Why is it so hard to part with old auction catalogs?? And, why are they still being printed??
Lakesammman
Posts: 17,464 ✭✭✭✭✭
I've got boxes and boxes of them. I'm especially partial to keeping the Bowers and Ruddy/Merena, ANR, Superior Stamp and Coin, etc. I know they can be viewed on line - it's just not the same!
On the other hand, by the time the current catalogs arrive, I've already viewed the entire catalog on-line and know which lots interest me. Is there a paperless option with HA, Stacks, etc. ??
Somebody help me! 
"My friends who see my collection sometimes ask what something costs. I tell them and they are in awe at my stupidity." (Baccaruda, 12/03).I find it hard to believe that he (Trump) rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world. (Putin 1/17) Gone but not forgotten. IGWT, Speedy, Bear, BigE, HokieFore, John Burns, Russ, TahoeDale, Dahlonega, Astrorat, Stewart Blay, Oldhoopster, Broadstruck, Ricko, Big Moose, Cardinal.
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My family has a timber and pulpwood farm so keep printing them catalogs.
I don't get them, anymore, but I have stacks from back in the day.
I never look at them, anymore, but can't bring myself to dispose of them.
Sometimes, it’s better to be LUCKY than good. 🍀 🍺👍
My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/16292/
Probably 5? years ago I sold about 40 years worth on eBay by company by year and got about $2,000 a little at a time. I'm sure once I'm gone they would end up in the world's largest dumpster that my wife or my daughter will have parked in the driveway.
Now with most of them available online I doubt they would sell for much but who knows. If you have the time and energy give them a try on eBay.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
How do you go about getting them delivered in the first place? Do you have to be a high roller?
I need them to go with my cognac, cigar and smoker's jacket
I'm sure I'll enjoy them in my retirement. Reading a catalog is much more relaxing than sitting at a computer.
I hear ya. Heritage and Stack’s produce some beautiful catalogs. I open the box, fan the pages, the smell that you just can’t get online, flipping through the pages. On the rare occasion I win a coin from one of those auctions, I keep that catalog.
I really only find them useful when viewing lots. It's convenient to be able to make notes with a pen. There are a handful that have sentimental value to me, typically because I purchased some nice coins or notes out of the auction, or because a great collection was cataloged for sale therein.
I still have some from Superior from the early eighties and also have some small ones from the 1940s. They ain't goin' anywhere. I have some beautiful hardcover auction catalogs from Legend that are five or six years old, too.
There's nothing like a real catalog for the biggies - Eliasberg, Garrett, Norweb, Pogue, etc.
Anyone still have the CD's that HA used to mail out?? I don't recall ever loading one and viewing it .....
I like catalogs even for specialized collections like William Sphon Baker and E. Pluribus Unum.
Maybe there's an essential oil that smells like freshly printed catalog that you could use while viewing a catalog on a tablet.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
I think there is/was a tipping point.
Early efforts at digitization were limited by the resolution of scanners and monitors.
I had images scanned in the late 80s early 90s at 640x480 8 bit, because "that matches the resolution of the monitor and nobody will ever need more than that"... that's right, 0.3Megapixel.
Nobody would scan at that resolution today and nobody expects those old images to be usable. We know better. But we scan at 3MP for routine use and it's good enough for most purposes (better quality than a Fax machine, equivalent to a mid-range laser printer).
For true preservation, we need to be able to effectively recreate the original from a copy stored in a digital form, and then there are fewer reasons to keep the originals. (Arguably in another 20 or 30 years we will routinely scan at resolutions sufficient to see defects in the paper to identify a specific original and we'll tut tut the fools who thought 2021 scanning was sufficient).
We do, today, routinely accept originals printed at resolutions we can reproduce through scanning... And that, IMHO, is the tipping point: we can /a/ preserve the original in the .pdf form it was printed from and/or /b/ scan a printed original with sufficient fidelity to be able to recreate it. This turns the printing, reading, and preservation of catalogs from a necessity to a luxury that most of us don't have the shelf space for.
back-of-the-envelope:
A book/catalog is printed at 72dpi or 122dpi or even higher for art photos. Scanners routinely do 100ppi for Fax or 300, 600, 1200, or even 2400 ppi for "photo scans". At 24 or even 32 bit.
(dots per inch != points per inch)
An 8.5x11 inch page at 1200 ppi is a 134Megapixel image. Roughly 1/2 Gigabyte of raw data per page.
From that, you can reproduce the page as it was originally printed.
All of which is a rough way of saying that you can, today, scan & recreate the original information any time. Something you couldn't do 10 years ago.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
I dumped most of my catalogs when I moved across the country in 2011. I still have a few left and bought a few I really wanted (not available online). I don't receive any new ones anymore, apparently not spending enough with any one firm.
Public libraries scanned their old newspapers in the 1980s onto microfilm and then discarded the physical papers. That technology is inadequate and obsolete already.
Not hard for me. I gave most of my auction catalogues to a friend many years ago. They just lay around and are hardly ever used. I kept a few like the Eliasberg auction that I attended and The Rasmussen large cent cat. and a few others. One dealer I know has (or had) a whole room full of nothing but auction catalogues. Haven't seen him for years, and I don't know what he ever did with them, or maybe he still has them.
I have hard cover catalogs from the landmark sales, like Eliasberg, Garrett and Norweb, but I don't keep the others. I just don't have the storage space.
And, why are they still being printed??
Because the auction houses know that there are still enough high-roller bidders who want their hard copy catalogs, some of whom don't even go on-line at all, to justify printing them. That may change someday but it's still a fact of life today.
Member ANA, SPMC, SCNA, FUN, CONECA
I don’t open the boxes anymore. Just waitin for garbage day.