What's Wrong With Stamp Catalogues

I was thinking about the general catalogues we use without thinking – Michel, Gibbons, Scott, Yvert, in Russia Standard and maybe a few others. Some are good, some are not. It often depends on the country you are interested in.

But all these catalogues date back to the days when collectors were most often one of each collectors and dealers one of each dealers. The collectors wanted to stick stamps in pre-printed albums or “write them up” and the dealers kept stockbooks by numbers.

You get lots of information which makes writing up easy: Date of Issue, Method of Printing, Paper type, Perforation gauge, sometimes (Gibbons) stamp designer and printer's name. You get a numbered list of stamps and Mint and Used prices, sometimes with some note distinguishing Used and CTO.

Many of these catalogue entries have been essentially unchanged for decades – well, a hundred years in some cases - as if there is no such thing as on-going philatelic research. Yvert is an example.

What you don’t get is a sort of overview which creates a context for understanding what you might find and what you will not find. In the days of one of each collecting that may not have mattered very much. Today, when people collect covers and do social philately, the old-style catalogue is not very helpful.

Let’s take an example. Look at your preferred catalogue for the Northern Army (OKCA) issue of 1919. It will be under “Russia” and will show five values, none of which is worth anything either mint or used. You will get additional information, varying from catalogue to catalogue. 

What you don’t get is a Thumbnail Sketch which sets out what we know about this issue, 100 years on. Here’s my own attempt at a Thumbnail, which could be made more precise from the literature available (mostly due, in this case,  to Alexander Epstein and Dr R J Ceresa):

This issue was printed in very large quantity in sheets of 200 made up of two panes of 100, separated by a wide gutter and printed tête-bêche to each other. Most sheets were separated into two halves, so that the gutter variety is quite scarce. Most of these stamps were sold to the stamp trade, at the time or later, and are very common as singles (often now in poor condition) and small blocks. Sheets of 100 are quite common. Despite being common, the stamps were forged and the forgeries are much scarcer than the genuine stamps. Very little Proof material or Printer’s Waste is known and when found is worth significantly more than the basic stamps. The absence of such material suggests that this issue was originally planned as a perfectly legitimate stamp issue.

The stamps were extensively Cancelled to Order in sheets and also CTO on philatelic covers, which are quite common and obviously philatelic. Specialists are not entirely clear which cancels were officially authorised. Some may have been manufactured by stamp dealers. It seems likely that some of the CTO material, and maybe most of it,  was produced in Estonia and not at the post offices in Northern Army controlled areas of Russia.

Postally used examples of the stamps are virtually unknown, and only about a dozen covers are recorded which appear to have gone through the post from the few post offices controlled by the Northern Army. Most of those covers originate from Gdov where however the Imperial Russian canceler of POLNA SPB was in use.  Any stamp or cover with a POLNA SPB cancel should be examined carefully and submitted for an Expert opinion.

A specialist could improve on that thumbnail and a good catalogue editor could make it shorter. If I am right about this, a Thumbnail like this orients you to a specific stamp issue and gives you some idea of what to expect and what to look out for.

For more dicussion of OKCA stamps,see my next Blog

The false certainties of catalogue values

As if to prove their reliability, all general catalogues value stamps as if they were pricing new issues. Indeed, many current catalgoue values still reflect the original new issue valuations decades later, with used valuations driven by the face-value related mint valuations.

This is why high face value used stamps are generally catalogued at more than low face value ones even though, from periods of high inflation, it is the low values which may be hard to find in used condition.

Catalogues also tell you that their valuations are based on auction realisations and "market prices". This is not credible. There never were auction realisations for stamps valued under (let's say) $10 and even though it would now be possible to aggregate ebay realisations on low-value stamps to get price guides, it hasn't yet been done. It would need a huge amount of work.

The brutal truth is this: for over ninety percent of stamps listed in the catalogues, world supply by far exceeds world demand. When you buy these stamps, whether in bulk or singly, you are paying (or should be paying) only for the costs involved for someone in acquiring them and transferring them to you.

So these stamps really have no more "intrinsic" value than the everyday stamps you tear off envelopes and soak of the paper: in other words, ZERO. Kiloware only costs more than zero because you are paying labour, advertising and shipping costs. It's no different to bottled water. The water is a free good, it's everything else which costs money.

Above zero, there are the stamps where demand exceeds supply, at least in the following sense: someone has to make an effort to find them and may only be able to acquire them if at the same time they acquire lots of ZERO value stamps.

In fact, you could think of values above the ZERO level as created in this way: if to get a stamp for which demand exceeds supply I have to acquire (buy) 99 ZERO stamps, then this stamp is worth 100 points. If I have to acquire 999 ZERO stamps, then it is worth 1000 points.

The trouble with the catalogues is that they make gradations which are much finer than is justified by any real-world information they hold. I don't believe there is ANY basis on which they allot $10 to one stamp and $11 to another, $100 to one and $110 to another. They just want to look knowledgeable.

Consider how auction houses work. They have price and bid steps which start small and get bigger. The next bid above 100 is going to be 110, the next bid above 500 is going to be 550. And so on.

The same is true of how cover dealers work. In Germany it is common for dealers to sell covers by price steps: they have boxes at 1 , 2 , 3, 5, 10 €uros and above that they price individually but still often in 5€ or 10€ price steps. There just isn't a way of telling a 42€ cover from a 44€ cover, though those kind of prices may be the outcome of dealer taking his input prices and adding a mechanical percentage for costs, taxes and profit.

Catalogs should get the message and start being more honest about the limitations of their knowledge. I would find it more credible if I saw valuation steps like these:

ZERO [that would be over ninety percent of stamps remember] - 1 - 2 - 5 - 10 - 15 - 20 - 30 - 40 - 50 - 60 - 80 - 100 - 150 - 200 - 250 - 300 - 400 - 500 - 600 - 700 - 800 - 900 - 1000 - 1500 - 2000 - 3000 - 4000 - 5000. There are only going to be a handful of stamps above that.

Next time you see a catalogue value of "5.50" just ask yourself, How do they know?