Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
1. Would "French Occupation of Mexico" simply be any of Mexico 26-34? I know there may be a few before and after that I could use, but I prefer a stamp with the likeness of Maximillian.
2. My album has a space for "British Occupation of Togo after WWI", but all I can find is a stamp that I would describe as "Anglo-French Occupation of Togo during and after WWI". Am I missing something?
3. Where can I find "French Legion fighting in Russia with the German Army?"
4. I also can't find two "Ukraine Government-In-Exile" stamps: One for mail from gov't to troops in field and another for a planned invasion which never took place. I suppose I could just wait a few months or years. Looks like it may happen again!
Thanks!
Lars
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Lars,
for number 3, it is NOT Scott-listed, but Lee says it's listed in Michel. There's a nice series of posts on the LVF in our past discussions: http://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=4183#24438
David
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David,
Thanks for the link! I read through it, but it seems the consensus of opinion in that thread was that those stamps were Cinderellas. That assumption may need to be revisited. I am asking about these stamps because they are listed in an album offered online by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. There are 788 spaces for stamps and I have filled 641 so far. Other than the items mentioned above, the only other stamps in that album that might be considered Cinderellas would be New Zealand - King Edward VII Land and New Zealand - Victoria Land since they were never sold to the public at face value.
The most fascinating (for me) was the French occupation of Mexico during the US Civil War. Fascinating, and news to me!
Lars
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Link to the album pages? I am working on a very similar collection and would love to cross reference. In
Also including all occupation and overprints such as Italian agean islands. Is a ton of fun and educational.
Thx
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Lars,
Item #1, I believe your are correct.
Your comment on Item #2 is correct. The stamps are listed under Togo as a British Protectorate, Scott #33-91; French Occupation, Scott #151-192; and French Mandate, Scott #193-331.
Item #3, Dave and Lee are correct about the French Legion stamps not listed in Scott, but listed in Michel. They do not have major status, but rather more like the Scott notes describing the stamps and giving a value.
Your item #4 is noted in Scott following Ukraine Scott #87. It is actually the third set of notes in the block. I did not find these mentioned in Michel.
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Jeredutt3: Here is a link to the album I am starting with:
http://postalmuseum.si.edu/stampgallery/everycountryalbum.html
I will post my comments regarding this album at the end of this post, but I want to address Michael first.
Michael: Thanks for the excellent info. Unfortunately I don't have the info for #4 in my catalog. I'm working with a 1998 set and the last number for Ukraine is 74 before jumping to the year 1992. I may get a scan of that page from APRL. They are very cool about sending stuff like that and as an APS member it's fairly inexpensive.
Back to the Smithsonian album. For the benefit of Jeredutt and anyone else interested, here are my observations so far:
1. Eastern Rumelia is listed in two places - page 17 (Europe) and page 101 (Asia). It is listed with Bulgaria with dates 1885-1920. 1885 coincides with the separation from Turkish rule, so Scott 20-40 would fit the bill, but it seems they got the date 1920 from the following entry in Scott "Eastern Silesia". Looks like a typo to me. The other listing for Eastern Rumelia (Asia, page 101) lists the dates 1880-1885. It seems like 1880-1884 would be better and any Scott #1-19 would fit the bill. Nevertheless, it seems strange that a specific geographic area would change continents like that. I have other questions (e.g. where Thrace fits in) that I haven't investigated enough yet to air publicly, but there is some puzzlement here!
2. On page 26, there is a box for Bosnia & Herzegovina, then boxes for Muslim Govt in Sarajevo, Bosnian Croat Admin in Mostar, and Bosnian Serb Admin in Banja Luca. I don't understand what the box for overall B&H is intended for.
3. I have suggestions for text on pp 83 and 85 regarding Junagarh, Saurashtra, Soruth, and United State of Saurashtra, but I won't detail it here.
4. Page 117 - why include two issues never sold to the public at face value? (NZ - KE VII Land and NZ - Victoria Land).
5. Page 126 - Togo stamp should be FRANCE and Great Britain and should be "Anglo-French occupation of Togo DURING AND after WWI."
6. Page 127 - RUSSIA - Should that be Russian occupation OF TURKEY before WWI?
7. Page 129 - "West New Guinea" should be "West Irian" for clarity.
8. I'm not thrilled about the choice of Yellow ink for South America.
9. The name of the Continent on the right edge should be flipped 180 degrees for normal mounting in an album.
10. All of Russia should be on page 20.
11. Move province of Turkey from page 27 to 26.
12. Page 35 - row 2, column 2, should be "LEAGUE OF NATIONS ADMINISTRATION 1920-1935"?
13. Page 37 - should have "German States - Continued" like on page 38
14. The modern stamp for South Africa should be on page 63 instead of 64.
15. Page 80 - should be "Feudatory States - Continued".
16. Why was LAS BELA left out of Indian States? I haven't even STARTED looking through the catalogs to see what other countries or states that may have been slighted that should be included!
This is fun, but a LOT of work!
Lars
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As a worldwide collector I find these pages very intriguing; and I definitely like the 'continuous infograph' format they have.
That said, they're far from being complete (my personal stamp inventory has 1,657 postal administrations, and I know there are few that are even more detailed). Take for example Finland presented as 1856 to present. As a Finn I can say it should be:
* 1856-1917 for Grand Duchy of Finland (an autonomous state of Russian Empire)
* 1917 to present for Republic of Finland
And on quick looks I can spot similar 'small' lapses occur here and there. I know these are 'splitting hair' differences for many, but often times they relate and show up in different stamp designs, currencies etc.
Just my 5 cents worth,
-k-
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03:09:36am
scb - I like your diligence in dividing eras. I do not collect Finland per se, but as a collector of Russia I include the period of the Grand Duchy of Finland under what I consider Russian occupation.
Kelly
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For me, one of the many enjoyable aspects of Stamporama
is learning how other members classify, arrange and display
their stamps; and how they view the world in which those
stamp-issuing authorities reside. Typically, this thread
is revelatory.
I do believe that even if all the representatives to the
United Nations were dedicated stamp collectors,
political consensus in that institution would be
no less difficult than it is today.
John Derry
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scb - thank you so much for that input! There are, no doubt, many omissions in the pages we are discussing. After reviewing your comment regarding Finland I agree that there should be TWO stamps on that page. I plan to modify pages that don't meet my satisfaction (and this page does not). Thanks again for the tip!
Lars
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Are there other resources for such a collection? I think scb is 100% correct and I wonder how many other omissions there are. I dread combing through 6 volumes of catalogs to find them!
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@Lars,
I was tempted to guide you to my blog's My Collection section, but sadly it's under construction (for 3th year already) and does not show all the data I have on topic.
But then I got an idea to import a 'simplified' and somewhat up-to-date list of postal entities from my development database into here: http://www.stampcollectingblog.com/postal-entities-list.php
As with any data like this, take it with pinch of salt as there are some things that need better categorization (for example the division of Italy needs a somewhat complete overhaul between kingdom, Italian Social Republic, Republic etc). But this should still double the volume of 'countries to collect' up to 1600+ entities 
-k-
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Thanks k!
That's just what I was looking for!!!
Lars
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It´s great to discover the existence of such an album 
I have a similar collection all put into a medium size stock book with one page per letter in the alphabet 
Larsdog, in regards to your question 4:
I guess they´re included because they were actually used (even in very small quantities)
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"I guess they´re included because they were actually used (even in very small quantities"
OK, fair enough! I am also discussing this on k's blog, but when I have some preliminary results I will post them here and there both. So far it's quite clear that there are at least three dozen stamps that need to be added to the Smithsonian pages to approach completeness.
Lars
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I bumped this back up as the topic has found new life.
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Thank you. Michael. When I saw Roy's post earlier, I thought it was Lars who had tackled this already, but I couldn't find the thread. Thanks for resurfacing it.
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I got a new 11x17 scan and print capable printer today, an HP OfficeJet Pro 7740 which was onsale 
, and, in celebration, printed off a copy of the Smithsonian stamp for every country album onto true archival paper as a new album to work on completing. Initially I will work through my collected duplicates to choose items to get a start on the album. I, also, need to find a good solution for a landscape mode binding on the short edge for my two sided printed pages (I only had 100 sheets of the paper available from a test project that I was contemplating a few months ago so printed it two sided, alternating on the short edge.)
The pages look absolutely beautiful printed on the test paper I had purchased from Archival Methods which is true archival quality paper which is 25% cotton content. I had done a couple of test page printings on standard copy paper and on 20lb acid free paper but they felt quite flimsy when mounts were applied whereas the other paper feels much better but is not as thick as the paper that White Ace uses for their albums which is essentially card stock.
Plus I hit a new milestone with my International Parts I-V for 1840-1963 album set of 16.0% complete with an additional pile of new acquisitions from the past six months to sort through to continue filling it towards my current goal of 17.5% complete of the 85,535 stamps that are covered by the albums. Currently the albums contain at least 95% mint or unused stamps and I am targeting replacement of the used stamps in the albums as alternatives show up that are affordable.
Regarding the Smithsonian album, has anyone built an Excel based checklist for the Smithsonian album for keeping track of acquisitions? If no one reports availability I will try to put that together as well. Just have to find a place where it could be posted so that others can download it. I know that both Dilip Limaye's checklist for the International Part I on Jim Jackson's Big Blue 1840-1940 blog and ChrisW's country count lists for the International Part I were both very helpful to me as guides on what can be done for keeping track of my collections.
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Congratulations on the new printer. Wide format printers are very affordable these days.
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Started creation of a checklist in Excel for the Smithsonian every country album and am making good progress with the first 52 of 136 pages done. I'm adding the country, time period, and page number for each entry.
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Hi jbaxter5256,
Any chance you'd share that spreadsheet?
Sounds pretty helpful!
