A reader writes:
“Read your column faithfully. You have convinced me to start collecting.

“One problem, either I spend $ for Scott catalogs, or for stamps. I can’t afford both. A friend mentioned that members of your stamp club may have older Scott catalogs that they may desire to part with. Can you steer me to these folks, if this may be the case?�

I sent the writer a short answer, but I’d like to expand on catalogs and their use here for everyone.

First, not every collector needs a catalog. If you decide to collect only face-different stamps and ignore watermark and perforation differences, your task is simplified considerably. But doing that, of course, means you might not know you have a valuable stamp because it has the less-common watermark or perforations. Still, many collectors do ignore such differences.

Second, depending on what you collect, you might not need a Scott catalog, or at least not a complete set. If you collect the U.S., its possessions and Canada, for example, you can easily get by with the Brookman or H.E. Harris catalogs, which list just those areas. There are also two U.S.-only catalogs, “The Postal Service Guide to U.S. Stamps,� and the “Official Blackbook Price Guide to U.S. Postage Stamps.� Both use the Scott numbers and have color pictures of the stamps, cost less than a single volume of the Scott catalog and are available at most bookstores. Scott also publishes a pocket catalog of U.S. stamps.

If you decide to collect a single country and not the world, you need only the Scott volume that lists that country.

But what if you do seriously collect the entire world? Then you might have to buy a full set of Scott catalogs or those of some other publisher. Even in this case, you probably don’t need the most recent set. Check with stamp dealers, stamp clubs and used book stores to see if they have an older set. If you can stand not being fully up to date, the older catalogs can be a bargain. However, they are generally not worth $20 a volume, a price I’ve seen in some used book stores.

You might also try a Web search for online stamp catalogs. I did, and one of the first entries to come up is from The Glassine Surfer, which has a list of links to such catalogs for several countries.
Lee’s Illustrated Stamp Listopedia at http://www.filbert.com/stamplistopedia/ has a similar list.

A final note: Don’t take prices in whatever catalog you use too literally. Depending on condition and other factors, stamps, and even large collections, might sell for far less or far more than their catalog value. Remember that catalog values are based on what a willing buyer would pay for an item to a willing seller. But if your entire collection consists of stamps priced at the minimum value, the actual value won’t be anywhere near the number of stamps multiplied by the minimum value.

(Just as I was ready to post this, an issue of Linn’s Stamp News arrived, with a letter suggesting that people who want catalogs check library book sales, too. It’s a good point, but one I had forgotten.)