I've received the package from APRL with the loan of the three volumes of "Deposit, Rebate, Savings & Trading Stamps" by Art Mongan (ARA, SRS, CS&CSS, APS)
The volumes are 8-1/2" x 11" comb bound with a hard cardboard cover.
I was disappointed to find that a section of the first volume (Chapter 3: History, References and Bibliography) is not there. Somewhere along the line this has been torn out or otherwise removed. It jumps from chapter 2 to chapter 4.
If any of you have a copy with Chapter 3, can you photograph or scan those pages and send it to me? I'd be happy to print, punch and put that section back in before returning it to APRL, with a note.
Art starts with a statement that the catalog should have been started long before his efforts as the information trail for many stamps had grown cold. The catalogs contain a good amount of information and more companies/stamps than I expected to see.
Up front is an explanation of the nomenclature used and general information such as perforation types, conventions used, etc.
Although I have some not listed it seems to be very well researched. Particularly for the state of internet resources in the 90's. This took some good old fashioned research.
The graphics are typical for self published works of the late 90's and are of that 1990's black and white Xerox quality. Not all are illustrated. Even so, I was impressed with the number of illustrations he did manage to collect. I'm left wondering if Art actually gathered the illustrations from his private collection.
The organization is alphabetical by company, which I'd have to agree is the best way to organize them. This is also grouped by several listings for 'US inscribed by plan name', 'bank deposit and savings stamps' and by 'foreign stamps arranged by company'.
Considering the time and effort it took to amass this much information I'd definitely give this work a thumbs up. I wish I had known him ten years ago, this has my interest.
As good as this catalog set is, there is some information that I was hoping to see but isn't there. This is by NO means a knock at Art who did a great job. However it does not cover things like an explanation of the overprints and there are no dates or date ranges for the stamps or descriptions of the companies that issued them. Of course there are no relative values assigned or discussion of printing particulars, condition and there are some notations that don't seem to be explained unless it was covered in the missing chapter.
I have better illustrations from my own collection of over 344 companies (1,018 stamps, not counting what's pasted in books) and I have some additional information on the companies and other details. I'm considering an addendum to this work or perhaps a new catalog.
I looked for the "publishing" and "released by" companies and find no record of them. I suspect they were Art's own. There is an email address listed on the title page but I presume this belonged to the late Art Mongan, it didn't bounce but as I have not yet received a response.
Posted 09/25/2021 4:14 pm