JR
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Yes, I will share it once I complete it. Stopped for lunch and to get the pages bound. Using slightly oversized wire bindings with a frosted front and back plastic page at Office Depot worked out very well. It helped a lot that the woman at Office Depot who installed the binding was a past stamp collector and knew to use an oversize wire ring so that the rings will not be too tight as the pages expand in bulk from adding stamps in mounts.
I, also, had the pages I had printed off for the Big Blue 1840-1940 checklist from Jim Jackson's site bound as well using a clear front cover (over the solid blue page from the checklist) and a navy back page. These also turned out much better than I expected. I had printed them on Permalife 20 lb. acid free bond paper which is not as thick as the archival paper I used for the album but which worked well for this usage.
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I have completed the Excel checklist for the Smithsonian National Postal Museum's Stamp for Every Country Album and should be able to send it to anyone who provides me with an e-mail address through the Stamporama Members Area messages center. If there is any place to post this on the Stamporama site I would appreciate guidance for doing so otherwise I will send it as an attachment by e-mail in response to requests through the Stamporama messages system.
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Here is the cover from the printed and bound album. I am slowly adding countries and now have 30 of 785. 
Thanks to Dave Sheridan for mentioning the FastStone Photo Resizer which let me drop the image size from 410KB to 110KB. I still have to work on centering of objects on the scanner as you can tell but thought this might be useful in getting an idea of how the album looks.
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This is what I have so far for my OFEC collection:
http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/smithsonian.htm
I need to get some new scans because I have changed a page or two already. I plan to post info on what I changed and why. I just got the pages into my standard format recently and haven't brought the notes over.
This is what I was working from:
http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/smithsonianOld.htm
Definitely a work in progress!
Lars
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WOW! Lars, you have made great progress on the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country Album!
I have a long way to go to reach that level of completeness. I really like the way you presented your album pages in the scan.
But this evening I found a drawer with some duplicates (and a few stamps which go beyond my International Parts I-V albums which came in some small purchases with other stamps) and went through the envelopes and am now up to 65 of 785 countries! Now if I can just remember where the other duplicates are stored. 
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I don't go by countries, but by spaces, because there are several other entities in the back that aren't countries. (I have added a few spaces to my pages, so I have more than 785 total). The last count I did was 740/803. The problem you will run into is the areas where fakes and reprints are prevalent. I'm trying to educate myself before tacking each area, but I'm sure I will be hoodwinked on more than one occasion. I feel comfortable spotting US fakes, but I have no idea how the Worldwide folks keep up with everything!
Some of the problem areas I noticed are:
Argentina - Buenos Aires
Argentina - Cordoba
Argentina - Corrientes
Stellaland
India - Jammu and Kashmir, Soruth, and probably others
Italian States - Romagna, Sardinia, Tuscany, and probably others
Germann States - Bergdorf, Lubeck, and probably others
Eastern Rumela
Karelia
Kionga
Spanish Morocco - Tetuan
Griqualand West
Transvaal
Tibet
Annam and Tonkin
Cochin China
Bangkok
New Zealand - King Edward VII Land
New Zealand - Victoria Land
Japan Offices in Korea
Nicaragua - Cabo Gracias a Dios
Venuzuela - Port of Carupano
Far Eastern Republic - General Semenov
Japan - Military personnel
In addition to the challenges with acquiring genuine stamps for the above, there are also a few rather pricey items:
The Canada - British Columbia and Vancouver stamp isn't cheap ($75 CV minimum), but like a dummy I decided to add spaces to include BC alone, Vancouver alone, and then the United Crown Colony, so that's REALLY going to be pricey for me.
Poland Russian Dominion is pricey ($250 CV) and had counterfeits
The biggest expense lies in the early Switzerland stamps:
Zurich $1500 CV
Geneva $1600 CV
Basel $11000 CV
I have some less expensive holes in my US collection I plan to fill before I even think about early Switzerland!
Lars
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I found my first country/issuing entity where I felt including two stamps was necessary. I had a Straits Settlements and a Japanese occupation stamp for Straits Settlements which is not in the occupations section of the album! I, also, located my first India States stamp for the album. I may have to extend to using used stamps for India States as an old album on blank pages has about eight different stamps from different India States in it but I only had one mint stamp in the group. Still thinking about it for now.
This is proving to be a LOT more interesting than I had expected. I got to use a bunch of stamps where I had some mild duplication for some fairly esoteric places. As a minimum I look up each area in Wikipedia and on Jim Jackson's site to get more background on the issuing entity for each new addition to the album. It has also proved useful to do Google searches for some country names where the issuing country name listed on the stamp is not easy to locate in the album due to language changes. This has brought to my attention quite a bit of added information occasionally.
Looks like I need to spend a bit more time perusing the Scott catalog as well. $11,000 for Basel!
That one probably will not happen unless a forgery shows up somewhere.
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JBaxter: Another site that might be of interest is this one:
http://www.dcstamps.com/
which stands for Dead Country Stamps. It's a work in progress by an active collector who I think has done an amazing job researching, documenting and organizing the history and philately of dead countries. One thing I particularly enjoy about his treatment are the "transition charts" he's prepared (again, a work in progress, so some areas are documented and some are not), which are nice flowcharts showing how these entities came and went.
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Thanks for the reference. It is a beautifully done site with much useful content.
And today I added Buenos Aires Scott # 10 to the album! Interestingly it is the lowest cost issue for the issuing entity in mint condition per the Scott 2017 Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps & Covers 1840-1940. This particular copy is unused but without gum. The Buenos Aires Scott #9 in dcstamps.com's page for Buenos Aires was a nice example for comparison.
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I am continuing to locate stashes of duplicates as well as some album leavings where the stamps did not have a place in my International I-V collection (just passed 14,000 stamps in it and still working down a pile of acquisitions from the past year) and now have 143 different unused stamps for the 785 issuing entities included in the Smithsonian album. I had a bunch of new items from the leftovers from the Supreme Global transfer to the International albums and there are still two large binders to check out!
I have found that having the Excel checklist that I created for the Smithsonian album open and using the Find function to type in country/colony names helps me tremendously in locating the correct page in the Smithsonian album since the album is mostly organized by region. Fortunately when I created the checklist I added issuing entity name, any text associated with the entity that was in the album and the page number where it is located.
Again if anyone else would like a copy of the Excel checklist, just send me a message through the Stamporama member messages system with an e-mail address for me to send you a copy of the Excel file. I, also, find that it is fairly easy to work with the Excel document using the Excel application on my iPhone from where I saved it on OneDrive so that I can access it wherever I happen to be. I suspect it would be easy to convert the spreadsheet into either Apple's or Google's equivalent of Excel as well.
Check out Lars' post and web site for his tremendous progress in completing this album as well! He has, also, posted some really nice notes on expanding the coverage of the album. While going through the Minkus Global Supreme album I noted some Colombian States and some occupations issuing entities that could also be added to the Smithsonian album coverage so there is definitely room for expansion if you need a bigger challenge. 
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Finished going through the second volume of my leftovers from my Minkus Supreme Global where the stamps were transferred to Scott International albums and now have 225 of 785 stamp issuing entities covered for the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country album! Plus found two typos in my Excel checklist while using the checklist to search for the relevant page for a country. One where Malawi was misspelled due to a transposition in one of three consecutive entries in the spreadsheet that reference Malawi and one place where the issuing date range had 1874 rather than 1974 for the first date which stands out fairly well. Both have been corrected for any new requests.
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Finished the third volume of my leftovers from the Minkus Supeme Global albums and now have 291 of 785 stamp issuing entities covered so I have made excellent progress based on my expectations for the album and so far have only purchased one stamp for the new album which was previously mentioned in my posts. It was for Buenos Aires. I actually purchased two other items but eventually found that they were in the albums but the countries were found in unexpected non-alphabetical order within the albums!
I have continued to e-mail the Excel checklist to those who provide me with an e-mail address through the Stamporam message system since I have not found a location to post the Excel checklist. Several individuals have started new collections based on the Smithsonian album and I would welcome them posting their progress to this conversation. If anyone wants to create a virtual collection rather than pull items from their regular albums and/or stockbooks they could use the Excel checklist to track items found in their regular world collection as well.
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I have managed to tear in half the only mint stamp I had for Cochin China which I was attempting to remove from my Minkus Supreme Global album to move it to my Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country album. Worse, about two hours later I managed to do the same thing for a Tahiti stamp which was severely stuck down. 
Worse, it wasn't a French Polynesia stamp but a Tahiti overprinted French stamp!
After walking around the building here, I eased my frustration by checking for possible items for Cochin China and Tahiti by checking for listings on eBay, on Hipstamp, and, finally, from a prior recommendation by Antonius Ra, on Stamps2Go where I found suitable replacements and ordered them!! 
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So sad! 
But hopefully a happy ending with your replacements.
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Yes, I am definitely happy with the replacements based on the pictures on the site and looking forward to their arrival. One good thing, I learned a lot about the relationship between Tahiti and French Oceania which I would have likely overlooked otherwise.
While I was looking up information on Tahiti since when I did a search for stamps on hipstamp.com and on ebay.com, French Oceania kept coming up, I found that Tahiti became a part of French Oceania.
I, also, took the time to review the listings for Switzerland in the Smithsonian album and found the entry in the album for Basel. Today, I checked out the Scott catalog entries for Basel and found that, if anything, Lars understated the prices for stamps from Basel. On a whim I checked Basel on hipstamp.com and found two listings, one an "excessively well done" counterfeit at $197 and one genuine stamp at $15,000! Yikes, even the forgeries are very expensive!
This really is proving to be a fun, highly motivating album filling exercise and interesting collection. 
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Well a silver lining to many clouds! Do people really intentionally pay hundreds of dollars for known counterfeits? I can't quite wrap my head around that.
