Postcards sorting by catalog code

[bernard41]

very well, thank you.

be careful: for some country we have morethan 2 letters:

Berlin: DE/B

Germay, Empire: GER/EMP

South Africa, Homelands: ZA/H

West African States: WAS

Northern Cyprus: TRNC

Russia, Empire: RU/EMP

if you want i can write all these exceptions.

actually a person combines the standard code with their personal code (for Turkey) example: TR-Coln-1432, TR-PTT-0182

[bernard41]

here all country with more then 2 letters:

ADE Aden

WAS West African States

ZA/H South Africa, Homelands

FEA French Equatorial Africa

CK/AIT Aitutaki

ALD Alderney

DE/B Berlin

GER/EMP Germay, Empire

DE/GG Germany, General Government

DE/W Germany, Weimar Republic

DDR Germany, Democratic Republic (DDR)

ATG Antigua and Barbuda

ANT Netherlands Antilles

ASC Ascension Island

BOM Bohemia and Moravia

GD-GR Grenada Carriacou & Petite Martinique

CEY Ceylon

TRNC Northern Cyprus

RU/EMP Russia, Empire

DE/ST German States

GEO Georgia

IN/COL India, British

JER Jersey

PT/MD Madeira Islands

KuK Austro-Hungarian Monarchy

SKN Nevis

GER/OC Germany, Occupations in the Years 1939-1945

ONU/G UNO Geneva

ONU/NY UNO New York

ONU/V UNO Vienna

PA(BM) Palestine - British Mandate

BES Caribbean Netherlands

CIND Lugansk People's Republic

RHN Rhodesia and Nyasaland

RS/ME Serbia and Montenegro

SML Somaliland

SWA Swaziland

TAAF French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF)

AAT Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT)

BIOT British Indian Ocean Territory

BAT British Antarctic Territory (BAT)

PAL Palestinian Territory

PMR Transnistria

TDC Tristan da Cunha

YEM Yemen, People's Democratic Republic

[bernard41]

a peculiarity for France: when I started I did not put enough digit, and when we reached 9,999, we had to add "A" in front of the figures ...

this may also happen later for Austria, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine ...

[mitanisch]

It should be noted in advance that there are no longer any current, printed catalogs for postcards.

There are no such catalogs for maximum cards either.

The catalog numbers used here for maximum cards are based on existing stamp catalogs, which are only preceded by a distinctive abbreviation to distinguish them from stamps.

Since the Michel catalog is a German catalog, this abbreviation is "MK".

In English "MC" for "maximum card" and in French "CM" for "carte-maximum" would be used analogously.

Three different abbreviations are used in the "Stamp Number" catalog, in addition to the country abbreviation, or none at all.

As there are: "MK" (9 pcs), "MC" (2 pcs), "ST" (8 pcs)

Sometimes "MC" is also used as "MC1" in the end of the number.

Stanley Gibbons has no comparable abbreviation before or after the number (except the country code followed by a consecutive number).

Yvert & Tellier has both "MK" (9 pcs), ​​"CM" (26 pcs) and "MC" (1 pc). Or nothing. Sometimes also "FDC" (4 pcs) and "FDO" (6 pcs).

With Michel it is: "MK" (2736 pcs), "MC" (324 pcs) and "CM" (34 pcs in Czech Republic).

Basically, and this applies to all catalogs, there are very different numbering variants.

For example: with and without hyphens, with and without spaces, with and without periods, as consecutive numbering or in connection with a year of publication and subsequent consecutive numbering.

Or a sequential numbering followed by the year of publication.

So without a uniform system. But this was just a small digression in the area of ​​maximum cards.

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Now for the postcards:

My concern was and is to develop and establish a uniform system with meaningfulness for normal postcards.

At the moment there are 145,111 pieces of the type "normal postcard". 35,874 of them with Michel numbers.

Since I am German, I naturally started numbering with Germany.

But this does not only apply to the postcards in my collection.

You can tell that 10,585 of the 12,935 "normal postcards" from the Federal Republic of Germany have a Michel number, but I only have 4,649 postcards from Germany of this type.

Until recently, Austria was in comparable preparation. Of course I've stopped that now.

I would like to illustrate the structure of my numbering using the following example:

https://colnect.com/de/postcards/postca ... esrepublik

DE-BY/NES BNeus-FA-H-9 1

DE: Country code. In this case Germany.

hyphen

BY: Second administrative unit code. In this case the state of Bavaria.

slash

NES: Third administrative unit code. In this case, the city or district, identified by the vehicle sign. That will certainly not be possible in all countries.

space

BNeus: 5 digits maximum. In this case "Bad Neustadt", where "Bad" should be abbreviated with B.

FA: Coloring. In this case colored. FA because "farbig" in German.

H: Orientation. In this case, horizontally.

6: Number of images. In this case 6 pieces.

space

1: Continuous numerating. In this case, the first piece with the above specifications.

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The system should be applied to all countries.

But since this can only be done by hand, it naturally takes time.

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There may be duplicate codes in the "Printed Codes" catalog, which if the code already exists will not be accepted by the system.

Duplicate codes because e.g. the issuers XY and AB used the same numbers for very different postcards.

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The "Colnect Codes" catalog lacks a system.

Country-specific consecutive numbering, analogous to the stamp catalogs, cannot be useful here, since postcards are issued by a large number of producers and not only by one, as is the case with stamps.

In addition, the large stamp catalogs have existed almost simultaneously since the first stamps were issued and are therefore also structured and continued chronologically.

Therefore, a sequential numbering is also useful there and the only right thing.

