Douglas Myall wrote:
These have begun to appear in recent years and I am wondering what
members think of them. For myself, I think they should be searchable,
printable (with colour images), navigable (easy to look up a given
stamp) and browsable. What features do YOU consider essential or
desirable?

The Pipex account is dead. so to contact me direct use:


Douglas

Hi Douglas,

I know some people that have used the CD's and for a few countries they
say it works great. However, if you are cataloging a lot of stamps that
involves multiple countries the CD's are not very efficient. You have
to keep mounting and dis-mounting a CD for the next volume. The people
I know say that the search is good, but not excellent. One reson being
that Scott in a lot of cases, especially for flora and fauna,
translates a Latin description to English and the search does not work.


A major complaint is that the CD's cost as much as the hard copy, so
the hard copy is purchased. I do some part time work for a stamp dealer
and we have found that customer's who buy the CD's eventually buy the
hard copy. In general, people prefer to buy a hard copy, especially if
they are World-Wide collectors and since the price is the same.

In another reply, there is mention of Scott putting the catalogs on DVD
and thus reducing the number of CD's to one. Truthfully, I do not think
that will ever happen, Scott likes to make money. The ideal situation
will be Scott breaking the catalogs into geographic areas, as Stanley
Gibbons, Yvert and others do. I have contacted Scott about doing this
and their statement is that there are too many World-Wide collectors
and dealers that need the full set. I think it is a ridiculous reason.
If broken into areas you still have the option to buy a full set. I am
sure that the catalogs will eventually go to 7 volumes instead of the 6
now published. Regarding color, I believe I read somewhere that the
2006 catalogs will be in color.

Jerry Bodoff