The Future of Scott Catalogs - Take The Survey!!

A couple days ago Amos Publishing sent out a survey form via various dealers to survey the philatelic community about how they would like to see the Scott Catalogs organized in the future. The current six-volume general catalog has apparently reached its size limit, and Scott is going to have to choose either to expand the existing format into more volumes or perhaps re-arrange the organization of the catalogs along geographic and historic lines (much as Stanley Gibbons, Michel and Yvert et Tellier already do for their catalogs).

Thankfully the publishers in their email included a link to their survey and permission to share the link, and a kind soul at the Stampboards Forum posted it.  Since this is something that I think every collector who uses Scott catalogs even on a casual basis should be participating in, I have decided to put the link to the survey here below.

Scott Catalogue Collector Survey

It's not a long survey, and at the end you have a chance to register to win a copy of the Scott Classic Specialized Stamp Catalog 1840-1940.

The one thing that the survey does NOT address is the question of digital versions of the Scott Catalogs.  This is a shame, since digital reference really is the future for hobbies such as philately.  Collectors my age (I am 44) and younger are very much wired into the digital world, and really live our lives connected to the internet.

While the survey does not directly address digital versions, it does offer respondants a space to leave further comments and opinions. My suggestion to those who believe Amos Publishing need to bring the Scott Catalogs fully into the twenty-first century is to fill this section out with what you think the optimal digital version of a Scott Catalog would be.

On my part, I suggested the following ideas

1. regional organization similar to SG, Michel and Yvert Catalogs
2. fully functional search feature within catalogs based on keyword
3. clear digital images of all stamps listed, not just one -sample- design as currently in the Scott Catalogs
4. ability to use the product offline for those occasions when one is at a show or bourse and there is either poor Wi-Fi access or none at all.
5. My last suggestion would probably be controversial : allow those who buy the digital version of the catalogs be able to have a low-price point subscription model that would allow automatic updates of content (such as adding new issues once they are given Scott numbers) and the ability to purchase new editions of the full catalog at a reduced price.  This is roughly similar to the model my favorite gaming company, Paradox Interactive in Sweden, follows for its historical strategy game - you buy the game, get free patches to fix errors, access to some free new peripheral content, and then ability to purchase new updated versions with more changed and new content at a price lower than the original game.  This is a model that works well for gaming, and I think would work well here for Amos Publishing to make the Scott Catalogs the best catalog for stamp collectors going forward into the twenty-first century.

In any case, take a few minutes to fill out the Scott survey and let your voice be heard!!

Do-It-Yourself Album Labels - easy as pie!

So you are building up your stamp collection and eventually you get to the point where you need to seriously consider how you are going to organize and store it.  Everyone does it differently. Some prefer pre-printed stamp albums, others stockbooks or (my choice) stock sheets in binders. Some forgo the book format altogether and use regular boxes. I even saw once on I think The Stampboards Fourm a collector who purchased an old library card catalog cabinent and stored his collection in dealer cards stored in the boxes where the library card catalog records were kept - VERY CLEVER and it looked amazing.

My French colonies collection is reaching a point where I have several lighthouse Vario-F and Vario-G binders to house it.  The Lighthouse binders are wonderful, but they of course have no information on the outside to tell you the contents.  I could just write the name on a self-stick label but to me that isn't really all that attractive.  Now you can purchase labels from Lighthouse for certain nations, or even have custom album labels made by Palo to say anything you want.  But for me, that seemed like paying money for something I could just as easily do at home.

And after experimenting a bit, I discovered it is definitely something worth doing at home.  All you need is an inkjet printer, some good label paper, and a good graphics program such as Photoshop to edit any graphics you might want to include on the label.

Growing up I always thought that albums which had the coat of arms of the nation whose stamps were in the album looked really classy, so I decided that is what I wanted to put on the spine of my binders. Just the coat of arms, not the name of the nation (being trained as historian means I know my coat of arms and flags of nations like the back of my hand).  Since my collections are organized along modern nations, with colonial issues being the first part of many of those nations, I chose to use the coat of arms of the independent nations. For those remaining areas of the French empire *ahem, Departments d'Outre Mer, s'il vous plait* I use their coat of arms as well.

