Disappointed

A little free speech text today :

The 2008 edition of the first tome (stamps of France) of the Yvert et Tellier catalogue is published this autumn ! And, when you read September issue of L'Écho de la timbrologie magazine, you know it ! Its new cover designed by French artist Marc Taraskoff is the event of the season ! Aude Ben-Moha writes it : this limited edition cover marks the "revival" of the French philately. Plus, she reminds you : buy this limited cover catalogue and you win this painting on a free minisheet ! Yeah !

The illustrator, Marc Taraskoff, is summoned for a commercial two-page interview about this cover, even if he admits that "I am neither a philatelist, nor a collector". But he can judge the content of Y&T catalogue : "it's quite not a harmless book. It's a reference, a true bible."

Conclusion : the content is precious to all collectors. So, let's go to page 86 and read this catalogue critic. The cover, the promotion of an annex mini-book about engraving and recess-printing written by Mrs. Ben-Moha, and which countries are in the others tomes published this month are all the topic of this critic. Nothing about the content and its evolution. :))

I forget the ultimate detail, in the eye of the new French philatelic collector, the one who collects catalogue covers and minisheets reproducing catalogue covers : "The latter [tome 1bis and following] keep their old red cover."


If you want to know some tiny bits of serious informations (yes, as commercial as the above), go read page 15 of Timbres magazine and the answers of the main manager of Y&T, Benoît Gervais, about his catalogue, his covers and his firm. About the tome 1 content, he thinks it became a "semi-specialized" catalogue that give the readers what they have been asking : "more photographs, more iconographic research [? from the redactor of this post], more informations".

Personally, I will wait November and the Autumn Show in Paris to give an eye to this catalogue : will he finally give as much - even more - datas about the stamps' story and career than Dallay.

For the stamps from un-French-related countries, and even if these books were not often in my hands, I suggest you compare Y&T content with Michel, Scott and Stanley Gibbons catalogues. The financial and linguistic effort can be very producive.


4 october 2007 :
If you want to see the content of the Dallay catalogues (France and French philatelic "countries"), you can watch on TV timbres the interview of their authors, Luc Dartois et Jean-Bernard Pillet, by Timbres magazine's journalist Michel Melot.