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Found a couple of old Scott Global Award albums and after checking out the stamps in them for the Stamp for Every Country album, I now have 327 of 785 different stamp issuing entities using mint/unused stamps pulled from albums containing duplicates. I did receive the two items I purchased through Stamps2Go.com for Cochin China and Tahiti so to date I have now purchased stamps for three stamp issuing entities for the album, one for Buenos Aires which I am sure I would not have and two to replace two stamps that were damaged trying to remove them from their original album due to being stuck down on the page. I had expected to come up with around two hundred different so actually did much better than expected. The Global Award albums had some stamps from later time periods up into the 1970's which allowed me to fill in several new countries that were previously British colonies.
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Wow, you are nearly at the half-way point, very impressive!
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Attended a local stamp show today and started talking with a dealer about the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country album. He thinks he has recently added a Basel stamp to his inventory which was cut into at the top. I doubt that even with that issue it would be affordable but he will check with his partner to see what price they would need for it as the partner made the acquisition. At least it was a very entertaining discussion and he was very interested in the album and had not heard about its availability from the Smithsonian. He operates a stamps only operation in Portland with a storefront and regularly comes to Seattle area stamp shows as a dealer participant.
I arrived late at the show due to other commitments today but did manage to find one new mint stamp for the album from another dealer with a 10 cent u-pick set of really worn International albums. Also, found 84 other mint stamps for the International I-V albums with an emphasis on stamps from Turkey and Part V so it was a fun visit. With some other items I have purchased on Stamporama recently I am up to 16.5% coverage yet still have about a nine inch stack of other items to go through so continue to hope for 17.5% completion once I complete the stack.
I continue to work on moving some stamps from Great Britain from a stockbook to new Scott album pages using clear Scott mounts as well and am now into the 1970's working from older stamps for QEII up through newer issues. It took me quite a while to locate 29mm vertical mount strips due to them being out of stock at both local stamp dealers plus at Amos Media and Global Stamps in Olympia, WA which slowed me down dramatically on the move as a significant number of stamps seemed to need either 29mm or 31mm tall mounts. 
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I realize this is a bit off topic, but I started my stamp OFEC (one for every country) project at about the same time as a similar coin OFEC. The difference is that I picked a specific time-frame (circa 1980) for coins, so the number of coins needed was only 190 (and that includes a few examples of what didn't fit my criteria). I just completed that collection a few days ago and posted it to a coin forum. I won't post images here, but anyone that is interested can see the final product on the Coin Community forum:
https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=326313
You don't have to log in to read the message board.
Anyway, now that I finally got THAT finished, I'm ready to start spending time on stamps again! And that means picking up my OFEC album again! 740/803 = 92% completion.
Next focus: Those pesky stamps with "BEWARE OF FORGERIES" in the catalog listing!
I plan to add links to helpful pages for these dangerous stamps on my web page for OFEC
http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/smithsonian.htm
so if there are any links you would like to suggest I can add those as well so as other folks walk this path we can provide some guidance.
Lars
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That is a fascinating collection. Thanks for sharing!
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Lars, great job! Why did you pick 1980? I am a little surprised at you estimate of value. I'm assuming they are all lower denomination base metal coins. Seems like you place an average value of about $4. It would seem that most could be had for far less. I guess that gets into what the lowest cost for which a dealer would be willing to handle and inventory a piece. I love the way you have them organized and presented. Thanks for sharing.
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A few questions (hopefully not already answered here and I just missed them)...
1. Are any of the albums available free?
2. Do they cover current countries only, or do they include former countries/colonies/dead countries, etc.
I think this might be something worthwhile to add to the purview of The Holocaust Stamps Project (Canada) as an educational tool for the geo-political evolution of our world as seen through stamps over the past 150+ years (new countries, occupations, dismantled countries, colonization, etc).
Dave has already started something like this, based on the US "Over-Run Countries" issue, with information on each of those countries and the impact of the Holocaust in the devastating effects on their Jewish and "Undesirables" population - and any stamps issued commemorating The Holocaust.
But this would certainly be more expansive and bring a world-view into focus.
Thanks, Craig (& Dave LeMaven)
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Here's the link you can download the entire album, or get it by section. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to get the downloads.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/stampgallery/everycountryalbum.html
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Thanks Michael.
I downloaded the album and did some customization to support both geo-political and Holocaust education through stamps. Hopefully this is compliant with their terms-of-use.
Here's the sample cover page and one country to start (Canada, of course). I am going through my personal collection to pull out duplicates (or stamps from not-collected countries) to begin replacing images with actual relevant stamps.
If anyone has suggestions for improvement, it would be greatly appreciated.
Dave Lemaven (& Craig)
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DUH!!!
And here are the images.
(Dave LeMaven alone - Craig will not accept responsibility for my stupidity...)
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That looks really nice Dave! Don't sell yourself short!
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This looks like a nice start on a custom version. I will be looking forward to your future content additions.
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Yes, I like that as well. Please keep us posted. Personally, I added a space for United Crown Colony of British Columbia and Vancouver Island as well. In 1865 British Columbia issued stamps in pence and Vancouver issued them in cents. (There was a combined issue in 1860, but the colonies were still separate then as far as I can determine, so I'm not sure of the purpose of that stamp). The two colonies combined in 1866. The stamps of the combined colonies would be the British Columbia stamps with overprints in cents (1867-69). The combined colony joined the Confederation in 1871.
Lars
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Continuing to make progress with the Smithsonian album with new additions bringing my total to 340 of 785 different stamp issuing entities now present in the album.
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On a related note, I recently purchased a 1935 edition of Scott's Modern Postage Stamp album and after cleaning it up by removing some old stamps in the album (fortunately the old stamps were all hinged with really nice quality hinges which peeled off perfectly from the album pages so the album now looks almost brand new!) decided to make an Excel check list of all of the stamp issuing entities referenced in the album. Imaging my surprise at discovering there were 395 different stamp issuing entities in this quite compact (less than 1 inch (24mm) thick) album. In particular I noted that a lot of Italian related forerunners are in this album which are not part of the Smithsonian album. Similarly there are some Colombia forerunners as well.
Now I need to do the same thing for the five volumes of the Scott International that I have for comparison.
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Just finished checking out the number of different countries represent by the Scott International albums by comparison to the 1935 edition of the Scott Modern Postage Album and came up with the following totals:
International Part 1A1 through 1B2 - 370 stamp issuing entities not including Indian States
International Part 2 - 246
International Part 3 - 224
International Part 4 - 207
International Part 5 - 215
These totals are for new pages from Scott/Amos Media. I continue to be amazed by the number of stamp issuing entities included by the original 1935 Scott Modern Postage Album which sparked this review.
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Continuing to locate stamps for the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country album and have now reached 373 of 785 stamp issuing entities.
Also, had an opportunity to go through a Minkus Master Global Stamp Album, most likely copyright 1960, since it doesn't have Minkus numbers in the spaces and the listings go through 1958 or 1959 except for one or two countries which mention an ending date of 1960. (No title page or United States pages are present for a definite answer. ) It had spaces for 549 different stamp issuing entities which would make for quite a challenge. For more information on the Minkus Master Global Album see Jim Jackson's really nice article in the July 2018 section of the http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/ web site where he discusses several different printings for the album and its suitability as a single volume world wide album.
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"373 of 785 stamp issuing entities"
You're only 20 stamps short of half way there!!!
I hope to find time to look through my extras when it turns cool and dark and I can't golf. Right now stamps are on the back burner for me!
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Enjoy the outdoors while it is cooperating. Found 5 more this evening going through an old stock book that was in the box with the Minkus Master Global Album so now at 378 of 785.
Looked at a Trindad stamp three times before I realized it wasn't Trinidad and Tobago so got to add it!
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I am curious about one thing. Is there a system to what stamp you select to put for each country? Do you go as far back to number 1 (ideally) as possible, or do you select for looks, or strictly M/MNH, or do you pick something topical or indicative of something in particular like first president/king/ruler/hero picture or ???
This is an interesting idea to motivate younger stamp collectors, and teach them a lot about geography, history etc... I see a lot of customization potential, but it may be hard to fill all spots.
Wondering if I should get into it too? 
At the risk of being thrown out of the house, I will delay a decision. Maybe after getting rid of my 26 Volume Europa (and still a few holes?) which would clear up some shelf space.
Great information to all the pioneers here.
rrr...
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"I am curious about one thing. Is there a system to what stamp you select to put for each country?"
You get to select your own system, but you probably already knew that deep down. In some cases you don't have a lot of choices, like the India Feudatory States, so you may have to use what you can find. In other cases there are prevalent counterfeits so it may be wise to avoid certain ranges of catalog numbers.
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In general, I choose whatever shows up. If multiple issues arrive simultaneously, I tend to pick stamps that I consider to be of most interest to me personally or occasionally the less expensive stamp if I am purchasing them from a dealer's pick book. My primary goal with this collection is to get an uncancelled stamp from each country. In some cases I will accept a mint no gum stamp but I prefer a clean mint stamp with gum. I don't care about non-hinged for this collection at all.
The goal for me is to fill the stamp issuing entities with relatively minimal cost. It has proven amazing just how difficult it is to find suitable entities at all so trying to find #1's or similar seems inappropriate. I am finding that more people are actually interested in seeing the album just because it covers so many countries and is fun to look at as a quick review whereas most non-collectors have little interest in more advanced albums.
I may even try doing a second version with all used stamps (although I will probably not include the non-country stamps in the last sections in that album, i.e. no military police action, occupied nations, etc., if I do it).
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Hi everyone,
I printed out the album as well. I really don't like the fact that it is landscape format, and I am seriously considering converting it to regular pages (lots of work there, though the checklist helps-thanks Jerrel), or, in the alternative, using a stock book or stock pages, which has the added bonus of being more flexible.
Is anyone else doing the stock page / stock book method? Don from Stampsmarter has some wonderful stock book label templates which could be adapted for this purpose.
Anyway, right now, I'm in the "choose a presentation method" that I can live with part of the process.
John
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I like the idea of freedom in this type of collection. You are free to pick the stamps as they come along, and swap them out at will. It’s good to be king!
