Michel catalog
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The Michel catalog (MICHEL-Briefmarken-Katalog) is the largest and best-known stamp catalog in the German-speaking world. First published in 1910, it has become an important reference work for philately, with information not available in the English-language Scott catalog.
The catalog started out as a price list for the dealer Hugo Michel of Apolda. By 1920 it was split into two volumes, for "Europe" and "overseas", and eventually grew to a present-day size of about a dozen volumes covering the entire world, with additional specialized volumes bringing the total to some forty catalogs.
Unlike Scott, Michel does not issue a complete set of catalogs every year, instead updating only several of the volumes. Michel is also more detailed, with quantities issued, sheet formats, and so forth. Also of significance to some collectors is its coverage of countries and periods omitted by Scott for editorial or political reasons. For instance, US embargoes against Cuba, Iraq and North Korea, are reflected by Scott's failure to show market values for those countries' stamp issues (as late as 2002, Scott did not supply any information at all about North Korean stamps), and Michel is one of few sources for that information.
Michel also documents the dubious stamp issues of the "Sand Dunes", the emirates and sheikdoms of the Arabian Peninsula who issued a great many stamps during the 1960s and 1970s, but which were unlikely to have seen any actual postal use. Scott excludes them as invalid stamps.
[edit] External link
- MICHEL online – German