The process is actually quite straight forward.

1) choose the kind of label paper you like.  I am using Silhouette brand printable silver foil. They make a gold foil as well as a transparent (more correctly translucent) printable paper as well. For me, the gold seems a bit too ostentatious, and the transparent made it difficult to see the coats of arms clearly, so silver was a nice compromise. And the pages are 8.5x11 inches and designed to work with inkjet printers that have the capability to print on photograph paper.

Silhouette brand printable silver foil. Restrained refinement perfect for this project.

2) Next I needed the designs of the various coats of arms. In Wikipedia we trust. Coats of Arms are public domain items so downloading the images from the Wikipedia is not a problem. 

3) Once you have the designs, a graphical editing program like Photoshop is necessary to make the images small enough to fit on the spine of the album. I am a huge fan of Photoshop but any good graphic editing program will do, and many of them are free/shareware.  Once you reduce the images down to the right size, you can create a new image file and then, using copy and paste, create a whole page of images.  I could fit twenty of them on an 8.5x11 page.

The balance of the first page of coat of arms labels I printed, having cut out a few already to place on binders.  I can fit twenty coats of arms on a page total.

4) Once you have the graphics done I needed to save the file in a format that would keep the background transparent when printing so that the silver foil would come through. In photoshop that is easy enough just choose save as a .png file.

5) Then you start the printing. In your printing preferences, you need to see the print type to printing photos, paper type to glossy photo paper, and print quality high. Then just load a piece of the label paper in and hit print.  Once done, LET THE PRINTED PAGE SIT SEVERAL HOURS TO DRY. This will help prevent smudging and "set" the designs.

6) Then once you let the labels dry, simply cut out and put onto the binder spine.

 The first three binders with their new coat of arms labels.  The black binder is for French Antilles (Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guiana coat of arms respectively top to bottom), the middle one is for Cameroun, and the one on the right for Gabon.

Easy peasy as Jamie Oliver would say and makes it much easier to find a specific country in my growing collection. And as I am still very much a worldwide collector and plan to focus on other parts of the world as my collecting evolves, I think this will be a nice look for my albums on the shelf.

The only thing I am not certain of, yet, is if over time the labels will be peelable, so that if I need to move a country's collection to a larger binder, I could easily peel the coat of arm label and reuse.  The labels adhere well to the Lighthouse binders, and at least initially do seem peelable within the first couple days of being applied. Long-term though not sure that will remain the case. But given how relatively inexpensive making these labels are, its not a major problem, and one could recycle a binder by putting a new label over the old if needed.

A what if of philately...the US overseas possessions....

The most recent post to JKJblue's excellent blog deals with the stamps of post-partition Samoa.  This of course means the stamps issued for the western half of the Samoa archipelago, as from the time of its annexation by the United States in 1900, the eastern half of the archipelago used (and still uses) the postage stamps of the United States.

This is not an exception for American overseas terrtories.  With the exception of the Philippines, which did issue its own postage stamps during the United States administration of 1899-1946 (likely because the Philippines had its own currency at the time of annexation, the Philippine Peso, and that currency was retained by the US Administration), and the overprints issued in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish-American war of 1898 for Guam and Puerto Rico, American overseas terrritories have used the postage stamps of the United States from the time they came under American rule.

One of the most beautiful stamps issued during the US Administration of the Philippines, the 1932 2c Mount Mayon pictorial (image courtesy mountainstamp.com)

USA 1c Benjamin Franklin stamp of 1894 overprinted -GUAM- for use on that island after its capture by US forces during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Regular USA issues would be used on the island after 1901.  (image courtesy pecollectibles.com)

Similarly, after the US annexation of Hawaii in 1898 separate postal issues would be superceded by regular United States issues in 1901.