For my own, I’m more of a cover guy so I believe I’d go that way with “A Cover From Every Country”.
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I started this project after Jerrel provided his spreadsheet listing all the countries in the album. It became easy to track what has been put into the album. Thank you for all the hard work on that listing.
I initially was going to do this as a landscape project but was not happy with that layout, primarily for working with the pages. I decided to go with the standard 8.5x11 3 ring binder with holes punched at the top of each page. See the attached sample page. I am glad I made that decision. The pages are laid out to work with either setup and still look good.
I am not a world wide collector but like the idea this album offers. I am starting with a 1933 Scott Modern Postage Stamp Album from my Dad's collection and my 1954 New Ambassador Postage Stamps of the World album. I am picking from these albums; my favorite or best quality or only stamp that I have for each country to put into the Stamp for Every Country album.
So far I only have inserted 37 stamps. I have gone down a dozen rabbit holes of interest as I find countries I never new existed or forgot existed since I have the stamp for that country. For me, reading an article about the country or the stamp on Wikipedia or Scott's catalogs has been a bonus from starting this collection. I will end up moving several hundred stamps from the two old albums but it will be an enlightening around the world journey of old and new interests. I was so glad to find this album on the discussion boards. It rejuvenated my collecting interests for world wide stamps (while limiting the volume of stamps required).
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KMARS,
I did the same as you, using a three hole punch and placing the pages into a standard 3-ring binder.
What I also did was print on 67 lb (147 g/m*2) card stock and use a 3/8" corner cutter (available at any scrapbooker's supply) to emulate the thickness and appearance of my White Ace pages from my other albums.
What's great about this project is that it is so easy to personalize!
Lars
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Those pages look great!
I like to use top-loading mounts (Hawid, etc.) and I don't suppose there is any way to do the landscape method that makes any sense with that kind of mount.
John
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Larsdog,
I like the idea of the corner cutter. I am going to buy one. I use White Ace Pages for my USA collection so that look would be consistent and it seems to make the pages easier to turn.
I printed on 8.5x11 Springhill Opaque Offset Digital Colors Cream 70lb 104g/m2. It took Epson Claria Inks nicely.
I am using Showgard mounts and writing in pencil the Scott # underneath the bottom fold. It lifts without any pressure on the stamp.
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Hey Lars, speaking of "personalize", wouldn't be SO kuhl to marry a topical collection to this one?!?
Like, maybe, monarchs on stamps (a political theme)?
Or, local geology/landforms (an earth sciences theme). That seems to be a pretty common topic among countries...
-Paul
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I just got a copy of the International Postage Stamp Album - Junior Edition from Scott with a copyright of 1924 and counted and prepared an Excel list of the different countries present in the album to compare with the Modern Stamp Album copyright 1935 which I mentioned earlier. This one has coverage for 388 different stamp issuing entitites (not counting 37 Indian States, 9 Italian Offices in the Turkish Empire entities with unique surcharges, and 13 different Italian occupied Aegean Islands with unique surcharges which would yield a total of 447 different entities). I differentiated the called out areas as there is a simple linear list of the issuing entities at the top of a blank page in the album for these issues rather than a traditional section with suggested stamps and/or empty spaces.
This is album is about an inch and a half in thickness with a much roomier layout than the Modern Stamp Album. It claims to offer spaces for roughly 18,000 stamps. By comparison the Modern Stamp Album after a detailed review contains 5031 illustrations and 13208 total spaces for stamps in a much more compact layout. Both albums are printed on both sides of a page and have countries that are mixed on a page, i.e. new countries don't start on a new page.
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"Like, maybe, monarchs on stamps (a political theme)?"
I like that! And if you can't find a stamp with royalty, you can always opt for the butterfly!
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" I differentiated the called out areas"
I would love to do a deep dive on this. Most of my spare time for stamps is when the weather gets colder, so I can't offer too much right now. (I still haven't had time to go through my duplicates to see if I have anything useful for you). Perhaps we can start slow and just tackle North America right now. We can start with the Smithsonian pages and then country by country talk about what we considered changing, or actually did change.
I will lead off with page 1: CANADA
BEFORE:
AFTER:
I opted to have a stamp for the British Province prior to 1868 and another from the Dominion after 1868. I also elected to add a space for the United Crown Colony of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. Does anyone else have any inputs on this?
Perhaps our friends in the Great White North can weigh in on Canada?
My next departure is page 6, so once we move beyond Canada, if anyone has any inputs on pages 2-5, please speak up.
Lars
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08:42:53am
"I opted to have a stamp for the British Province prior to 1868 and another from the Dominion after 1868....Does anyone else have any inputs on this?"
Only that we celebrate our birthday as July 1, 1867 (not 1868).
The first new issue of stamps appeared in 1868 (the Large Queens), so it's your choice whether your dates reflect those of the stamp issues, or the political division. Personally, I would go with the political division.
Roy
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08:48:51am
Personally, I would rearrange the order of the forerunner provinces to group Province of Canada (which was modern day Ontario and Quebec together), PEI, NS and NB together, reflecting that these provinces together became Canada in 1867.
BC joined in 1870 (after the railway link was completed) and Newfoundland in 1949.
Roy
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I've just had a look at the catalogue and while I think the idea is interesting I'm not keen on the layout.
However, I guess any layout and choice of countries would be open to criticism.
I'll limit my comments to Crete.
I'd expect to see:
A British Administration 1898-99
B Russian Administration 1899
C Crete 1900-1913
D French Post Offices 1902-14
E Italian Post Offices 1900-14
F German Feldpost 1944
I only see:
- Crete 1898-1913 ... I would split out both the British and Russian issues
- Austrian Post Offices in Crete ... although these French currency stamps were not issued specifically for Crete (despite Scott listing them under this name).
The other foreign post offices in the Turkish Empire could be tidied up too.
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Just curious, is this your main collecting interest? Or do you all have other collecting areas, making this a sideline collection?
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"so it's your choice whether your dates reflect those of the stamp issues, or the political division"
Unfortunately I don't have a great deal of choice unless I want to reprint a lot more pages. It looks like the dates on the pages are issue dates.
"Personally, I would rearrange the order of the forerunner provinces"
Not a bad idea. The order I used was essentially the order given with minimal changes, but as long as I'm printing a new page anyway, that may be a better way of doing it.
"Just curious, is this your main collecting interest?"
This is not only a sideline, but a secondary sideline. My primary is US. Secondary is a Topical collection. This is just for fun, for me.
"I'll limit my comments to Crete"
We will need to revisit that when we get to Crete. Any other comments on Canada or pages 2-5 of North America?
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I have a number of other collections in progress but started on this as a sideline to use some of my duplicates and just see how far I could get with it. In the process I found it to be an amazingly motivating experience which has significantly broadened my exposure to the history of different countries and their postal emissions. All, so far, at a relatively minimal expense.
I have found it to be interesting to a number of people whom I have run into who are not stamp collectors so it has been an interesting social experiment as well. That I can point others to the Smithsonian site for a copy of the album if they want to get involved themselves is quite useful as well.
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I agree. It's pretty darn cool! And the perfect album to show a non-collector.
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"Personally, I would rearrange the order of the forerunner provinces to group Province of Canada (which was modern day Ontario and Quebec together), PEI, NS and NB together, reflecting that these provinces together became Canada in 1867.
BC joined in 1870 (after the railway link was completed) and Newfoundland in 1949.
Roy"
Roy,
What I can find on www.canada.ca shows PEI joining AFTER BC. I could sort by order they joined (BP + NB + NS; BC; PEI; NFL) or earliest issue (BP + NB + NS; NFL; PEI; BC + VI; UCC) or I could just go West to East (UCC, VI, BC, BP, NB, NS, PEI, NFL). I'm leaning toward option 1 as you suggested. Any comments?
Also, while we are on Canada, I am assuming that the Canadian Provinces listings before Canada in the Scott Catalog for "British Columbia and Vancouver Island", numbering 1-18 are as follows:
#1-2 ???
#3-6 Vancouver Island denominated in cents
#7 British Columbia denominated in pence
#8-18 United Crown Colony (cents overprint on pence impressions)
Then in the main listings under Canada, 1-20 would be the Province (Ontario and Quebec) and 21+ would be the Dominion (initially ON, QC, NB, NS). Sound right?
Comments?
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08:10:25am
"What I can find on www.canada.ca shows PEI joining AFTER BC."
You are correct. My fingers were faster than my brain.
PEI joined Canada on July 1, 1873.
BC&VI #2 (#1 was never used) was issued for use in both of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, which were separate colonies until they were combined on November 19, 1866.
The rest of your list sounds correct.
Roy
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"BC&VI #2 (#1 was never used) was issued for use in both of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, which were separate colonies until they were combined on November 19, 1866."
Thanks, Roy!
The order of precedent countries is typically done with the most recent at top left, so I ordered the stamps with the original 4 provinces (represented by 3 stamps) at bottom right and then BC+VI, PEI and finally NL top left.
Regardless of how everyone feels about including a stamp for the United Crown Colony of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, it seems that the Smithsonian page for Canada leaves a hole for pre-Dominion Ontario and Quebec (Canada #1-20) that is hard to ignore. Here is my new page for Canada:
I could see collapsing BC and VI into a single entity, especially if you want to keep the cost down, but leaving out pre-Dominion Ontario and Quebec (Canada #1-20) seems to be an unacceptable omission.
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Things aren't so complicated with the rest of the pages.
Here are pages 2-6:
(page deleted since we have moved on from this continent)
The only thing I added to page 2 was a note to see page 125 for French Occupation of Mexico. If the US includes a CSA stamp, it makes sense to include a Maximilian stamp for Mexico, but if it's already on page 125, a note will suffice.
