One problem with adding more pages and/or stamps to an existing book, is that it does not show up as a new book on the list. It is still still treated as an older book.
If I looked at your book list, I will see "new" besides all your books that I haven't looked at. If I look at your Greece book, that "new" will go away. If you add more stamps/pages to that book, the "new" will not reappear for that book.
I understand what you're saying, but while the approval books are a great thing, there are system limitations that cause some inconveniences with how the books can be compiled by sellers.
Michael you are correct on that, and if you did add more pages than you would have to a) change your description page to add an index so you could jump to a page number and b) promote it in the discussions. For example, I have a book of France in existence. Lets suppose the book has 75 stamps remaining and it has 24 pages. I have 50 Monaco MNH sets. I can't list them on my own, as there are not enough. I could take down the France book, add the Monaco scattered throughout the book on the appropriate price pages, and put it back up changing the title. If I did that, I could not honestly expect a person to page through a 24 page book looking for Monaco. On the other hand, with a larger book, I could add say 10 pages to the back of it for Monaco, keeping the pages separate by price, low to high, change the title and then put in the description Page 1-24 France MNH sets, Page 25-34 Monaco MNH Sets. A person could then jump to page 25 to view Moncao and not have to go through all the pages to hunt down the stamps. As with anything else, the seller has to be creating the books for the buyer's ease of use. Personally if I was looking for say German revenues, and I saw a 24 page book that said "Germany & Revenues" I probably would not page through the book looking for them. I don't think I'm alone in this. Put up a book that says Germany and Revenues and tell me what page they are on, yes, I'll look.
There may be as you say system limitations on this to be sure.
Greg, I do like your idea of "indexing". Not sure how you plan to do it, but my thought is to add the index on each page in the Comment section at the bottom.
Another reason why I wouldn't like the approval books be expandable to 35 pages is that I spend enough buying from each book that goes just to 24 pages!
Greg:
"I have 50 Monaco MNH sets. I can't list them on my own, as there are not enough. : "
Thanks Ralph, though if I put up a book with only 50 sets at 7:00, I might make some enemies as too many people would miss out. I might be 3/4 gone by 7:05. I didn't realize you could get by with so few covers, though my first cover book will be closer to the 100 I think (unless the photos don't come out well. I really don't like smaller books myself, and I now find myself buying material to restock as well as making new.
Greg: with our Approvals limitations of 24 pages, and if one puts 2 covers per page using the SOR templates, you max out at 48 items. So we adopted one of the exceptions to the 100 rule specifically to accommodate the bigger items such as covers, S/S, FDCs, and sets. I think any number above 25-30 would be fine..under...hum...may be pushing it from my viewpoint, and I will look at uniqueness. (and stay flexible)
The other exception is subject to the Moderator review, and is for stamp material (countries or topics, desirability or condition) where 100 items is just too much of a burden, due to rarity or other unique factors. (I definitely will not apply it to a book of Penny Black for example!)
We want to remain as inclusive as possible and encourage these in Approvals, not just confine the Books for the very low cost, or common items. On the other hand, Auctions is a more desirable place for them, so we will not allow books with too few items, especially if they are not grouped in a narrow collectible area.
rrr....
Perhaps I am in the minority but I would like to see larger books than 24 pages and here is why. Personally I don't like mixing and matching countries in a book when you are doing it by price. For example, I have a book that contains 3 different German States, and in almost all cases the three are each represented on every page especially on the lower value pages. By having larger books the stamps could be separated out AND since there is a jump to box on the bottom (I just found this out), you could index the book in the book description so it could be set as say Page 1 Bavaria, Page 16 Baden, Page 29 Wurttemberg etc. If you don't index it, its your loss. The other reason to do this would be to allow the adding of pages. For example, say I have a book of 2 different French Colonies that has more than 50% sold. This creates a problem that I will deal with on another separate thread. If I want to add stamps to this book, for the most part the only way to do it is take it down, reorginize what is there, add another colony to it and put it back up. With larger indexed books, the extra colony could simply be added to the back and a notation made on the cover as to what the page numbers are for this new colony. The title of the book would also be changed. Just a thought I am throwing out there
Greg
re: Bigger Books?
One problem with adding more pages and/or stamps to an existing book, is that it does not show up as a new book on the list. It is still still treated as an older book.
If I looked at your book list, I will see "new" besides all your books that I haven't looked at. If I look at your Greece book, that "new" will go away. If you add more stamps/pages to that book, the "new" will not reappear for that book.
I understand what you're saying, but while the approval books are a great thing, there are system limitations that cause some inconveniences with how the books can be compiled by sellers.
re: Bigger Books?
Michael you are correct on that, and if you did add more pages than you would have to a) change your description page to add an index so you could jump to a page number and b) promote it in the discussions. For example, I have a book of France in existence. Lets suppose the book has 75 stamps remaining and it has 24 pages. I have 50 Monaco MNH sets. I can't list them on my own, as there are not enough. I could take down the France book, add the Monaco scattered throughout the book on the appropriate price pages, and put it back up changing the title. If I did that, I could not honestly expect a person to page through a 24 page book looking for Monaco. On the other hand, with a larger book, I could add say 10 pages to the back of it for Monaco, keeping the pages separate by price, low to high, change the title and then put in the description Page 1-24 France MNH sets, Page 25-34 Monaco MNH Sets. A person could then jump to page 25 to view Moncao and not have to go through all the pages to hunt down the stamps. As with anything else, the seller has to be creating the books for the buyer's ease of use. Personally if I was looking for say German revenues, and I saw a 24 page book that said "Germany & Revenues" I probably would not page through the book looking for them. I don't think I'm alone in this. Put up a book that says Germany and Revenues and tell me what page they are on, yes, I'll look.
There may be as you say system limitations on this to be sure.
re: Bigger Books?
Greg, I do like your idea of "indexing". Not sure how you plan to do it, but my thought is to add the index on each page in the Comment section at the bottom.
Another reason why I wouldn't like the approval books be expandable to 35 pages is that I spend enough buying from each book that goes just to 24 pages!
re: Bigger Books?
Greg:
"I have 50 Monaco MNH sets. I can't list them on my own, as there are not enough. : "
re: Bigger Books?
Thanks Ralph, though if I put up a book with only 50 sets at 7:00, I might make some enemies as too many people would miss out. I might be 3/4 gone by 7:05. I didn't realize you could get by with so few covers, though my first cover book will be closer to the 100 I think (unless the photos don't come out well. I really don't like smaller books myself, and I now find myself buying material to restock as well as making new.
re: Bigger Books?
Greg: with our Approvals limitations of 24 pages, and if one puts 2 covers per page using the SOR templates, you max out at 48 items. So we adopted one of the exceptions to the 100 rule specifically to accommodate the bigger items such as covers, S/S, FDCs, and sets. I think any number above 25-30 would be fine..under...hum...may be pushing it from my viewpoint, and I will look at uniqueness. (and stay flexible)
The other exception is subject to the Moderator review, and is for stamp material (countries or topics, desirability or condition) where 100 items is just too much of a burden, due to rarity or other unique factors. (I definitely will not apply it to a book of Penny Black for example!)
We want to remain as inclusive as possible and encourage these in Approvals, not just confine the Books for the very low cost, or common items. On the other hand, Auctions is a more desirable place for them, so we will not allow books with too few items, especially if they are not grouped in a narrow collectible area.
rrr....