting myself with each stamp. As I examine each one using the scanner I am unfortunately occasionally discovering faults, flaws, repairs, reperfs, regums, etc. on stamps that I bought many years ago fully trusting that they were genuine, fault free stamps. There is the hate.

So now I am smarter, wiser (hopefully) and just a little depressed. Well, not really depressed, just a bit chagrined thinking how clueless I was 20 years ago. But, all the same, thanks to my scanner I am having a blast getting back into this wonderful hobby of ours.

Is there any other tool that has had such a profound affect on our hobby as the scanner?

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

Agreed.
Scanner is up there with the Amos Scott Catalogue, and Steiner pages.
The Big 3.

(Followed closely by SCF)

What type of scanner do you have?

I need one good for stamps.

Batessa, I have the Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner. Not as cheap as some but a quality machine that does everything I need.

rod222, I just started using the Scott online catalogue. I am just getting into United Kingdom stamps and I purchased the 2019 catalogue for just Great Britain for only $15 US. A whole lot cheaper than buying the paper edition. The online version takes a little getting used to but it saves space on my stamp table not having to have a catalog open along with the album I am working on.

I also have a subscription to Bill Steiner's pages so I guess I am set!

You are set Anghus..

I also buy the Paper Scott pages, for dedicated countries.
I Scan the pages, then OCR them ( a colleague does that).
I then have the searchable catalogue in the second computer screen
above my main screen.

Works a treat.

If you're collecting GB, you should be able to pick up a used copy of Gibbons's GB Concise for well under £10 on ebay.

Good advice GeoffHa. I try to pick up an older country specific catalogue for each country or region that I collect. I have Scott Specialized of course for US, Unitrade Specialized for Canada, Gibbons for Great Britain, Afinsa for Scandinavia, Michel for Germany and a few others that I cannot think of now. I still need to get a Zumstein for Switzerland and Lichtenstein and something for France and colonies. Since I mainly collect the classical period I use the Scott Classic Specialized catalogue for the rest of the world. I used to try and keep a more or less current set of the Scott worldwide catalogues but decided it was not worth it since I really don't collect modern stamps at all.

With all of the online resources available today I suppose it would be possible to collect without any catalogues at all. I imagine many if not most casual collectors through the years did not use catalogues but simply depended upon the illustrations in their albums. I'm too detail oriented for that however and like most SCFers enjoy having information at my fingertips. As mentioned by rod222, SCF is right up there as one of the most valuable information sources!

While we are on that subject, I would like to express my appreciation for some of the personal websites maintained by members here such as "Big Blue 1840-1940" and "Stamp Collecting World" to name a couple. Listing similar websites is probably worth a topic of it's own!

The best catalogue for France is Maury, and it's excellent value for money. Maury's colonial catalogues are also better than Yvert's single voume catalogue, but they can be expensive or hard to find, so Yvert may be the better bet there. Enjoy!

Anghus

I also use my scanner for magnification. Found it inadequate at times as fine details were sometimes blurred. I invested less than $50 in a USB Microscope and have been pleased with the result. I tried one from AmScope that didn't work at all. Next tried one from Carson which worked like a gem from the start. Don't want this post to be a product endorsement but believe my initial mistake could be avoided by others.

Anghus - I too just the other day upgraded my scanner to the Epson V600 and the Corel Paint Shop Pro X9 program and am in the early stages of figuring them both out. Also using it to scan years and years of old photos to save for posterity and easily share with family.

Gettinold, I have a USB Microscope also which I use it to quickly review stamps. It has saved me a number of times when picking up stamps on-line that were not as expected/advertised - like some 'professionally' regummed Columbians.

The scanner is a big change. You can tell how important it has become since people will complain about not seeing an image for even an inexpensive stamps that are for sale.

The Internet is a key one for me.

Much of my philatelic study over the past 30+ years has been of stamp color varieties, with a focus on the U.S. 1851-57 3-cent stamp.

I found that distinguishing between subtle shades of some stamp colors was possible using scanner images after I found it impossible with direct examination, even using an Ott light. So for color study, my scanner is absolutely the most useful tool I have.

I use an Epson Perfection V370 Photo scanner.

This scanner image shows color and shade differences of only a narrow range of #11/11A colors; a selection of claret and brownish colors. The difference in the colors of this set of six stamps isn't nearly as distinct (to me) under room lighting:

If like to throw a pitch in for the Edson v37 or v39 scanners. They're USB powered, so you don't need tp plug them in, they're really light, and they even have a kickstand so you can stand them on their side.

Nice little display Classic Coins