(pages deleted since we have moved on from this continent)
What I am considering changing on this page is Cuba. It seems that two additions are in order:
1. Spanish West Indies (Cuba 1-3,9-14,17-21,32-34,35A-37,39-41,43-45,47-49,51-53, and 55-57 were also used in Puerto Rico). I propose adding an example before the Spanish Dominion issue for Cuba and adding a note to Puerto Rico.
2. I am also inclined to divide modern Cuba into 1902-1958 (pre-Revolution) and 1959 to present. I like the idea of a similar treatment for Nazi Germany, but does that open a Pandora's Box in places like Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, etc.?
I would like to hear what other opinions might be before proceeding.
If you have any comments about the first half of North America (pages 1-6), please chime in no matter what your opinion or concern might be. The rest of North America (pages 7-12) and all of South America (pages 13-16) should be fairly straightforward.
Lars
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Lars,
This effort of yours is important, and I appreciate it.
The problem as I see it is that if you get as little as three people together,
you will have three different opinions as to what should be included, or shouldn't.
Understanding, at the same time, what to include or not include is a matter of personal preference.
Because of this, I've just about concluded that the stock book/stock page method
is right for me. It is easier to make changes, and move stuff around. Changing labels
for stock pages/books is a trivial matter. Not so much for the printed pages!
This project is not as easy as it looks, and I appreciate the knowledge and ideas
from the advanced "stamp from every country" collectors.
John
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Yes, I agree that using stock books/pages are a good option for this kind of collection. Here's an example of how one could label stock pages:
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Very nice example of using stock pages for a stamp from every country collection showing an extension to sets of stamps and/or extension into a possible full album, so should it be labeled as a Collection for Every Country?
This really does look like a good approach especially where you want to build a general encompassing collection with areas of specialist intensity due to interest or availability of material yet still organized as a single collection. I must admit personally that I fit the album filling profile much better as it tends to provide some limits to my collection which might otherwise easily get out of hand. Of course, currently I do have about nine different albums in various stages of process with three more albums on order so limitations are easily bypassed.
And, yes, the albums do overlap their coverage and leaving spaces empty since I know I have the needed items in another album isn't working for me. So, I am duplicating content in that my International album in particular has duplicates from my country collections for USA, France, Great Britain, and Canada in particular. Plus I even have two International collections, one that has essentially all mint stamps and covers parts I-V and one that has a mixture of mint and used stamps and is part I only. And so it goes!
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No, not really meant to be an example of how to do a "Stamp from Every Country" collection, but more of an example of how to label stock pages.
Here's an example of how I started a Number One's collection early in the year...could be adapted for a Stamp from Every Country collection.
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"The problem as I see it is that if you get as little as three people together,
you will have three different opinions as to what should be included, or shouldn't."
While that is true, some opinions are likely more authoritative. If Roy provides guidance regarding Canada, I'm going to listen. If Keijo makes a suggestion about Finland (and he already has), I will pay more attention to that.
"Understanding, at the same time, what to include or not include is a matter of personal preference."
Yes, and that's why I take all inputs, make a decision for my own collection, and move on.
Whether the stamps are mounted on album pages or placed on stock pages is a matter of personal preference but does not impact what should be included. Using the Smithsonian pages as a starting point, I don't see it as an impossible challenge to have a dialog about some of the glaring errors. For me, the omission of the pre-Dominion stamp of Ontario and Quebec is a hole. British Columbia / Vancouver Island is more of a matter of preference.
Going through the pages one section at a time allows everyone a chance to make their opinion known if they see a deficiency. Then each person can make their own decision as to what to include and how to store them.
Lars
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I have stamps for Central Lithuania but did not see it included in the Stamps for Every Country Album. I modified page 18 to include it in Poland. This seems to make sense to me but I would appreciate input from those better informed to determine if there is a better place for this country. Thanks for any input. My modified draft page is shown below.
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KMARS,
That's a great one to discuss! Let me get us up to page 18 first...
If there are no further comments on pages 1-6, here are pages 7-17.
The only notes I had were:
1. Page 10 has one stamp for St. Kitts 1903-1980. I plan to split that into 1903-1966 and 1967-1980 since Britain granted Autonomy in 1967 but not independence for Anguilla from St. Kitts and Nevis. Anguilla unilaterally declared independence in 1967 and started issuing stamps, but the stamps issued from 1967-1980 for St Kitts-Nevis all included Anguilla. Britain didn't grant Anguilla independent status from St. Kitts and Nevis until 1980.
2. Page 16 I added another spot for Suriname since it was an integral part of the Kingdom on Netherlands from 1954-1975 and an Independent country since 1975. (I also changed the color of South America since the yellow in the original document was hard to read).
3. Page 17 - Eastern Rumelia 1885-1920 is listed here for Bulgaria, but Eastern Rumelia 1880-1885 is also listed on page 101 under Turkey. Does anyone know the significance of this? This is what I posted 4-1/2 years ago when I first started working on this:
"Eastern Rumelia is listed in two places - page 17 (Europe) and page 101 (Asia). It is listed with Bulgaria with dates 1885-1920. 1885 coincides with the separation from Turkish rule, so Scott 20-40 would fit the bill, but it seems they got the date 1920 from the following entry in Scott "Eastern Silesia". Looks like a typo to me. The other listing for Eastern Rumelia (Asia, page 101) lists the dates 1880-1885. It seems like 1880-1884 would be better and any Scott #1-19 would fit the bill. "
I have yet to revisit the issue since I just now finished with North and South America. (Yes, it's taken that long).
So please make any comments you wish about pages 7-18. (Refer to KMARS post for the proposed addition to page 18). Hopefully we can close discussion of North and South America and start looking at what comments there are for Europe. I can edit my posts to delete the pages for North and South America once everyone has had a chance to comment. Not everyone has a printed copy of the pages so I posted images of what we are talking about. Page 17 (see #3 above) and Page 18 from KMARS are the first to consider for Europe.
(pages deleted since we have moved on from this continent)
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I don't see any further comments for the Americas, so on to Europe!
There are two pages under consideration right now:
Page 17 Eastern Rumelia
Page 18 Central Lithuania
Obviously if anyone has any inputs about anything else on these pages, now is the time to speak up!
Page 17 Eastern Rumelia - I still don't understand this one. The album page has EASTERN RUMELIA 1885-1920, and another entry (on page 101 for Turkey) for EASTERN RUMELIA 1880-1885. Scott lists Eastern Rumelia 1880-1885. All I can figure is that Eastern Rumelia 1-19 is intended for page 101, Eastern Rumelia 20-40 is intended for page 17, and the entry for Eastern Rumelia on page 17 should read 1885, not 1885-1920. If that is correct, all of the Eastern Rumelia stamps for page 17 (Scott 20-40) are overprints and, per Scott, "Counterfeits of all overprints are plentiful".
If anyone reads that differently, please chime in.
Page 18 Central Lithuania - KMARS correctly identified this deficiency and the proper placement under Poland. The only thing I will do differently is flip the order of presentation of precedent countries to keep with the established standard.
If there are any comments about ANYTHING on pages 17-18, please make your opinion known!
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Larsdog,
Below is Page 18 modified per your suggestion for Central Lithuania as a precedent country to Poland. Any other comments would be appreciated.
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KMARS,
That looks perfect! If you can send it to me via email in PNG or JPEG format it would save me the trouble of creating it for myself.
If anyone has any comments, speak up, but if not we're on to pages 19-21 to cover the remainder of Eastern Europe:
I am fairly ignorant when it comes to Eastern European history, but does it strike anyone else as odd that USSR and RSFSR are precedent countries of Romania instead of Russia?
We seem to be finished with North and South America. Any comments on Eastern Europe (pages 17-21)?
I need to find my keijo notes for Eastern Europe!
Lars
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Something's really fishy about Romania. Moldova and Wallachia, yes. But Tannu Tuva is in Siberia, and the Transcaucasian Republic was made up of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. None of those have any connection to Romania. The Russian issues don't seem to have any basis at all.
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"Something's really fishy about Romania. Moldova and Wallachia, yes. But Tannu Tuva is in Siberia, and the Transcaucasian Republic was made up of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. None of those have any connection to Romania. The Russian issues don't seem to have any basis at all. "
I'm glad I'm not alone on this!
It sure looks like the stamps SHOULD be organized as follows:
Page 19
ROMANIA
Precedent countries - MOLDAVIA-WALACHIA
MOLDAVIA
RUSSIA 1922-PRESENT (start on bottom half of PAGE 19)
Precedent countries - USSR 1923-1991
TANNU TUVA 1926-1943
RSFSR 1918-1923
Page 20
RUSSIA (continued)
Precedent countries - KARELIA 1922
SIBERIA 1919-1922
NORTH INGERMANLAND 1920
FAR EASTERN REPUBLIC 1920
PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT - Civil War 1917
EMPIRE 1857-1917
Page 21 - erase Russia entry at top left on this page.
That covers everything except Transcaucasian Federated Republics, but that really belongs in Asia, so I propose moving it to page 95 as a Precedent country to Armenia and adding a note to Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Comments?
Lars
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09:22:49pm
Anyone seriously interested in this topic of the history of stamp issuers should seek out this book:
For example, here are the pages for Romania and other parts of the Balkans:
Now the best news!
The book is avaialble from Abe Books online for US$6-7 postage included!
Here is a link (note there are multiple editions. Mine is 1989)
World History Stamp Atlas on Abe Books
Roy
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"The book is avaialble from Abe Books online for US$6-7 postage included!"
This is GREAT!!! Just what we needed! Order placed. I look forward to this addition to my library. It's also available on Amazon for the same price.
Lars
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You guys are awesome!
I just grabbed mine (1989 hardcover) from Amazon for less than $6 (used some rewards points), including shipping... I also saw one on eBay for $5.50 postpaid in USA.
This will be a great edition to the library.
John
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Thanks for the tip, looks like a great book! Just ordered mine for under $6 including shipping.
