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Michel Junior Catalogue 2018 Reviewed

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The bane of every stamp collector is the high cost of all the ancillary items that come along with the stamps: mounts, albums, stock books, and, worst of all, catalogs. A basic set of 6 Scott catalogs will cost over $400. If you concentrate on certain countries, like US stamps, you may also want to obtain the ?native? catalogs for those areas, such as Stanley Gibbons for the British area or the Zumstein for Switzerland and Liechtenstein. For Poland, there is the Fischer catalog; for Scandinavia, Facit; and for collectors of Germany, the Michel Katalog is the reference of choice.

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The problem is, any of these catalogues will set you back at least another $50 or so ? much more so if we?re talking about something like the 2-volume Michel Germany Specialized. To borrow a line from Senator Everett Dirksen, $50 here, $50 there ? pretty soon we?re talking real money. What is a Phrugal Filatelist to do?

Luckily, for American collectors, many public libraries carry the latest edition of the Scott catalogs in their reference sections. While not the most convenient solution to a collector?s need, it is, undoubtedly, a phrugal one. To ease the burden of laying out a large sum of money in one year, some collectors will buy an older set to begin with, and then update only one or two volumes each year to the latest edition.

Though I am a worldwide collector, Germany stamps is a major area of concentration for me. I have a 4-year-old edition of the Michel Katalog for Germany, and my local stamp club has the 2-volume Germany Specialized catalog. To buy the latest edition of the standard Germany catalog will set me back more than $60 with shipping. I?d like to keep abreast of the changes in stamp values, but, for $60, one is paying for a lot of information beyond just values ? information on postmarks, paper varieties, phosphorescence and fluorescence, and a host of other minutiae that is not going to be any different than what is in the 4-year-old edition. This is where Michel Junior comes to the rescue.

I just received the 2018 Michel Junior ? The Little Germany Catalog. It is a compact volume, measuring 4 ? inches by 7 3/8 inches (not much bigger than a standard paperback novel) with close to 600 pages of updated values for the entire German area ? states, colonies, offices, allied zones, it?s all there, including local issues of Cottbus, Finsterwalds, et al. New issues are listed up through the end of 2019.

Values are shown for MNH (or MH, where appropriate), Used, and FDC (First Day Covers). It omits the on-cover used values found in the standard catalog. It also does not include the issue quantities or expiration dates. Where the standard Michel Katalog pictures every stamp in a set, Junior will, occasionally, omit a few. For example, the DDR 10-stamp set MiNr 344-53 pictures only 5 of the 10 values. Also, for Memel, for example, where the standard catalog lists Mint values for both hinged and never-hinged, the Junior edition gives only MNH values for the individual stamps, while giving both MH and MNH values for the complete set.

Other items which are omitted include values for miniature sheets (Kleinbogen), and booklet stamps and their various combinations in pairs and other multiples. And, naturally, as befitting a catalog with the ?Junior? sobriquet, you won?t find many varieties listed, nor most of the footnotes found in the standard edition.

One thing you will find in the Junior catalog which you won?t find in the standard version is the size of the stamp (but not the perforation gauge). The width and height, in millimeters, is given for every issue. That, alone, is worth the price of admission for the help it provides in preparing stamp mounts and in creating custom album pages. The color images of the stamps are reproduced at about 40% of the actual size, but they are printed clearly and are perfectly adequate for identification purposes.

All in all, this catalog is a perfect companion item for collectors already possessing the standard or specialized volumes, but who don?t care to pay the higher prices just to get updated values. For the collector who requires only a basic catalog, without all the specialized information in the other volumes, or for BidStart dealers who want to include Michel numbers in their auction and sales listings, this catalog fits the bill nicely.

The best part, though, is the price. The cover price is 9.95 Euros. I ordered my copy from Werner Zielniewicz, from his web site www.wernerziel.com. (This was my first time dealing with Herr Zielniewicz, but it will not be my last. His customer service was outstanding. If you?re wondering how a simple catalog order can be raised to the level of ?outstanding,? well, place an order, and you will see.) The cost was US$12.95, and even with shipping charges from Germany to the USA, I spent less than $20. $18.95, to be exact. Compared to the standard Michel Katalog, that leaves me more than $40 with which to fill a few more holes in my album.

For that, I declare the Michel Junior catalog 2018 a ?PhF Best Buy.?
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