[Dravec]

I completely agree with @hbofill12

Concerning stamp reference catalogs (Edifil, Stamp Number, Stanley Gibbons, Unificato, Yvert et Tellier ) - at the moment only a very limited number of maxi-cards have them. I'm not sure that we need them.

As soon as we have possibility to link each maxicard to corresponding stamp and reciprocally, we do not need STAMPS number for maximum cards (it's danger, because the same stamp can be part of different maxicards).

Michel catalog (I mean real Michel) has special numeration for official maxicards and therefore can be used (let say, it's only one, which is really used at the moment).

[Dravec]

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There may be duplicate codes in the "Printed Codes" catalog, which if the code already exists will not be accepted by the system.

Duplicate codes because e.g. the issuers XY and AB used the same numbers for very different postcards.

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I should say that only "printed codes" are really useful when you try to find postcard in Colnect database.

Of course, there is a lot of the same codes (specially in case of simple numbers 1-1000), but

1) state prefixes help to discriminate NL 162 from US 162

2) when the same number is used inside one country - simply add some prefix/suffix

3) printed numbers help to catch duplicates during upload process (really hunderds items were blocked). Of course, I need to check it manually each time, but time and power savings are unbelievable.

[shugal]

In my opinion the current Colnect Codes in the Postcard category (as well as in many, but not all, other categories on Colnect) is completely useless and a waste of time and disk space, because it does not offer any value at all. If I just want an automatically generated ID number, we already have it in the database (it's part of the card's URL: https://colnect.com/ en/postcards/postcard/ 183883-65B_USS_Arizona _and_Oklahoma_in_Pedro _Miguel_Locks--_USS_ warships_passing_Panama _Canal-Panama (I purposefully broke down the link for readability) the database ID is 183883). If any collector has use for a numbering system sorted by time of import into the database (I can't think of any use except pure identification, but it seems other colnectors see a value), this ID should rather easily be able to be displayed and sorted by. If I only want to see cards from one country sorted that way, I can just filter for the country first. Therefore I see no use for the current Colnect Codes. The same goes for all other categories where Colnect Codes is just a consecutive numbering scheme. Consecutive numbering by time of database addition is meaningless for items like postcards, where older cards may be added to the catalog later than newer cards, and for most card a year of issue (or even decate of issue) cannot be determined.

The value of stamp catalog numbers for maximum cards in my opinion is still present even when all maximum cards are properly liked to their stamps (could that be an option in the NIF, so it doesn't need to be done later by an editor?), because typing in the stamp number makes it easy to find (it would be good if I could choose the catalog before typing the number to search, so I don't get other cards with the same number from other catalogs).

In my opinion the Postcard category is in need of a useful cataloguing logic. mitanisch's numbering scheme offers that. It won't be applicable for all types of cards (most art cards and advertisement cards don't show a specific location), but it applies to all cards that show an identifyable location. I don't know how postcards are collected in other countries, in Germany collectors are either interested in a specific theme (e.g. churches or art from a specific artist) - themes, artist and other fields allow these collectors to relatively easily find cards they are interested in - or they are interested in postcards from a specific region, ofthen their birth place or living place and the immediately neighboring area, which is very often determined by low-level administrative borders. e.g. county (Landkreis in German). For these collectors, the Colnect Postcard category currently doesn't offer an easy way to find what they are interested in, because Location only goes to the level of state or province, far too big for most collectors, so they need to manually search for every series (town/village/city) in the area of interest. mitanisch's cataloguing system rectifies that by adding the lower administrative levels. His numbers have an actual meaning beyond just being an arbitrary ID number.

Therefore my suggestion is to completely abandon the current Colnect Codes, display and make searchable and sortable the database ID as replacement for the current Colnect Codes, and use mitanisch's system (after some discussions to refine the system in a way it can be used for view cards globally). This new cataloguing system will need to be explained in detail in the Wiki, I can help with that. Theoretically mitanisch's system can be (mostly) automated: For each series (as far as it means a village/town/city, unfortunately currently Series is a mixture of location and real series information) the database can hold the required lower administrative levels, this would only need to be created once for each series. The other information is mostly in the database (horizontal/vertical is, the number of views is cut at 5). One problem I see (which is alreay now sometimes an issue with Location and Series, not nothing caused by mitanisch's numbering) are locations that change administrative units. This sometimes, but rarely happens on the current Location level of province, though some countries have rearranged their top-level units, and then old cards must use the old system and new cards the new. Changes in lower administrative levels are happening more frequently: small villages and included into larger cities, counties are merged or split, or individual villages move from one county to another. We've had quite a lot of such changes in Germany, and it's not always easy to find out if a card belongs to the old or the new system.

Currently the database does allow the same catalog code be used for the same catalog only once, and only one code per card of the same catalog. This causes some problems. For maximum cards, there can be differedt cards with the same stamp. For other cards, besides different manufacurers using the same numbers (or even the same manufacturer uses the same number in different series), which can be managed by adding the manufacturer name and series name where needed, some have more than one code printed on them. Example: https://colnect.com/en/postcards/postcard/146394 has Fr/M 2974 in the samp area and 001-60000-2974 in the vertical printing between address and message space. Ideally both codes should be entered. For that either more than one code for the same catalog and card needs to be allowed, or the size of the catalog code field needs to be increased.

Regarding Vadym's initial request, I think all catalogs present need to be selectable for both searching for a specific code as well as for sorting.

[bernard41]

everyone gives their opinion and that's fine

the standard XX-Coln-0000 coding has the advantage of being on all postcards (at least no card is without code),

it is simple and understood by everyone

ok it is not based on the specifics of each postcard,

it bothers but does not prevent the individual codings that some collectors still use, nor an intelligent codification ...

it also has the advantage that many of us use it

but it is not perfect, and everything can still be improved