1899 stamp issued by the US administration in Hawaii, the high value in a set of three stamps that would be the last separate issue for Hawaii before its stamps were replaced by regular US stamps. (image courtesy treasurecoastamps.com)

The same fate would befall the Western Virgin Islands after they passed from Danish to American rule in 1917 when the US government bought the islands from Denmark.

Danish West Indies stamp depicting King Christian X, one of a set of eight issued in 1915 that would be the last stamps released before the transfer to American sovereignty in 1917 and the end of the Western Virgin Islands separate philatelic identity (image courtesy linns.com)

I always thought it was a pity that the overseas external territories *cough colonies* of the United States lost their philatelic identity so quickly after they came under American administration. As the Mount Mayon stamp from the Philippines shows, the potential for some truly beautiful stamps that depicted these, to Americans in the contiguous 48 states, exotic lands governed by the United States would have been great.

The Postal Service would, to a degree, do this with the Overseas Territories issues of 1937, although Guam and American Samoa were not given any recognition in this series.

The 1937 External Territories issue of the US Postal Service, honoring Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, but NOT Guam or American Samoa. (image courtesy delcampe.net)

A lovely set, isn't it?  Now imagine what *could* have been had the external territories been given postal autonomy to issue their own stamps under US Postal Service oversight.

But...it never came to pass. Alaska and Hawaii acceded to Statehood in 1959.  While Puerto Rico became a Commonwealth/Estado Libre Asociado in 1952, it did not regain postal autonomy, and given recent events on the island, the likelihood it will become a full-fledged state in the next decade seem quite high. And the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Guam remain external territories, with varying degrees of self-government, and (non-voting) representation in the US House of Representatives. And they continue to use regular United States postage stamps.

On a similar note, I think it is also sad that the five French overseas departments (départements d'outre-mer) also have lost philatelic autonomy. No more separate issues for Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Reunion or, more recently, Mayotte. The distinctive cultures of these five territories produced some gorgeous stamps during their philatelic lifetimes, and while the French have issued stamps depicting scenes or personalities from these regions from time to time over the past sixty years, something I think was definitely lost to philately with the end of their philatelic independence.

Iconic low value stamp from the 1947 pictorial issue of Guadeloupe.  Alas this would be the final set of stamps issued specifically for the island, as stamps of France itself would replace Guadeloupe stamps shortly thereafter. (from author's collection)

Stamp issued by France in 1970 depicting the Rocher du Diamant in the overseas department of Martinique.  Martinique, like Guadeloupe, issued its last stamps in 1947. A beautiful stamp to be sure, but only one of a handful of stamps released in the past nearly seventy years depicting the overseas departments (image courtesy delcampe.net).

Of course, philatelic independence can also go horribly wrong, as the recent philatelic histories of the external realms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands - Curacao, Aruba, Saint Maarten, and the Caribbean Netherlands communes of Saba, Saint Eustatius and Bonaire, will attest. Philatelic independence for these external territories had in the past five years led to their selling their philatelic souls to a philatelic agency that issues stamps in their name with often only little relevance to the local cultures. But this is a recent phenomenon, and in particular I always found the stamps of Aruba in particular to be gorgeous until it made its bargain with the philatelic devil. 

Aruba 1993 Folklore issue, from the days when Aruba's philatelic production was conservative, relevant to the island, and the stamp designs in general of a very high quality. (image courtesy delcampe.net)

Aruba 2014 Classic Cars issue, released by the philatelic agency the Aruba Post Office sold its soul to.  Higher-than necessary face values, little cultural resonance to the island, and less that stellar artwork.(image courtesy delcampe.net)

So perhaps this is one of those double-edged sword issues, since the temptation by almost all postal services these days semes to be to to use their philatelic programs as cash-cows, cashing in on the popular topics and generally ignoring the culture, history and society of the countries or territories the stamps purport to represent.

Always remember, haste makes waste....especially when adhesive tape is involved...

