Scott Catalog Numbers: How to Read a Stamp Listing

A Scott number is the identifier that turns "an old blue stamp with a man on it" into a specific catalogue entry with a year, a printing, a perforation, a watermark and a price. In the United States, Canada and Mexico it is the numbering everyone uses; dealers quote it, auction lots cite it, and album spaces are laid out by it.

The catalogue has been published since September 1868 and now runs to fourteen volumes: twelve covering every country that has ever issued stamps, plus the US Specialized and Classic Specialized editions for collectors who need the sub-varieties. It is published by Scott Stamp LLC, which acquired it from Amos Media in October 2025.

A full listing gives the Scott number, an illustration, the denomination, the colour of the paper and design, a description of the design, the year of issue, and prices for unused and used examples. That is enough to confirm what you have — provided you also check the things the picture cannot show you, which is where most misidentifications happen.

A plain number with no letter in front is a regular postage stamp. A capital letter before the number marks a different class of stamp:

• C — air post (airmail). The Inverted Jenny is Scott C3a: the third US airmail stamp, variety a.
• B — semi-postal, a stamp sold above face value with the surcharge going to a cause.
• Other prefixes and prefix combinations cover postage due, special delivery, occupation issues, postal tax and similar categories.

This matters in practice because the same number can exist twice. Scott 3 and Scott C3 are different stamps from different series, and quoting one when you mean the other will get you the wrong price and the wrong stamp. Always copy the prefix.

Letters after the number work differently from letters before it, and this is where people most often misquote a catalogue.

A capital-letter suffix marks a major listing in its own right. Scott 28A is a major number, printed in the larger type the catalogue uses for main entries, and is a distinct stamp rather than a footnote to Scott 28.

A lowercase suffix marks a minor listing: a shade, a printing variety, an error, an imperforate pair. Minor listings appear in smaller type beneath the major entry.

The two stack, and the order is fixed. A minor variety of Scott 16A is Scott 16Ab, not Scott 16b — the capital comes first because it belongs to the major number, and the lowercase letter is added after it. Scott 16b would be a minor variety of Scott 16, a different stamp.

If a seller quotes a number that does not follow this pattern, the listing is worth checking before the price is.

Scott values are retail figures for a stamp in a grade of Very Fine, unless the listing says otherwise, and they are set from market analysis and reported sales over the previous year. They are not what a dealer will pay you, and they are not what a stamp in average condition is worth.

Gum assumptions are built in. For pre-1900 issues, an unused stamp priced at the listed figure is expected to retain most of its original gum; for later issues, full original gum is assumed unless the entry states otherwise. A stamp without gum, or regummed, sits well below the listing.

A minimum value of about 25 cents applies to most stamps. That floor exists to cover a dealer's cost of handling, not to describe demand, and it is why totalling the catalogue value of a bulk lot produces a meaningless number.

Stanley Gibbons, the British catalogue first issued as a penny price list in November 1865, works differently on this point: its prices are what the firm would itself charge for that stamp in that condition if it had one in stock, rather than an average of the market. Two catalogues can therefore give two different figures for the same stamp without either being wrong. See the stamp appraisal page for how these figures relate to what you will actually be offered.

Matching the picture is the easy part and the unreliable part. Most catalogue numbers that look alike are separated by things you have to measure.

Work in this order: country first, then the series and year, then the perforation gauge, then the watermark, then the shade, then condition. A stamp that matches the illustration but has the wrong perforation count is a different Scott number with a different price, sometimes by three orders of magnitude. Our guide to perforations and watermarks covers the two measurements that do most of the work, and identifying a stamp's country and issue handles the first step for foreign material.

Photograph the stamp and the app identifies it, which gets you to the country and issue quickly. Take the measurements yourself before you settle on a catalogue number, because the number is what everything else — price, certificate, sale — is hung on.

The Postal Service's own catalogue is USA Philatelic, which it describes as an official source of current stamps and stamp products. It is free: you sign up at usps.com/philatelic to have it mailed to your home, and a PDF edition can be downloaded from the USPS Postal Store. Issues can also be read online at Stamps Forever, the USPS collectors' website; the Spring 2026 issue is Volume 31.

Orders placed from the catalogue carry a handling fee of $2.10 for domestic orders up to $50 and $2.85 above that (USPS Postal Store, September 2026).

USA Philatelic is a sales catalogue of new issues, first-day covers and similar products. It does not list old stamps or give their values. For that you need a reference catalogue such as Scott.

