France - Newspaper Sower

Here is a France "Sower" overprinted for newspaper rate. Yvert lists both the bister-olive and the bister-brown while Scott lists the bister-brown only. Considering the major difference in colour (in my opinion, at least) I wonder why Scott wouldn't list it as P8a (???) if not on its own?

Scott does not produce a catalog that specializes in France, whereas Yvert does. The Scott worldwide catalog set is a general listing. If you want to specialize in a particular country, it is best to go to a specialty catalog (currently, Scott only makes one for the US, they discontinued the others that they used to make -- e.g., Canada, China...)

Yvert is both the catalog and the album you want to go to if you want to specialize in France; for the classic era stamps, they have listings/spaces for nearly 3x the number of stamps that Scott lists. I have a 1937 Yvert France specialty album that I still use. They don't make album pages like that any more.

Hello khj.
I have a 2009 Yvert and as I said in my original post it lists both the dark and the light as separate entries.
As far as Scott (general) is concerned, I have seen instances where it lists a stamp as a number and then shades as sub-numbers or sub-letters.
I was wondering why, with such an obvious difference in colour, this particular stamp is not treated likewise by Scott?

Hi Tony

In an earlier thread, I had stated that I buy foreign catalogues every now and then. My sole reason for this is mainly to go beyond the scope of the Scott Catalogue which is lacking in a lot of areas.

While the Yvert & Tellier catalogue is a good one, I am told that the "Ceres" Catalogue is an exceptional one too and is good for listing varieties etc. It might be worth your while to get a Ceres version too

Chimo

Bujutsu

I haven't jumped for it yet, but the current Maury Ceres & Dellay 2-volume France has floated around in the last year for either $39.99 or $49.99 (I forget which...).

I haven't flipped through it, so I can't comment on how it compares to Yvert, but a current Yvert will be more expensive, comparing apples to apples. That being said, I like Yvert's format...

While this is true, these minor catalog shade listings are far from comprehensive. It is not Scott's goal to make a comprehensive worldwide catalog. The Scott classic catalog will have far more color shades listed, but even those listings don't include many of the color varieties/shades. It is an editorial choice on their part to decide what to include and what not to include -- you'd have to write and ask them regarding any specific stamp. If Scott were to include every single documented color variety, the catalogs would probably be 25% thicker. Compare the Scott US Specialized listing (where many of the color varieties/shades aren't even assigned a minor catalog number) to the general listing for US in their WW catalog, and you will see how much Scott leaves out. The fact is, we who are interested in color shades are a distinct minority in the stamp collecting world. The specialized catalogs fill our needs in that respect, not the Scott nor SG simplified catalogs.