Book? Which Book?

The average online collector runs across the term "Back of the Book" about 20 times a month. How many times, however, does he really stop to consider exactly what those words mean?

The "back of the book" usually refers to items other than those used to prepay the delivery of a written (printed) message from one place to another. That means that regular postage stamps that prepay for such service, including semi-postal and airmail stamps, shouldn't be considered "back of the book". Postage due stamps, however, are issued to collect the cost of postage not prepaid by the sender, and therefore legitimately fall in the category of "back of the book". In fact, any payment for services other than the delivery of a message could legitimately be considered as not regular postage, and therefore fall in the "other" category. This would include postal tax stamps (which are essentially a form of revenue stamp), authorized receipt stamps, stamps to pay for special services such as special delivery, certified, or insured delivery, late fees, special handling fees such as registered mail, parcel post stamps, even telegraph stamps that are not issued for the delivery of a telegram, but to prepay the cost of sending one.

The problem with the term "back of the book" arises, however, when different catalogs list stamps in different categories. The old Minkus catalog included virtually everything by issue date, regardless of what service was being paid for. The Stanley Gibbons catalogue includes war tax stamps in their regular issue listings, while Scott and several other catalogues separate them into "back of the book" type listings. Stanley Gibbons further confuses matters by modeling its listings of the stamps of the United States fairly close to the same criteria used by Scott, while listing just about every other country according to the criteria used for British Commonwealth stamps.

Using different catalogues from different countries not only change what is considered "back of the book", but what is actually included in the book. Scott catalogues currently don't list stamps from about a dozen different countries, and don't include prices for some stamps for several others. Some country catalogues, including Stanley Gibbons (British), Yvert & Tellier (French), Zumstein (Switzerland/Liechtenstein), Michel (German), Facit (Scandinavia) and Yang (Hong Kong), to mention just a few, list stamps not found in one or more of the others. There are frequent places where stamps are listed in different places within the different catalogues, such as airmail stamps being included with all other listings, or separate, with postal tax and semi-postal stamps either separated from the main listing or included, where some TYPES of stamps are listed in one catalogue but excluded in another (I.E., telegraph stamps), and much more.

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