I'm thinking about starting a "Number one from every country" collection
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While I am waiting for my book to arrive, I will post the final Eastern Europe pages that I made. There is little of substance other than one dubious addition, one typo corrected, one stamp moved to Asia, and making Russia more organized. I will leave these posted for a few days and then delete them to prevent clutter in this thread. All of these images and additional comments can be found here: http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/smithsonian.htm
Of course, I will review what we have already covered so far after I get the book.
Lars
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I ordered a copy of the book as well. It looks very interesting.
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Brilliant Roy!
I have spent countless hours going back and forth between Wikipedia and Scotts trying to put together the same thing for the countries and areas Im interested in, specifically the significant changes around the two world wars.
And the breakup of the British Empire.
I have compiled a sadly small number of pages over the past year, at a "billable hours equivalent cost" of at least 200 times the cost of this book. Who says age makes you wiser...
Question: do they accept PayPal?
Many thanks, Dave.
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10:54:17am
"Question: do they accept PayPal?"
I presume you mean Abe Books, since others mentioned the book on both eBay and Amazon.
No, I don't think so. I have always paid by credit card. Fast and easy, never a problem.
Roy
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I too bought mine at Abe Books, no PayPal, just used a credit card.
Very good service so far, even got an e-mail from them saying that my delivery may be delayed because of Hurricane Florence.
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I built an online database with stamp issuing country successors/predecessors info and was aspiring to add vintage maps. I was hoping to get some help on this project but when that failed to come through the database has just sat there unfinished. I got the basic data entered and a few maps...
http://www.stampsmarter.com/stampIssuing/Bycountry2.aspx
Don
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"Precedent country to Armenia and adding a note to Azerbaijan and Georgia. "
Don't forget Batum as a predecessor to Georgia. It had its own stamps issued during the 1919-20 British occupation.
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Don,
Thanks for posting the link. That is very useful. I have a similar list Keijo put together several years ago but is no longer available without subscription. I like having multiple sources to look over each country.
I have a question about your list, though. The next area we have to cover is Northern Europe and the one country where I had a previous suggestion on from more than one person is Finland. The suggestion is to split Finland between the Grand Duchy (1856-1917) and the Republic (1917-Present). I only see the Duchy on your list.
As I was posting the question I found my answer when I went back to your listing one more time, so in case anyone else out there is dense like me, if you pull up a country like Finland on Don's list, and select Finland as the Sub-country, if there are subsequent entries for that country, there is a NEXT button at the top of the listing. I missed that the first couple of times through.
Thanks for sharing your info! Great info, Don!
Since we have that out of the way, splitting Finland is the only suggestion I have for Northern Europe. Any other inputs?
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"Don't forget Batum as a predecessor to Georgia. It had its own stamps issued during the 1919-20 British occupation."
dollhaus, I added a note to Georgia to bring this up when we get there. Georgia is on page 96.
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I have question relating back to Central Lithuania.
Are you looking to group territories under the current country?
If so, I'd suggest that Central Lithuania be listed under Lithuania.
This was basically the unofficial Polish Occupation of Vilnius/Wilno and the area around it.
It was subsequently annexed by Poland and then returned to Lithuania by the USSR, with small parts given to Belarus.
If the basic criterion is a geographical one, I'd expect to see occupation and foreign post office issues included in the relevant geographic area rather than grouped under the occupying country or the country administering the foreign post office.
This is the way I organise my collection so I am biased!
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"Are you looking to group territories under the current country?"
Nigel,
That would seem to be most logical to me as well, but it doesn't appear that the Smithsonian pages are following a strictly geographic theme. I am trying to remain as consistent as I can with the theme presented by the Smithsonian pages, but I could see organizing them as you suggest. I just don't want to create any more new pages than I have to. For those collecting in stock books, that is a very viable and attractive option!
To your point about the Smithsonian pages not having a strictly geographic theme, I think that is clear from Eastern Rumelia appearing as a precedent country in both Bulgaria and Turkey. It appears that their theme is a geo-political one: Eastern Rumelia was considered a part of Turkey when the 1880-1884 stamps were issued, but was considered a part of Bulgaria when the 1885 stamps were issued. If one chose to do so, the Eastern Rumelia stamp or stamps could be listed only under Bulgaria to adopt a modern geographic theme. Like I said, that certainly sounds reasonable to me.
I think the geo-political instead of strictly geographic approach is why the Smithsonian pages omitted the British Province of Canada. To me, the British Province of Canada (Ontario and Quebec) joined with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to create the Dominion of Canada, then other provinces joined later. To the Smithsonian pages, the British Province of Canada WAS Canada, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia just joined later. Perhaps Roy can weigh in and tell us if that's the way he interprets it.
Right now I'm just trying to go through the pages and highlight anything that anyone suggests needs consideration. It's up to each individual to decide which, if any, need to be added to their version. I'm posting what I came up with because I am offering the files to create the updated pages for any page someone may wish to use. Others are welcome to post alternate versions using different criteria. KMARS is creating some pages on his own as well that he was kind enough to share with me.
Who knows, I may eventually decide that a purely geographic approach is the only way to go, and I may ultimately decide to remove Central Lithuania from my album. For now I am committed to my other additions, but I admit Central Lithuania is dicey since it was a Puppet State and only in existence for two or three years. Personally, I don't plan to add all of those WWI and WWII occupation stamps. Others may have a different take on occupation stamps.
And some folks may think the Smithsonian pages are perfect the way they are, and that's OK, too.
BTW, Nigel, you made specific observations about Crete earlier, and we will be covering Southern Europe next, so I will repost you comments. Feel free to elaborate when we get there. Waiting for feedback on Northern Europe, especially Finland.
Lars
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Re Nordic countries... This is how I do them with my collection
Denmark:
Denmark (1851-)
Faroe Islands (1919)
British Occupation of Faroe Islands (1940-1941)
Faroe Islands (1975-)
Greenland KHG (1905-1937)
Greenland Thule (1935-1936)
Greenland (1938- )
Iceland (1873-)
Finland:
Grand Duchy of Finland (1856-1917)
Finland (1917-)
Aland Islands (1984-)
Aunus (1919)
Eastern Karelia (1941-43)
Norway (1855-)
Sweden (1855-)
And of course one could dive in way deeper with various local posts etc (which are plenty).
-k-
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scb,
I like your list. I would have said much the same.
I'm intrigued by the way you have split the Greenland stamps before and after 1935.
What does "KHG" stand for, relating to the period of the polar bear parcel stamps?
I would have guessed that you might have split Greenland in 1953 when the colony became part of the Danish realm (but I see no need to do this).
Perhaps you could include Slesvig/Schleswig?
This brings up the question of plebiscite issues such as Marienwerder etc.
I don't want to complicate things much further but in my own collection I like to include pages for stamps of another country used in that country.
For example, I start my Poland pages with pages of "Russia used in Poland" (as I don't have Poland #1!) and I do the same for "Russia used in Finland" for the appropriate period in my Finland album.
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Larsdog,
Sorry to go back to Russia before it disappears over the horizon...
I appreciate you don't want to include all the transient Russian Civil War armies and territories but I'd suggest including South Russia along with Siberia and the Far Eastern Republic.
If you wanted to drop one to keep the Russia area neat I would drop the Provisional Government.
I have a soft spot for Wenden so that's another candidate (here or under Latvia).
Even though it was a local issue it is still listed in most general catalogues.
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I'm glad Keijo (scb) shared his list. I started working from that almost 5 years ago, but it's no longer unrestricted so I couldn't share it myself. It's his work and he put a lot of effort into it. A very valuable resource!
We can use his list for Nordic countries as an example:
Faroe Islands is only one listing in Smithsonian. I don't see a political difference between Faroe Islands 1919 and now, so Smithsonian would not typically make that break. Regarding the British Administration stamps of 1940-41, there is a section in the back of the Smithsonian album (BOB) for examples of Offices Abroad, Local stamps, Occupations, and Military stamps. The British Administration stamps would be in the BOB section if they are included. As a result I did not personally alter Faroe Islands, but someone else may deem otherwise.
Greenland is only one listing in Smithsonian. Keojo's Greenland KHG (I think it's KGH) were privately produced local stamps, so they would be BOB. Thule would fall under military stamps and be BOB. As Nigel suggested, there is a possibility of making a split at 1953.
I agree that Finland should be split at 1917.
Aland Islands - Local Stamp (BOB)
Aunus - Occupation (BOB)
Eastern Karelia - Occupation (BOB)
That was my thinking. Other opinions will undoubtedly vary, but it's still useful for different opinions to weigh in, and I do wonder what the difference is between Faroe and Aland.
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"I appreciate you don't want to include all the transient Russian Civil War armies and territories but I'd suggest including South Russia along with Siberia and the Far Eastern Republic."
South Russia would be considered a Military stamp and thus BOB. One of the selected military stamps is the General Semenov stamp. I suppost one could replace that with a General Denikin stamp if desired!
Wenden, as a local issue, would be BOB. That starts on page 119.
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are there any stamp issuing entities that you already know are just simply Out Of Reach based upon price?
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"are there any stamp issuing entities that you already know are just simply Out Of Reach based upon price?"
The biggest expense lies in the early Switzerland stamps:
Zurich $1500 CV
Geneva $1600 CV
Basel $11000 CV
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What would be some of the newest stamp issuing entities? I'm thinking the countries formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia. It would be nice to have all engraved stamps but I dont think its possible. I would want to avoid having a classic 19th century stamp right next to a Disney stsmp.
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One possibility for the Switzerland items is to include some revenue stamps as placeholders to keep the empty spaces from getting to you. Each of the areas has specific inexpensive revenue stamps I believe. I haven't done it yet but the stamps keep coming up when I do searches for the issuing entity.
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"What would be some of the newest stamp issuing entities? I'm thinking the countries formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia. "
You can look through the entire album to see what the most recent entry is. There are several post-USSR break-up.