I recently bid on a stamp up for auction at the Delcampe marketplace. I wanted to fill a hole in one of my French colonial pictorial issues to complete the set.  Saw a dealer with the stamp, placed a bid on it, and won it. It was not an expensive stamp, and the dealer mailed it out using French euro- and mixed-denominated commemorative stamps. Unfortnately I had not changed my address at Delcampe, so the stamp was addressed to my old residence, but I had a forwarding address set up with the USPS so it received a new address sticker. So far, so good.

The stamp arrived in this cover. Have blocked out personal info but its a nice cover with a change of address sticker added by USPS that did NOT damage the French stamps!

I opened the letter, and inside were two pieces of what felt to me like index card stock. All good, the stamp should be fine.  The stamp itself had been placed inside a Scott-type center back cut mount  the perfect size to fit the stamp. All good.

Then the dealer decided to attach the mounted stamp to the inside center of one card with....ADHESIVE TAPE over both cut ends of the mount.

Fail, EPIC FAIL.

The stamp itself did not shift during mailing. The use of the right size stamp mount meant that it was snug as a bug in a rug. Simply adhering the mount directly to the card would have been the best solution. But the dealer felt that to secure the stamp, sticky tape was needed.

I do not know what the French use for adhesive on their tape, but the stuff would hold together parts of the Space Station.

How to liberate the stamp from its prison. I could not insert a pair of stamp tongs inside the mount since both cut ends were firmly shut by the tape.  So my plan was to peel one side of the tape off the card, then use tongs to extract stamp from back of mount.  MacGuyver would have been proud.

Alas, the tenacity of the French tape was amazingly strong. It was not going to peel easily. I worked slowly, but soon the Taurus within got the better of me, and I decided to give a harder pull.

DOMMAGE! - the tape ripped, tearing into the mount, and also putting a small rip on the top edge of the stamp itself.   MERDE!

The good news is the stamp itself was not particularly expensive, and I did receive a nice cover in the bargain. But, I still have that hole in my set to fill, all due to the overzealous zeal of a dealer who feared the stamp would not survive the Trans-Atlantic journey secured in every way possible.

Are Philatelic "Rogue States" helpful or harmful to stamp collecting????

Over at his excellen Big Blue 1840-940 blog as part of his post on the classic era stamps of St Vincent, jkjblue discusses some interesting data he crunched comparing stamp output to population for modern issues (he based his study on the issues of 1980 to 2012). His results were quite interesting based on the number of stamps released per 1 million people in population

"The Top 51
(Total Stamp issues 1980-2012 normalized for one million population )

1. Grenada Grenadines – 4410/.008* = 551,250
2. Grenadines of St Vincent – 3153/.009* = 350,333
3. Nevis – 2753/.009 = 305,888
4. Palau – 3256/.019 = 171,368
5. Antigua & Barbuda – 4423/.064 = 69,109
6. Grenada – 5528/.1 = 55,280
7. St Vincent – 6586/.121 = 54,429
8. Dominica – 3467/.065 = 53,338
9. Marshall Islands – 3056/.066 = 46,303
10. St Thomas & Prince – 4363/.155 = 28,148 
11. Micronesia – 2408/.13 = 18,523.
12. Maldives – 4011/.3 = 13,370
13. Guyana – 7606/.7 = 10,865
14. Gambia – 6293/1.1 = 5,720
15. Guinea-Bissau – 5855/1.2 = 4,879
16. Comoros – 2535/.6 = 4,225
17. Liberia – 4990/2.6 = 1,919
18. Guinea – 8750/7.5 = 1,166
19. Mongolia – 2591/2.6 = 996.5
20. Sierra Leone – 5204/5.3 = 982
21. Central Afr. Rep. – 3205/3.4 =942.6
22. Togo – 3202/4.3 =744.6
23. New Zealand – 2178/3.7 = 588.6
24. Nicaragua – 2430/4.4 = 552.3
25. Libya – 2259/5.0 = 451.8
26. Mozambique – 5569/16.5 = 337
27. Cuba – 3189/11.1 = 287.3
28. Portugal – 2330/9.9 = 235.4
29. Belgium – 2283/10.4 = 219.5
30. Hungary – 2197/10.2 = 215.4
31. Ghana -3372/18.1 = 186.3
32. North Korea – 4128/22.2 = 186
33. Cambodia – 2110/11.6 = 181.9
34. Australia – 3188/17.9 = 178.1
35. Tanzania – 4806/31.3 = 154
36. Romania – 2992/22.6 = 132.4
37. Uganda – 2742/21.6 = 126.9
38. Taiwan – 2442/22.1 = 110.5
39. Venezuela – 2175/23.3 = 93.3
40. Spain – 2297/39.2 = 58.6
41. France – 3080/59.0 = 52.2
42. Bulgaria – 2213/42.9 = 51.6
43. Philippines – 3481/68.6 = 50.7
44. Great Britain – 2741/59.1 = 46.4
45. Japan – 4870/126.2 = 38.6
46. Thailand 2305/60.6 = 38.1
47. Vietnam – 2567/77.3 = 33.2
48. USSR/Russia – 3030/147.1* = 20.6
49. Brazil – 2296/157.1 = 14.6
50. United States – 3518/281.4 = 12.5
51. China – 2915/1,246.9 = 2.4"

