The Future of Catalogues and Their Importance to The Hobby
by John M. Hotchner
It used to be that I could carry an annotated United States Scott Specialized Catalogue of the current year when I went to a stamp show. It was my record of what I had and its condition level, my want list, guidance on value, my reference on varieties to look for, and a 
handy reference on design types and measurements from the first 80 years of US stamps.
No longer! The 2022 US Specialized now weighs six pounds and stretches to over 1300 detailed and information-packed pages. In fact the entire Scott Catalogue (13 soft covered books including the Specialized, plus the 1840-1940 hardcover Classic Specialized), now takes a foot and a half of shelf space and weighs in at about 58 pounds.
I recently had to bring the catalogues from one floor to another so a dealer doing an evaluation could have them for handy reference. It took three trips! And don’t get me started on the price – just under $1000 for the complete run.
Is it any wonder that as the newly updated catalogues come out each year, prior year’s catalogues – deeply discounted – are eagerly sought by collectors who are satisfied to 
have a reference for most of what is in their collections.
Given that the catalogues are an essential for any serious collector, and that they can only grow as the nations of the world pump out ever more stamps and souvenir sheets even as mail volumes decrease, I got to wondering about their future.
I’m on the margins of the digital revolution and prefer looking at hard copy, but Scott has now converted the catalogues to digital form – and offers them in addition to hard copy at about three quarters the price of hard copy. But this is still a stretch for even established collectors who would much rather spend that kind of money on stamps for their own collections.
For the present time, Scott continues to sell both hard copy and digital, but how long can 
they afford to produce and sell hard copy at an affordable price, as digital takes hold and eats into those sales? It is bound to happen that fewer and fewer hard copies will be sold each year, and there will come a time that hard copy will go away. I don’t have Scott’s sales numbers, but it seems logical that Scott will get to a point where only digital will be available.
But will the current format of digital versions of the full catalogues match up with collector demand? Possibly for some time to come, as we are used to this as the retail model. But I think back to the old Minkus Catalogs which briefly gave Scott some competition in the 1960s into the early 1970s. In a way it was doomed from the start as Scott numbers were the industry standard, but Minkus album pages were popular. Labeled with Minkus catalog numbers, they helped to sell the catalog.
But Minkus did something that I wish Scott would consider: Minkus brought out a series of country-specific catalogs. Undoubtedly, that negatively affected sales of the
Scott 1955: Complete in two volumes
comprehensive catalogs. They were not updated yearly, but it was a real service to collectors who specialized in one or only a few countries, and saved megabucks for collectors who did not need the comprehensive catalogs.
Scott is a business, and I don’t minimize the cost of providing the products they do. I’m sure that the economics of catalogue production are unforgiving. They put a terrific amount of human effort and investment into keeping their products up to date, and it is right and proper that they cover those costs with their pricing, and that they make a profit. But I am troubled by what catalogues – hard copy and digital – cost the collector.
At the same time that the products are an essential for the hobby, they are as a practical matter not available to the great majority of people who might be interested in getting started in stamp collecting – especially young people who are still in school or just starting 
out in a career.
Does this play a role in the steadily decreasing market share that stamp collecting commands these days? I think so. Sure, there are other factors involved in that: the delayed gratifications of stamp collecting can’t hope to compete with the immediate gratifications of video games. But we as a hobby are not making it easy for new people to join up and prosper when the tools of the hobby are priced beyond what new collectors can afford.
To repeat, Scott must cover its costs and make a profit or we will lose the substantial benefits of having the continually updated critical reference upon which we all depend. But I hope they also factor in somehow, (may I call it) their responsibility to also support the future of the hobby.
If this means they bring out hard copy only every two years, or alternate years between hard copy and digital, or a host of other possible ways to cut costs for both producer and user, they are worth thinking about.
Should you wish to comment on this editorial, or have questions or ideas you would like to have explored in a future column, please write to John Hotchner, VSC Contributor, P.O. Box 1125, Falls Church, VA 22041-0125, or email, putting “VSC” in the subject line.
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