The 2026 Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue is published by Amos Media in six volumes arranged alphabetically by country. Since 2018 each volume has come in two parts, A and B, so the full set is twelve books. Volume 1 covers the United States plus countries beginning with A and B, and the 2026 edition of Volume 1 was released on June 1, 2025. A digital subscription is also sold (amosadvantage.com).

Outside North America, collectors use other numbering systems: Stanley Gibbons in Britain, Michel in Germany, Yvert et Tellier in France, Facit in Scandinavia, Edifil in Spain and Sakura in Japan. A stamp has a different number in each, so a listing should always say which catalogue it is quoting.

Several online catalogues are free to use. Wikipedia's list of stamp catalogues gives these sizes:

• Colnect: 1,432,751 stamps, searchable by theme, year and country, with values
• StampWorld: 840,739 stamps, with values
• Stamps of the World wiki: 382,414 images on 27,757 pages, without values

They are good for identifying a stamp and finding its year and design. Their values are catalogue-style figures and should be treated as a rough ranking, the same caution that applies to Scott. When a stamp matters, confirm the number against Scott or Stanley Gibbons, because those are the numbers dealers and auction houses quote.

The Scott catalogue changed hands in October 2025. Scott Stamp LLC, owned by Jay Bigalke and David Fritz, bought it from its previous owner, Amos Media Co. (Wikipedia). The company's site, scottstamp.com, now sells the catalogues along with magazines and checklists.

That explains why sources disagree about the publisher. The 2026 edition of Volume 1 was released on June 1, 2025, before the sale, and its product page still names Amos Media Company as publisher (amosadvantage.com, September 2026). Editions after the sale come from Scott Stamp LLC.

The ownership line goes back to the founder. John Walter Scott, an early New York stamp dealer, issued the first catalogue in September 1868 as a 21-page pamphlet titled Descriptive Catalogue of American and Foreign Postage Stamps, Issued from 1840 to Date. His business was operating as the Scott Stamp & Coin Company by 1893, the catalogue continued under Scott Publishing Co after the firm stopped dealing in stamps, and it later passed to Amos Media, which sold it to Scott Stamp LLC in October 2025 (Wikipedia).

You do not need to buy the catalogue to get a working idea of what a Scott number is worth. Use three free checks, in this order.

• A free online catalogue such as Colnect or StampWorld gives a catalogue-style value, which works as a ceiling.
• Dealer price lists arranged by Scott number show what a buyer actually pays. Mystic Stamp Company lists its US stamps in Scott order, and allstamp.net lists each stamp with its Scott number and grade.
• Sold prices show what the market really paid. For famous stamps, specialist sites publish them: the Inverted Jenny census at invertedjenny.com records sales by position.

The dealer lists also show how much grade matters. On allstamp.net in September 2026, used Scott 9, the 1-cent Franklin Type IV, was $35.00 in Fine and $85.00 in Very Fine: the same number, more than double the price. That is why a Scott number on its own never gives you a value. You need the number, the grade, and whether the stamp is used or unused.

If you are selling rather than buying, expect less than any of these figures. The American Philatelic Society advises members to price at 40% to 60% of Very Fine catalogue value on its StampStore.

Research and drafting were assisted by AI, and every price, date and number on this page was checked against the sources listed below. Auction results name the house and date; dealer prices are asking prices on the named website in September 2026.

An online stamp catalogue works best once you know the country and roughly the year, because every free catalogue is organised by country, then by year of issue.

• Read the inscription. The country name narrows the search. Our guide to identifying a stamp's country and issue covers the hard cases.
• Note the denomination and currency. They help place the stamp in time.
• Browse the country by year and match the design.
• Then measure. Many designs were printed several times with different perforations or watermarks, and a catalogue picture cannot show them; see perforations and watermarks.

StampWorld describes itself as the most complete stamp catalogue on the internet: it lists more than 750,000 stamps with more than 700,000 colour pictures, registration is free, and a marketplace for buying and selling is attached to the catalogue (stampworld.com, September 2026).

• Current U.S. postage: the USPS Postal Store, covered above. Postage sold far below face value elsewhere is a common counterfeit sign; see how to spot a fake stamp.
• Collectors' stamps from members of a society: the American Philatelic Society's StampStore on HipStamp is open to buyers anywhere, and all the material is owned by APS members (stamps.org, September 2026).
• Worldwide stamps from individual sellers: marketplaces attached to catalogues, such as StampWorld's, let you check the catalogue entry and the listing side by side.

Whichever site you use, match the catalogue number and check the perforation and condition in the photos before paying.