"I was thinking it would be nice to have all the stamps engraved but I dont think its possible. I think I would want to avoid having a classic 19th century stamp right next to a Disney stsmp."
You get to pick whatever stamp you want in most cases, especially modern issues.
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"One possibility for the Switzerland items is to include some revenue stamps as placeholders to keep the empty spaces from getting to you. Each of the areas has specific inexpensive revenue stamps I believe. "
What a great idea! Perhaps there are other work-arounds as well.
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You take a good nights sleep and there's ton of new responses to digest. The hordes of being a worldwide collector 
Re, Greenland KGH... That's Royal Greenland Trading Department ( Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, KGH). I don't see it any different as say Mozambique Company or North Borneo Company - which are usually listed as 'postal entities'.
Re, Slesvig/Schleswig... True, I could include it with Denmark. But with my collection I have got separate category for German Plebiscite Territories. In a way this kind of separation makes life easier (especially when recalling that plebiscites were just a temporary political solution due to complexity of making up under which country should the territories end up).
Re, Faroe Islands 1919 entity... This is/was a local 'postmaster' release (due to lack of proper Danish stamps, the Danish stamps were first bisected then overprinted for local use)... All in all I'm not sure that there should always be 'political reasons' to make something a postal entity (this here being a prime example of such practice).
Re, difference between Faroe Island and Alands Islands... Nothing. Both are regions with complex past, but currently autonomous regions (sorry for poor quality of below pic - it was pretty late when I arrived there with a ferry) with independent postal administrations.
-k-
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Hi ernieinjax and larsdog,
These Swiss canton stamps are classics and it would be a shame to exclude them as locals.
However, the prices would be a huge problem for most of us!
I really like jbaxter5256's idea of using revenue stamp as placeholders.
As an alternative you could always use forgeries if you didn't mind including them.
If you did include locals another classic one that would have a scary price (if you could find a seller) would be Tblisi/Tiflis in Georgia where only six stamps have been found so far.
If you wanted to extend the scope of the collection a little further, you could perhaps include revenue stamps from countries that didn't issue postage stamps.
For example, some of the smaller German states used the service of the Thurn & Taxis postal service but issued their own revenues.
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Hi scb,
"Re, Greenland KGH... That's Royal Greenland Trading Department ( Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, KGH). I don't see it any different as say Mozambique Company or North Borneo Company - which are usually listed as 'postal entities'. "
Thanks for explaining this. I hadn't heard of this organisation before.
Another classic example would be Thurn and Taxis which was a business not a state.
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Dave Lemaven: I will be in Paris on Oct 1. If you want me to grab you a copy? I don't deliver, but I can mail it to you when there.
rrr...
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"Re, Greenland KGH... That's Royal Greenland Trading Department ( Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, KGH). I don't see it any different as say Mozambique Company or North Borneo Company - which are usually listed as 'postal entities'"
This is from The Posthorn, May 2000, page 16:
"1905 – 1938 Period
This was the Pakke-Porto period, i.e., the period when the KGH wanted a fee for carrying mail to and from Greenland. As a fee for letters would conflict with the monopoly of the Danish Postal Service, only a parcel fee was permitted."
I think the difference was the KGH stamps were not allowed for use as regular postage.
"Re, difference between Faroe Island and Alands Islands... Nothing. Both are regions with complex past, but currently autonomous regions"
CORRECTION: Aland is in the BOB section of the Smithsonian album on page 121.
I'm not going to post my new pages for these because there are just so many ways to go and everyone can make their own decisions. (And honestly, I'm still doing a little more digging for myself before making a final decision). Thanks for all the inputs everyone. That helps in making these difficult decisions. Feel free to keep discussing Eastern Europe and Northern Europe as we continue.
The next section (Southern Europe) is even more complex, so let's break it into more manageable pieces:
Southern Europe - PART I
My initial comment is:
I don't like the presentation for Bosnia. The dashed box at left makes no sense and why put the last precedent country on the next page?
The last page includes Crete, so please refer back to Nigel's comment from 9-7-18:
"I've just had a look at the catalogue and while I think the idea is interesting I'm not keen on the layout. However, I guess any layout and choice of countries would be open to criticism. I'll limit my comments to Crete.
I'd expect to see:
A British Administration 1898-99
B Russian Administration 1899
C Crete 1900-1913
D French Post Offices 1902-14
E Italian Post Offices 1900-14
F German Feldpost 1944
I only see:
- Crete 1898-1913 ... I would split out both the British and Russian issues
- Austrian Post Offices in Crete ... although these French currency stamps were not issued specifically for Crete (despite Scott listing them under this name).
The other foreign post offices in the Turkish Empire could be tidied up too."
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"Dave Lemaven: I will be in Paris on Oct 1. If you want me to grab you a copy? I don't deliver, but I can mail it to you when there"
Thanks gggrrr. I appreciate the offer but have one on the way to me...
Dave.
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I like the idea of combining "a stamp for every country" with "collecting #1 from every country".
I don't want to collect worldwide broadly, but I would like to build an album representing the changing world as seen through stamps. So I think that combining these ideas might be a good compromise: I can include a nice representative stamp for each country, but defer to a #1 if I have it.
SUGGESTION: Since these two collecting areas seem to be quite popular, would it be worthwhile to create a new Discussion Group dedicated to "A stamp For Every Country / #1 Stamps For Every Country"?
Dave
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Dave,
This was my thinking too (see my early post above). I am starting out focusing on building a collection of #1s. There's actually a surprisingly large number of #1s that are affordable. I am doing this using Vario pages using black labels and white text.
Right now, I'm thinking that this will be the main focus of the collection, but for those countries that a #1 is clearly out of my reach, you could have separate pages containing the earliest stamps that are affordable. These would be sort of "runner's up" pages so that those countries would be represented.
This would, in effect, be a combination of "a stamp from every country" and "a collection of #1s"
-Chris
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WooHoo!
World History Stamp Atlas arrived today!
Great idea, Roy!
I plan to look over the Americas and Europe over the weekend to see if there is anything glaring that we missed. If anyone else sees anything, let us know.
Lars
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Just received my World History Stamp Atlas today. It cost me about $7.00 on Amazon. received it in one week from Great Britain. Should make for some interesting reading.
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I too got a World History Stamp Atlas - I've been reading it on the bus each morning on the way to work. So far I'm up to Germany 1945-89. The book was published just before the fall of the wall and German unification.
Nevertheless, it's a very good read. Lots of maps. But a bit heavy for the bus.
I wonder if SOR members have cleaned out the market for this item!
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"I wonder if SOR members have cleaned out the market for this item! "
If not, at the very least someone in big data land has seen the spike and is now desperately trying to make sense of it!
Back to Southern Europe Part I, the only suggestions were for things that fall into the BOB section, and I have made a note to revisit what Nigel mentioned when he was discussing Crete. The one outstanding question is this:
Does the dashed line box at upper left make any sense?
If anyone can explain how that is relevant, please do so. Otherwise it's an easy fix with white-out, but it appears to be the first actual error in the Smithsonian pages. Everything else has been a judgment call so far.
I look forward to any inputs on the stray box, but on to the rest of Southern Europe:
(Please ignore the first 3 entries for Western Europe. We will get to those next).
I don't have any questions or concerns on these pages from my notes, but if anyone has any concerns (keeping in mind that Offices Abroad, Local Stamps, Occupation Stamps, and Military Stamps are in BOB), let us know what you think.
Lars
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I received my order today. The book looks very interesting. Just started reading about the Channel Islands and Great Britain. There is quite a story in the different postal practices especially before the advent of stamps in Great Britain.
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I bought David’s international cover lots and that will be the start of my “Cover From Every Country” collection. I’m planning on keeping it light, no obscure and rare Indian states, no countries I never heard of.... in other words “The World According To Tom”. It’s good to be king!
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Go get'um Geiger
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"I bought David’s international cover lots and that will be the start of my “Cover From Every Country” collection. I’m planning on keeping it light, no obscure and rare Indian states, no countries I never heard of.... in other words “The World According To Tom”. It’s good to be king!"
Great idea, Tom!
I did something similar with an OFEC coin collection. I really didn't want to get into all the old roman coins, obsolete countries I had never heard of, and all the revalued currencies. So I picked a year and used an Atlas from that year to determine what the current countries were at that time. Even something that modest is 178 countries!
It is nice to be able to create what you want to fit your needs. It sounds like an exciting project!
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Time to finish up Europe with Western Europe.
I have a few concerns in this section, all on page 35:
1) Page 35 - there is no space for Nazi Germany, but there was a space on page 29 for the Italian Socialist Republic (1944).
2) Page 35 - there is no differentiation between pre-Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany, West Germany (circa Cold War), and re-unified Germany. Should there be?
3) Page 35 - I believe there is a TYPO on this page. The second entry for SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION makes no sense. Should that be LEAGUE OF NATIONS ADMINISTRATION 1920-1935?
Items 1 and 2 come down to how you view Germany. I can see how some would consider Nazi Germany to just be the same old Germany under different management and West Germany was a diminished Germany, but Germany still the same and DDR (or GDR - East Germany) was never really recognized, so after reunification Germany was back to "normal". That would lead to the view that ANY stamp from 1872 to present would properly represent modern Germany. I am having a hard time with that so I'm interested in what others think, especially our friends in the EU.
It's hard to escape the fact that #3 represents a TYPO. Am I missing something?
Lars
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Hi Lars,
"1) Page 35 - there is no space for Nazi Germany, but there was a space on page 29 for the Italian Socialist Republic (1944)."
The situations in Italy and Germany were different.
The Italian Social Republic existed in the north of Italy as a German puppet state at the same time as a non-fascist royalist Italian government operated in the south (and gradually took control of the whole country).
Both issued stamps.
"2) Page 35 - there is no differentiation between pre-Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany, West Germany (circa Cold War), and re-unified Germany. Should there be?"
Up to you I guess.
I would suggest splitting it into German Empire / Weimar Republic / Nazi Germany / West Germany / Germany (reunified).