Source : Big Blue 1840-1940 Blog

The top 20 nations are of course nations that have huge stamp outputs and small populations, and are dominated by nations represented by a few (in-)famous philatelic agents who release issues in the names of these nations depicting all sorts of topical themes, from Cats and Dogs to Pop Stars and everything (and anything) in between.

To a large percent of the stamp collecting community, these -stamps- are little more than glorified wallpaper being peddled under often questionable circumstances with little relevance to the nations they purport to represent, all in the quest to part (mainly topical) collectors from their coin.

Exploitative stamp issues released with an eye to cashing in on collector interest is of course nothing new. The United States Columbian Exposition Commemorative of 1893, an issue of 16 stamps in a range of values from US$0.01 to US$5,00 (which in 2015 dollar purchasing power, would be well over US$130 today!), resulted in howls of protest from the philatelic media of the day, and the issue would not really begin to sell over face value for the high values until the 1930s when a whole new cadre of collectors entered the hobby in wake of both the Great Depression and the high profile philatelic activities of both a British King (George V) and an American President (Franklin Roosevelt).

In the 1970s the American Philatelic Society, which at one time included global new issue listing in its journal The American Philatelist, created the "Black Blot Program" program to list new issues its editors felt were exploitative to the collector community, often issues of a topical nature from developing nations in Africa, Asia, the Pacific Basin and the Caribbean.  In the end the APS would end listing global new issues altogether, and the Black Blot program was soon just a memory.  Interestingly enough, many of those 1970s issues that received Black Blots have gone on to appreciate in value somewhat more (and sometime very much more) than their face value at release than stamps whose release were not seen as a threat to the philatelic wallet.

Since then the tide of new issues has truly become an antidiluvian flood of issues, and not just from countries who have "sold their philatelic souls to agents." Japan now regularly tops 300 stamps per year, while nations as respectable as New Zealand, the United States, Australia and Great Britain routinely have more than 100, and total cost due to much higher face values means keeping up with new issues can be a challenge financially for many collectors. A large percent of the collector community shun modern-day issues as a result.

