Worldwide Stamp Catalogs
Scott Catalogs
A set of Worldwide Stamp Catalogs is a necessity for
anyone collecting stamps of the World or Topical / Thematic stamps from various
stamp issuing countries.
The most widely used catalog for this purpose, in North America, is the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue. They are issued every year and contain information on all the major
issues of every stamp issuing country in the world from 1840 to date.
Recent editions of these catalogs have all the stamp images pictured in
color.
Aside from the stamp listings, each volume of the Scott catalog also contains listings of philatelic societies, expertizing services, a guide on grading stamps, basic stamp information, philatelic terminology, a currency conversion table, listings of countries' territories and colonies, and a pictorial stamp identifier, for stamps that are difficult to identify.
The World used to be a lot smaller place. Back in the mid-20th Century, all the stamps in the world fit into a two volume, hardbound, set of Scott Catalogs. As of the 2019 edition, now becoming available, it is twelve volumes, plus the Specialized Catalog of US Stamps and the Classic Specialized Catalog.
The set shown here is a 2018 edition. I purchased the twelve basic general foreign volumes from Amos Publishing last year for about $600.00 (including shipping). The catalogs come in
soft-cover volumes, as follows:
Volume 1A = U.S., U.N., Countries of the World A - Australia
Volume 1B = Countries of the World Austria - B
Volume 2A = Countries of the World C - CUR
Volume 2B = Countries of the World CYP - F
Volume 3A = Countries of the World G
Volume 3B = Countries of the World H - I
Volume 4A = Countries of the World J - L
Volume 4B = Countries of the World M
Volume 5A = Countries of the World N - PHIL
Volume 5B = Countries of the World PIT - SAM
Volume 6A = Countries of the World SAN - TETE
Volume 6B = Countries of the World THAI - Z
The
list price for a current edition (2019) of the complete set of twelve catalogs is
about $840.00, though, if you look around on the internet, you can
probably find a set, or individual volumes from a set, that are
discounted from the Publisher's suggested price.
The publisher, Scott (Amos) Publications, also offers a substantial discount on the new catalogs, for customers with paid subscriptions to Linns publications.
Another
way to save money, if the most recent issues of each country are not
important to you, is to look for an older edition, either in new or used
condition. This way, you could find a complete set of catalogs for a small fraction of the price of a new set of the current
edition.
If you're a collector of Worldwide classic stamps or just
stamps of the world from 1840 - 1940, you're in LUCK! For classic
collectors, there is the one volume, hard-bound, Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps and Covers - 1840 - 1940.
It is an excellent catalog, printed on high quality paper with color
stamp images, and currently, the most recent edition (2019) has a list price of
about $175.00. Being a durable, hard-bound book, it should give the
collector MANY years of use. You can get an older edition on the
internet for less though. I got my 2008 edition, in new condition,
shown here, in an internet auction in 2011, for about $50.00.
As expensive as it is, the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue is still the best deal for the general Worldwide stamp or thematic subject collector.
There are, of course, many other catalog publishers
that have excellent stamp catalogs with coverage of issues of the World, such
as Michel (in German), Yvert Tellier (in French), Stanley Gibbons, etc.
Specializing?
The Scott catalogs are intended as a GENERAL reference for Worldwide or thematic stamp collectors. They generally only list major stamp issues, without regard for varieties and collateral material of philatelic importance. For the specialist in a particular country, they are quite inadequate.
Anyone specializing in a particular country should acquire the specialty catalog issued specifically for that country. The specialized catalogs for particular countries contain important historical and philatelic information about the stamps of that country, and in most cases, they list important varieties of classical and modern postage stamp issues that are not even mentioned in the Scott catalogs.
eBay Auction and Store Links
Stamp Catalogs
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