Unitrade Specialized Catalogue of Canadian Stamps

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University and editor of the Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

The bible of Canadian stamp collectors is beginning to resemble a Sears
catalogue. The color illustrations are larger than ever before, and with
its expanding size, the Specialized Catalogue of Canadian Stamps has a
glossy, more spacious look. It also costs twice as much as the 1994
edition, a no-nonsense affair that had black-and-white illustrations. I
liked that edition because it was inexpensive and serviceable, but
apparently many others didn’t. Advances in computer graphics
technology have since made color illustrations easier and cheaper to
produce, but the cost of paper continues to rise.

In the meantime, stamp prices in the catalogue have hardly changed. The
editors say they tried to put together the most accurate retail prices,
but there is the nagging suspicion that this is basically a dealer’s
wish list. One need look no farther than the advertisements of dealers
and auction houses in Canadian Stamp News to realize that collectors
need not pay as much as the catalogue’s valuations. There are
exceptions, especially when it comes to the rare 19th-century stamps of
premium quality. Still, in general, collectors should expect to pay less
than these prices, and perhaps the catalogue ought to reflect this
reality more closely.