At the same time though, if there was not a demand for the -wallpaper- issues of Saint Vincent, Central African Republic and the like, why do nations continue to allow these agents to issue stamps in their name.  There must be some benefit to at least someone in the issuing nation (even if not to the budget of the issuing nation or the general population as a whole) and the market must be large enough to keep demand for these issues growing. There must be a large enough cadre of "casual collectors" purchasing this material because the images on the releases appeal to the them enough to pay hard cash for the stamps. What perecent of this group moves beyond the occasional purchase of the latest Formula 1 stamps from Mozambique or Obama stamps from Saint Vincent is hard to qualify,

In the end collectors collect what they like, and they determine what they want to collect.  As I have been working on French colonial issues the last couple years, I have also begun collecting stamps from the independent successor states.  While one can often quibble that there was no reason for, say, Cameroun to honor Space Achievements as it did on a series of issues in the late-1960s, I would argue that at least in comparison to much of the production today (both by countries represented by agencies and nations that still control their new issue programs) the quality of design was much higher (many of these issues were produced in France by the French post office printers by multi-color engraving, and are really stunning pieces of artwork). And in comparison to face value at time of release, some of these "international" topical issues (though not all, to be fair) have appreciated quite nicely in the intervening decades.

Cameroun's 1968 Satellite Communication issue. Directly relevant to Cameroun, not really, but design-wise quite beautiful and a nice example of the growing "internationalization" of culture in the 1960s.

In today's interconnected global village, the idea that there are topics that are "irrelevant" to certain societies is an increasing difficult assertion to maintain.  Vintage American films, Japanese anime, British pop music are as much enjoyed and appreciated in Freetown, Sierra Leone or Georgetown, Guyana as they are in any Western city.  The number of stamps issues per year may make it difficult for collectors raised on the traditional -collect the country- model to keep up with, but personally I do not think these philatelic "rogue states" are harmful in and of themselves,  unless those buying the issues believe they are making an investment that will pay off in the future.  Stamps only are a good investment in terms of leisure time to relax and discover the world. Financially a collector *might* make a financial gain from the expenses put into the hobby over time, with a bit of luck. But more often than not that does not happen. However, I've never really seen any advertising from these agencies touting their productions as an investment tool, something that can not be said for other retail branches within the world of organized philately.

Personally I do not really collect the post-1980 generation of stamps produced by agencies for these "rogue states" - their design ethos for me is just not appealing - but I can see how they can become a "gateway" to attract new collectors into the hobby. I think perhaps a bit less "pooh-pooh"-ing of the issues and a bit more outreach to these casual collectors to show them the vast variety and diversity of the hobby would be a wiser approach when these issues come up for discussion.

My current catalogue library...and my love of specialized catalogues!

As my last post indicates, I have quite a few specialized catalogues in my collection. I LOVE specialized catalogues. Part of the reason is due to the sheer number of varieties you often find listed, which makes shopping for stamps all the more fun if you have the chance to find a variety that is only listed in specialized catalogues in the stock of a dealer who does not know.  To quote Glen Stephens, the moderator of collection forum Stampboards, "Knowledge is POWER".  Another reason I love specialized catalogues is that it lets me set up my albums to include spaces for all known varieties. No, I may not ever own many of them, but one can always dream, and there is always the thrill of the chase.

And finally, for collectors in the USA, the realization that Scott does not list many items that would be considered basic issues in other countries is a frustration that only the overseas specialized catalogues can redress, at least until such time as Scott finally provides listings in its Classic Specialized Catalogue. One of my current bugaboos with Scott is its complete failure to list the Parcel Post stamps of Algeria.  First released in 1899 (twenty-five years before the first Algerian-specific postage stamps) the Parcel Post (or as the French say, Colis Postaux) issues have a strong following in France and are considered a basic part of any Algerian collection, and the Maury catalogue lists almost 220 major number varieties (and lots of minor varieties to boot!)

A selection of Algerian parcel post stamps from a Delcampe listing. Just don't spend time looking in the Scott catalogue for them! 

The oddest thing about this Algerian parcel post question is that Scott DOES list similar parcel post issues for mainland France, which were added to the Classic Specialized catalogue in I believe 2012. So for Scott not to list the Algerian issues is even more anachronistic now than it was when the French parcels were not listed either.  Scott editors, if you read this, please consider listing these issues - there is plenty of market data available!

