Stamp collecting for beginners — 03. Reading a catalogue entry

Open any stamp catalogue for the first time and it looks like a page of code: rows of numbers, abbreviations, symbols and prices with no obvious beginning. In fact every entry is written in the same order, and once you know that order you can read any of them — in this site’s catalogue, in a printed book, or in an online listing.

What an entry contains

A catalogue lists each stamp issue in date order, and for each one records the facts that tell it apart from every other stamp. A typical entry contains:

• The date of issue — the day the stamp went on sale.
• The name of the issue — what it commemorates, or the name of the definitive series it belongs to.
• The denomination — the face value printed on the stamp. Older Indian stamps are in annas and pies; from 1957 India moved to decimal currency, at first written as “naye paise”.
• The colours — needed because the same design was often printed in different colours for different values.
• The perforation — the size of the holes around the edge, given as a number (see lesson 04 on how to measure it).
• The watermark, if the paper has one, and the printing method.
• A catalogue number and prices, which need a section each.

Large catalogues add more: the designer, the printer, the number of stamps printed, and known varieties and errors listed under the main entry, usually with a letter after the number.

Catalogue numbers, and why there are several

A catalogue number is a reference, nothing more: a way of saying exactly which stamp you mean without describing it. The trouble is that each major publisher numbers stamps its own way. The ones you will meet most often are:

• Stanley Gibbons (UK) — the usual reference for India and the Commonwealth, written “SG” before the number.
• Scott (USA) — the standard in North America.
• Michel (Germany) — very detailed, widely used across Europe.
• Yvert et Tellier (France).
• Colnect — an online catalogue built by collectors, with its own numbering.

The same stamp has a different number in each. When you buy or swap, always say which catalogue a number comes from — “SG 3134” and “Michel 2958” can be the same stamp, while “3134” on its own means nothing.

Mint and used prices

Most catalogues print two prices for each stamp: one for an unused (mint) copy and one for a used copy. Sometimes one is far higher than the other. A stamp that was mostly bought by collectors and rarely used on letters can be cheap mint and expensive used; a common everyday stamp is the reverse.

Some catalogues use symbols instead of words. Michel, for example, marks a never-hinged unused stamp with two stars (**), a hinged one with one star (*), and a used one with a circle containing a dot (⊙). The key at the front of each catalogue explains its own symbols — it is worth reading once.

One warning, covered properly in a later guide: catalogue value is not what you will be paid for a stamp, or even what you will usually pay for it. It is a guide to relative value — that one stamp is worth about ten times another — far more than a price tag.

Using The Philatelist’s catalogue

The catalogue on this site covers the stamps of India and follows the same pattern. Each stamp’s page shows its date of issue and denomination at the top, and a Technical data tab with the details recorded for it — perforation, watermark, printer, printing process, colours and the quantity printed, where they are known — together with its numbers in Michel, Yvert et Tellier, Stanley Gibbons and Colnect.

A few ways to put it to use:

• Filter by year or decade to see everything issued in a period, in order — the same view a printed catalogue gives you.
• Filter by theme to find every stamp on a subject.
• When someone quotes a catalogue number, search for the stamp and check its Technical data to make sure you are talking about the same one.
• Sign in and mark the stamps you own; your collection page then works as a checklist of what is missing.

If you find a detail that is wrong or missing, the Report a mistake link at the foot of every page reaches the editors — the catalogue is kept up by collectors, and corrections are always welcome.

Next: condition — the single biggest reason two copies of the same stamp can differ in value by ten times or more.