I don't think that's right. The 2025 edition came out in November 2024, which means the 2026 edition is already a little past due. Hopefully it'll be out very soon.
It is almost 2026 and Charlton still hasn't joined the 21st century; they are still operating on an antiquated business model of having to buy what is essentially the same book again and again.
Because of the price, the fact that there are very few major changes year over year and my desire to cut down on clutter in my house, I am finding it increasingly difficult to justify the cost of a new physical Charlton catalogue even every other year.
The physical catalogue keeps increasing in size, not only because of the addition of new Bank of Canada prefixes, but the pages of commercial advertisements at the front.
Personally, I have zero interest in Municipal Scrip and little to no interest in Province of Canada and, other than a few exceptions, Dominion of Canada notes so I rarely look at these pages in the catalogue.
It is undoubtedly more expensive for a company to publish a book with more physical pages, however if collectors are paying for this resource, they are forced to indirectly absorb the cost of adding the advertising pages to the catalogue. It's like paying for a premium TV package with no ads, but then being subjected to them anyway.
Businesses who pay to include their ads in the catalogue may or may not benefit from having them in there; the only party that is guaranteed to profit from this arrangement is the Charlton Press.
With the abundance of information online, recent auction information from reputable auction houses and dealers that inform the pricing in the catalogue is readily available free of charge.
It would be interesting to see if the Charlton Press will consider other revenue streams such as:
1. A digital catalogue option at a lower price point, renewable by subscription on an annual basis.
A digital catalogue would allow for real time updates to pricing tables and it would allow the catalogue to become more dynamic, like the "Trends" section of the Canadian Coin News paper.
2. A loose leaf format where one could purchase the entire catalogue or only the desired sections. Another advantage of a loose leaf format is that new additions and/or corrections could be sent out to subscribers as pdf's and printed at home, or sent from the publisher in hard copy at a slightly higher price point.
Of course, the likelihood of anything like this happening at the Charlton Press is slim to none, but it is worthy of some thought.
Dean