So what do I have in my library currently. Here is the current listing :

1. Scott 2015 Classic Specialized Catalogue 1840-1940
2. A complete set of 2012 Scott General Catalogues - all 6 volumes
3. 2009 Scott US Specialized Catalogue (I will probably get a newer version this year)
4. Maury Timbres de France 2011 edition
5. Maury Timbres de l'ex-empire français en Afrique 2006 edition (I wanted to update to the 2014 edition but it has gone out of print already!)
6. Maury Timbres des bureaux et anciennes colonies français en Europe et Asie, 2011 edition
7. Maury Timbres des DOM-TOM 2009 edition (catalogue for the current Departments and Territoires d'Outre-Mer, except St Pierre & Miquelon and French Antarctica, which are in #8)
8. Maury Timbres des Principautes et Terres Polaires, 2011 edition
9. İsfila Türk Pulları Kataloğu 2014 edition
10. GJ Catálogo Especializado de Sellos de la Republica Argentina 2009 edition
11. Stanley Gibbons Specialized Australia Catalogue, 9th edition
12. Stanley Gibbons Specialized New Zealand Catalogue, 5th edition
13. Stanley Gibbons Specialized Brunei-Malaysia-Singapore Catalogue, 4th edition
14. Afinsa Catalogo de Sellos Postais : Portugal, Açores e Madeira, 2005 edition
15. Afinsa Catalogo de Sellos Postais : Portugal, Açores e Madeira 2000-2012 supplement
16. Afinsa Catalogo de Sellos Postais : Colonias Portuguesas, 2011 edition.

Unfortunately the Afinsa catalogues are no longer produced as the publisher went bankrupt in wake of the Afinsa Ponzi Scheme Scandal but copies can be found in the second-hand market with a little searching.  Maury no longer lists catalogues on its own website, my guess is all the latest editions are out of print as well, though again the aftermarket will have copies.

Over time I am sure my collection of specialized catalogues will grow. I desperately want a copy of the Unitrade Specialized Catalogue of Canadian Stamps but the current 2015 edition is out of print, though the 2016 edition should be available in late 2015 and that will be purchased this year!

You may be thinking wow how can he use all these catalogues, most are not in English!  Well, I fortunately have fair to good reading ability in nine different languages (French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Turkish, Arabic and Persian) as a result of years of training as a graduate student in Islamic History at Ohio State.  But, I find that most catalogues are organized in such a way that someone with little foreign language knowledge can, with the help of online translators, get the main jist of what the catalogues are saying.

The great debate....hinged vs never hinged...and the evil legacy of Crystal Mounts....

It's a debate that has rumbled through philatelic circles since at least the 1950s (famous US Stamp Dealer and author Herman Herst Jr wrote about it in many of his articles, collections of which have been published as Nassau Street and Fun And Profit In Stamp Collecting and both of which are entertaining and educational reads well worth checking out!). Should mint stamps be collected as hinged or never hinged.  Or perhaps more to the point, at what point chronologically should a collector stop collecting mint hinged stamps and only seek out never hinged copies of issues.

A look at stamp catalogues from various regions is little help as none seem to agree to any date in particular. Generally, Scott sets its values for mint as never hinged for most nations around 1945 or so. Some countries a little later, some (like the USA) in the 1930s. Scott also, at least in its Classic Specialized 1840-1940 Catalog, provides pricing for never hinged for issues before their cutoff date. One thing Scott very rarely does though is price items, or even give a rough guide to value, for hinged items AFTER the transition date. Does this mean hinged items issued after the transition date are worthless???? Surely it can't, but how do you value the items if there is no guide, even a rough one.

Other catalogues, as I note above, use different dates.  The Gibbons catalogs make the transition form hinged to never hinged with the coronation of George VI in 1937.  Again, no guide is provided as to what kind of a discount should be given for items issued after 1937 that are hinged, and even more perplexing, neither is any suggestion of a degree of premium never hinged items issues before 1937.  At least none is given in the three specialized Gibbons catalogues I own (Australia 9th ed, New Zealand 5th ed and Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei 4th ed).

