We have had a very mild spring this year. Last year we had several 100 degree days in April and this year we had highs in the 60’s and 70’s. Warm enough to get the garden started though. Everything is growing well and the spring flowers are prolific. All the severe weather has bypassed us so we have no complaints.

We are still working on cleaning up our listings on the web site. When we moved our site to a new provider early this year our images did not transfer evenly – we lost almost half of our images and many other images ended up in wrong locations. We cleaned up our Germany proper listings in previous months. In April we revised all of our German states listings – a major undertaking. We made about 1000 changes and added about 400-500 images for these. During May we will update our German plebiscite and occupation listings.

We apologize for the absence of needed images as well as the wrong images attached to some items. We thought the clean up would go pretty quickly but it has not. There were just too many needed corrections and we will continue to respond to our customers first. If you have any questions about a particular listing or need to see an image of an item you are considering – just let us know and we will respond immediately.

Stamp Catalogs

This is the time of year updated stamp catalogs begin to be published. For many years we have reviewed the major catalog listings for the countries we stock. For the last ten years we tend to give short reviews mostly saying there have been no significant changes. This is because the stamp market has been very steady for many years, the number of stamps being added is growing at blazing rates, and catalog publishers are making little effort to review market changes in a timely fashion.

We have always preferred Michel catalogs for their tracking the stamps we stock because their listings have been the most comprehensive and their pricing most reflective of the stamp market. Every year Michel publishers would conduct a thorough review of some sections of their listings. This review would include updating the available information identifying varieties and pricing of the section being reviewed. In recent years these reviews have become infrequent. Also they have not kept up with the actual market pricing of most stamps throughout their catalogs. The result has been than annual catalogs have become basically reprints of previous catalogs. In the past couple of years the market for better German stamps has grown substantially stronger but this is not reflected in the catalogs.

The bottom line is that stamp collectors are best advised to update their catalogs very infrequently as buying new catalogs is much more expensive now and the new catalogs offer little new information. We will continue to review catalog revisions and if we note any new catalogs with substantial new information suggesting that a new catalog would be worthwhile we will advise!

Having made all these comments. We note that the 2004 Scott catalog listing of Austria issues has zero changes from previous releases with the exception that they have added some recent issues to their listing.(The only noticeable change is that all images throughout the catalog have been reduced in size – the images make it more difficult for viewers ability to differenentiate stamps.) Similarly the new Michel Austria specialized catalog has very, very few prices changes from previous versions.

Neither catalog is worth buying if your current version is less than ten years old.

Our Printed Price Lists

It has been a year since we stopped mailing our printed price lists to our customers. Sadly we have lost a few customers who order through mail only. We still maintain price lists for all areas we stock but update them far less often.

In an attempt to accommodate our by mail customers we will revise our price lists to include far fewer Michel listed varieties and reflect mostly Scott listed items. Our varieties will be listed on our web site. This change will permit us to keep our mailing lists more up to date if not quite as comprehensive as we would like. This month we have updated our Germany Part C list which covers our post WWII regular issues

R Schneider
POB 978
IOWA PARK TX 76367

OFFICE 618 975 2099
FAX 940 213 3596

EMAIL
RSchneiderStamps@gmail.com

Website:

wwww.RSchneiderStamps.com