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**Terry Reedy** · September 23rd 13, 08:55 PM posted to rec.collecting.stamps.discuss

On 9/23/2013 1:06 PM, wrote:
Can a 1992 Michel color guide (farbenfuhrer) be used with a 2003
Deutschland Spezial catalog?

My Michel color guide was published in 1992. My current Michel
Deutschland Spezial was published in 2003. (It is the 1840-1945
version.)

In my library is a 1995 Deutschland Spezial, in which colors are
sometimes quite different from those given in the 2003.

Which set of catalog colors should I be using with the 1992 color
guide?

For example, one stamp has three color varieties listed in each
catalog. For the 1995 edition:
a. ultramarine
b. violet blue
c. gray blue

For the same stamp in the 2003 edition:
a. lebhaft violet ultramarine to dark ultramarine
b. (lebhaft) lilac ultramarine
c. (dark) gray ultramarine

'lebhaft' = 'lively', whatever that means.

Any and all help would be appreciated.

I would guess that the 92 color guide would work better with the 95
catalog than the 03 catalog. Lucky you to have all three from one
publisher. (Scott does not make a color guide and is not consistent in
color names within its catalog. I have found both a non-Scott American
color guide and a Gibbons color guide to be somewhat useful with Scott's
catalog, but only somewhat.)

Does your color guide have 'violet blue'? 'lilac ultramarine'? both?,
neither? If only the first, I would strongly suspect that lilac
ultramarine is a new name for violet blue and that you just need to
develop a translation table.

Even without fading and other post-production color changes, colors are
a difficult subject. Inks were once hand mixed so the colors of multiple
mixings tended to vary continuously. Some of the rarest colors may have
been errors that appeared on only one issue, and hence not appear in a
color guide.

Terry