Since I am focusing at this time mainly on the French colonial world, I also have a set of Maury catalogues for France and empire.  Here there IS some help, as Maury prices everything from start to its general transition date of 1960 in both never hinged and hinged varieties. Interestingly enough, the degree of premium for Never Hinged items in the later 1950s vs hinged is not that large, usually around 33% or so. After 1960 prices for mint stamps are for never hinged only, though one could argue that the discount should not be too huge for hinged if the examples of the late 1950s pricing ratios are taken into consideration.  Similarly the Afinsa catalogues for Portugal and Colonies offer pricing for both never hinged and hinged stamps up to 1953 and the Centenary of Portuguese Stamps issue. The İsfila catalogue for the Ottoman Empire and Turkey sets the date at 1938, while the Guillermo Jalil catalogue for Argentina sets it at 1940, with both catalogues providing pricing guidance for never-hinged items issues before their transition dates, though not after.

Stamp mounts only began to become common in the USA with the introduction of the Crystal Mount by the HE Harris company in the 1950s, though there were some predecessors that, to be honest, were more work than worth the effort to use.  I remember Crystal Mounts well, since that is what my father used when he introduced me to stamp collecting in the 1970s and 1980s. I remember spending many an snowy upstate NY evening helping him mount his various collections with these mounts, that only came in a small range of sizes so that one had to fold over part of the mount to secure the stamp inside.

Crystal Mounts in their packaging from the 1980s...images that bring shudders of horror to me today.

Until the introduction of mounts based around stamp height in a much larger range of sizes (such as the Scott Mount by Prinz and similar mounts) these were considered the best mount for keeping stamps never hinged. And millions of US collectors used them in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s (and some still swear by them)

(rant) I truly LOATHE Crystal Mounts (/rant). It was always way too easy to bend perfs as you folded over the extra plastic, and stamps often have a hard time "breathing" when they are in tightly folded ones.  When I inherited my father's stamp collection, I discovered that removing stamps from mounts was rather akin to extracting a coin that has fallen thru a grate - often frustrating and infuriating.  You need to be very careful removing the stamps from a Crystal Mount, and you often need to put it under some weight afterward to remove the -curl- that the mounts often create after years of storage.  Really poorly stored collections housed in Crystal mounts often have yellow staining where the gummed strip was positioned, and occasionally the gum will even glaze from moisture trapped over time.

When I was heavily building up my first stamp collection in the 1990s, I used the traditional album pages and Scott Mounts, as I've noted in my first post.  At times it felt like I was spending as much on supplies as I was on stamps. But this time around I have decided to use Lighthouse Vario stockpages and it is so wonderful NOT to have to factor the cost of mounts into my stamp budget AT ALL. Although they have come down in price from what they were in the 1980s when I was trying to convince my father to switch to Scott mount and stop using Crystal mounts (an arugment he eventually came to accept in the early 1990s) they are still not cheap especially when you consider the range of sizes you need if you are a worldwide collector.

But back to the original question - hinged or never hinged.  In the end, this is something that each collector has to decide for himself or herself.  De gustibus non disputatum est. My general rule of thumb is hinged is fine until 1960, and from 1960 onward I will only buy never hinged issues. By 1960 you really have huge supplies of never hinged material for most nations available in the marketplace here in the USA, and stamp mounts by 1960 were much more commonly in use. Some nations I may make the never-hinged only transition a bit earlier, but 1960 is, for me, a pretty firm date for all nations. Now, if given the opportunity to purchase pre-1960 material in never hinged form at a fair price, then I will not turn my nose up at it either, but for me at least, there is nothing wrong with a hinged stamp, provided that the hinging by previous owners has not done any major physical damage to the stamp over the years, such as thins on the back.  For my part, so long as the stamp remains in my possession, I will not harm it further with another hinge.  But let us be honest, we admire our stamps for the designs on the front, not to fetishize the pristine-ness of the gum on the back.