Talk:Sun Yat-sen stamps

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Experiment below

This is an attempt at a numbering system, and a possible way of organizing stamp listings. By doing this with a Sun Yat-sen issue we have the opportunity to develop experience with many of the problems that may be encountered. This is still not the most complicated Chinese issue, but finding and identifying the various stamps even here is still very difficult for the beginner.

The most important principle in developing this idea is making it easier for the person trying to identify the stamp. The second principle is scalability in the organization so that the scheme could be extended to apply to more specialized material. The traditional concept of "set" is reconsidered, and applied differently. We want to avoid the frequent tendency in some of the best known catalogs to break sets up when they get too long. We also need to better integrate overprints for territorial or occupation use to reflect the fact that they can be part of the history for both the occupier and the occupied.

In the example below we have

1. CHN- = The three letter code for the country with a trailing hyphen. This should be standardized to an accepted system.
2. SNK = An optional field for a political subdivision or other subset. In this case it refers to the Shanghai and Nanjing occupation area.
3. -1941 = The year that the common design was first issued, with a leading hyphen. This has the effect of putting two consecutive hyphens when there is no political subdivision.
4. -0101 = The set and the major stamp within the set, with a leading hyphen. The sets should preferably be numbered in the order that they first appeared, but we should not be too rigorous about this. The stamps within the set should be ordered by face value of the stamp. On can use consecutive numbers for this when dealing with a completed set. Current sets to which new values are still being added should leave unused numbers between stamps. Note that in this set there are two 8 cent stamps with obviously different colours; this too would be a major difference.
5. -01 = The two most significant variations by type, also with leading hyphens. In this case they are the overprints.
6. Additional details can be added in a similar format.

Eclecticology 08:40, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sun Yat-sen New York printing

Catalogue No.	Value	Colour	Overprint_1	Other	Scott	Gib	Mich	Yv	Ma	Chan	ROC-PO	Notes
CHN--1941-0101-00	½¢	Sepia			449	583		334	547	496	Ord 33-1
CHN--1941-0101-10	½¢	Sepia	1¢ Red			624					Ord 36-3	Hunan-Kwantung printing
CHN--1941-0101-11	½¢	Sepia	1¢ Red	small characters	486(j1)				607	536A		Kwangtung printing
CHN--1941-0101-12	½¢	Sepia	1¢ Red	large characters	486(c1)				606	536B		Hunan printing
CHN-SNK-1941-0101-2	½¢	Sepia	5¢		9N78	95		69	SH-93	JC81	87
CHN-SNK-1941-0101-3	½¢	Sepia	$50		9N84	101		75	SH-99	JC87	93
CHN--1941-0102-00	1¢	orange			450	584		335	548	497	Ord 33-2
CHN-SNK-1941-0102-10	1¢	orange	10¢		9N79
CHN-SNK-1941-0102-20	1¢	orange	20¢		9N80
CHN--1941-0102-30	1¢	orange	$10		716
CHN-SNK-1941-0102-41	1¢	orange	$50		9N85
CHN--1941-0102-42	1¢	orange	$50	25¢ green	617
CHN-SNK-1941-0102-51	1¢	orange	$1,000		9N91
CHN--1941-0102-52	1¢	orange	$1,000	$5 green	621
CHN-KWT-1941-0102-60	1¢	orange	Kwangtung		1N16
CHN--1941-0103-	2¢	bright ultra			451

[edit] Comments

Not to be too discouraging, but this is just scratching the surface. The reason Scott, Michel, etc can get copyright protection for their systems is that they exercise a huge amount of editorial judgment in what to include/exclude, and in how to assign numbers. For instance, sometimes stamps are grouped into a single set spanning multiple years, and other times they are broken into several sets sharing a design or design type; there is not a consistent algorithm that they use. The system I developed factors out a lot of this, but when handling the full complexity of overprints in 1940s China for instance, the descriptors get pretty long. If you really want to work on this, I should just send you my current data and code; although I don't have a solution, the data includes all the tough cases. Stan 17:17, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It would indeed be interesting to see what you have done. These sorts of ideas have been knocking around in my head for years, and I realize that I am just scratching the surface. My first impression from what you say is that we are at least recognizing the same problems. Of course, if you are making copyright claims on your scheme I will need to be respectful of that.

Scott's copyrights are shaky, but that's a discussion for some other time. For now I feel safe referring to them as long as we are still at the experimental level.

I agree that editorial judgement will be key. Even in the small amount above I find that Scott lists two types of the 1 cent overprint, Gibbons has only one, and Yvert doesn't mention it at all. I can't find my Michel to see what they do, and some more specialized books claim that there are at least 12 varieties. I think that catalogues should have beginner, intermediate and advanced levels, with scalability built into the transition between these levels. Still, I don't think that any significant development on Wikipedia beyond an intermediate level would be worthwhile, even after we factor in the incredible patience of the flyspeckers. Eclecticology 21:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)