About twenty years ago, the Scott publishing company began publishing annually their Specialized catalog of worldwide issues to 1940. Originally, this was merely excerpted from their regular five volume US and Worldwide edition, but as the years have gone by, the editors have constantly added additional content each year so that the Scott Specialized has become a pretty indispensable tool for serious philatelists. The value of the catalog is that it easily allows collectors to go beyond the traditional catalog listings in their collecting. For instance, for many countries, the Specialized catalog lists forerunners