However, I expect this would annoy some collectors by splitting the Federal Republic into two sections, before and after reunification.
Others might prefer having just one section to reflect the basic continuity of German history from 1871 onwards.
"3) Page 35 - I believe there is a TYPO on this page. The second entry for SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION makes no sense. Should that be LEAGUE OF NATIONS ADMINISTRATION 1920-1935?
"
No, I'm sure this is deliberate. I think the overall handling of Saar in the album is silly but I don't think this section is the problem.
This section reflects stamps issued after France handed the Saar back to Germany but before the German currency was reintroduced.
I'd prefer to see the pre-war French administration included here as you have suggested but not at the expense of the German 1957-59 issues.
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Nigel,
Your response, as always, was concise and to the point.
"I would suggest splitting it into German Empire / Weimar Republic / Nazi Germany / West Germany / Germany (reunified).
However, I expect this would annoy some collectors by splitting the Federal Republic into two sections, before and after reunification.
Others might prefer having just one section to reflect the basic continuity of German history from 1871 onwards."
I agree that this is the space within which the differing opinions are likely to reside. Thank you for making the point more accurately and clearly than I was able to. We seem to agree that this is a matter of personal preference, and while the approach taken by the Smithsonian pages is a reasonable one, personal preference may factor in here. Anyone else care to offer an opinion?
"I'd prefer to see the pre-war French administration included here as you have suggested but not at the expense of the German 1957-59 issues. "
Perhaps I'm missing something here. On page 35, the top right position is:
SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION 1957-1959. On the bottom row center is SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION 1957-1959 again. I have corrected that in pencil to be LEAGUE OF NATIONS on my copy, but this seems to be a typo in the original document. Am I wrong?
Lars
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Hi Lars,
Sorry, I misunderstood your point about the Saar typo as I hadn't noticed the Saar entry on the top row.
Yes, I agree it's a typo to have the German Administration repeated.
I'd suggest keeping the Saar entries in date order so updating the first of the German Administration as you have suggested.
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"I'd suggest keeping the Saar entries in date order"
Nigel,
I believe the "date order" for "Precedent Countries" used in the Smithsonian pages is descending by end date, so if I were to eliminate the duplicate Saar and replace it with League of Nations (1920-1935) then it would actually go to the right of Danzig. (Once they get into "German States", THEN they go in alphabetical order).
So, to recap, there is a typo that needs to be addressed in one of the following ways:
1) Ignore it and leave it empty
2) Insert a duplicate
3) Print a new page with that space omitted
4) Replace the duplicate with League of Nations Administration (1920-1935)
5) Replace the duplicate with something else
My plan is option 4 unless further inputs change my mind.
You make very interesting points about the main German entry, and I'm really torn right now, so I plan to ponder a bit, but it raises a question about your comment:
"However, I expect this would annoy some collectors by splitting the Federal Republic into two sections, before and after reunification."
If one takes the approach that FRG was the successor to Nazi Germany, does that mean we need to not recognize the legitimacy of GDR and therefore the GDR stamp belongs in the BOB section along with other occupation stamps? Whether or not we split German Empire / Weimar Republic / Nazi Germany should be based on how we treated similar questions. A recent example was Finland. I split it into two spaces because I agreed with the analysis you and Keijo presented. Would I need to make the Empire / Weimar / Nazi split to be consistent?
I see what you are saying about post-WWII Germany and what I do there may depend on how I treat pre-WWII Germany.
Thanks for all the insight!!!
Lars
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Though the goal of Smithsonian pages is noble, they seem to simplify to extreme at times 
As far as Germany goes, I use very simple and straightforward split into:
German States (Baden,Bavaria, Bergedorf...)
Germany (Empire, Weimar, Greater German Reich, Bohemia, GeneralGovt)
German Plebiscite Territories (Allenstein, Danzig, Saar etc)
Germany Occupied (various zones)
Germany divided (West Germany,East Germany, Saar, Saarland,Berlin)
Germany re-united (modern day Germany)
And that one-stamp listing of Austria, sigh... IMHO it should be Austro-Hungarian Empire, Republic of German-Austria, First Austrian Republic, Occupied Austria, and then modern day Austria... If this division feels illogical, then please study the maps on how Austrian borders have morphed over change of power & wars.
-k-
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K,
I always love to get your inputs!
Let's take Germany first. Splitting pre-WWII Germany into Empire and Weimar makes sense, just as splitting Finland between Duchy and Republic made sense. Doesn't that mean we need to do the same for Great Britain and France? What other European countries (besides Austria) would require similar treatment in order to maintain consistency? Romania? Denmark? Norway? Sweden? Greece? The list seems rather long. And if we go down this path, what does that mean for Africa and Asia?
I am actually inclined to take this path myself, but I want to differentiate what I personally choose to add from what I believe to be a typo or major error in the Smithsonian pages.
Let's assume I am committed to this path. What you call Greater German Reich has a connotation for Germany after 1943. If you mean Nazi Germany (starting 1932), then I agree it should be separate.
Bohemia (and Moravia) are already listed under Czech Republic. I don't know what you mean by GeneralGovt.
It looks like states and territories are covered. If, after replacing the duplicate SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION 1957-1959 with SAAR LEAGUE OF NATIONS ADMINISTRATION 1920-1935, you believe there is a major omission in territories, let me know.
Occupation stamps are covered in the BOB section, so we can ignore them for now.
That brings us to Austria. Why did you leave out the Austrian Monarchy with stamps issued 1850-64? I agree with A-H Empire, but Republic of German-Austria was just a temporary post-WWI rump state that would belong in BOB, in my opinion. I agree with 1st Republic and 2nd Republic (modern Austria), but why not include the Federal State of Austria (1934-38)? I would dismiss Occupied Austria as BOB.
I look forward to your reply!
Cheers!
Lars
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"The list seems rather long. And if we go down this path, what does that mean for Africa and Asia? "
The list for Europe is indeed long, mostly because Europe has complex history filled with way too many invasions & wars (talking hundreds just for 1840 to date). Not sure if anybody has ever build a proper "index" for all of it (even my records are constantly under construction and evolving as I learn more).
Fortunately rest of the world seems much more straightforward (or alternatively I need some more education, LOL).
All in all I think a lot of this "how we view the world" boils down to what makes "sense", and that is where personal views/opinions and prior knowledge play a major role. I sure would give an arm & leg if I could just talk with the folks who build the Smithsonian pages on why the decisions they made at times.
Re,Austrian omission... Simply "forgot" those from my list. But you are correct, they should be part of Austrian split.
-k-
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I concur, just getting people to agree upon the definition of a ‘stamp issuing entity’ is problematic.
Add in complex histories and the task by definition is ‘wrong’ in some people’s eyes. This was one of the reasons I stopped development on the SQL database I was working on; you pour large amounts of time into something only to have others tell you that it is all wrong and/or incomplete. This makes this kind of development well-suited for someone who wants to spend a lifetime trying to please everyone.
scb, if you would like a copy of the Stamp Smarter SQL table let me know and I can send it to you.
Don
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"This was one of the reasons I stopped development on the SQL database I was working on; you pour large amounts of time into something only to have others tell you that it is all wrong and/or incomplete. "
And for me (as well as the late SWH/Gerben van Gelder) this was one of the reasons that inspired and motivated both of us to create postal entities list of our own (with heavy weight on the last word). Every list out there was so "wrong" that we ultimately had to build something to match our specific needs.
"
I concur, just getting people to agree upon the definition of a ‘stamp issuing entity’ is problematic. "
Possibly the understatement of the year
Here's a small story that might say a lot about the difficulty of it all. Though I and Gerben both worked years (more honestly decades) first separately and then later shared and compared our data with long talks, our lists are like day and night. My postal entities list has got 1733 rows (and still growing with random new rows once and awhile), Gerben's list stopped at 3100+ entities. Both of us had more or less the same resources and data, where the differences come are scope and some approaches of where to draw the line. Possibly the hardest bit of it all is to maintain consistency and same set of rules for each and every country out there. (I admit that my work is constantly under progress on this part).
"scb, if you would like a copy of the Stamp Smarter SQL table let me know and I can send it to you."
Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass for now. It's not that I would not be interested, but I do have literally years (possibly decades) of new data to digest & migrate into my current database.
-k-
PS. Sorry for hijacking the topic away from Smithsonian pages...
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This is getting way too complicated and is sucking the fun right out of the collection!
I am going to take my "Cover For Every Country" the same direction as I have my New Jersey postmark cover collection. I will have a slot for every cover I currently own. When I acquire new covers, I will create the slot for those. My collection will always appear complete, but allows for expansion as I find new material. And I won't have a bunch of empty pages waiting for obscure Indian states that existed for a few days in the 1890s!
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"This is getting way too complicated and is sucking the fun right out of the collection!"
Nah, fun is still in there (at least for me). This kind of detailed approach is just where 30+ years of worldwide collecting can lead into. Depending on how one looks at it, it can be called evolution, progress, specialization - even madness.
I do realize that for most collectors having just single "Austria" or "Germany" or "Russia" is enough (and complex enough). But the thing is when you have collected the world for decades, there really becomes a true need to be able to pinpoint entities on more granular level.
Just my 5 cents worth (and with no offense meant/taken).
-k-
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"This is getting way too complicated and is sucking the fun right out of the collection!"
That is a major concern for me as well. That is why I want to differentiate between a real error (a duplicate for GERMAN SAAR) and something that is optional (like splitting Finland between Duchy and Republic). I have no desire to expand my collection by any significant amount, but if there are a few places where it makes logical sense to add a few stamps, I am inclined to do so. Whether I decide to include a particular stamp or not is almost secondary to the discussion and research involved that makes my collection more meaningful to me personally. If you are not inclined to add anything beyond the Smithsonian pages, that is a very reasonable approach, but you may want to follow along to be aware of actual errors in the pages. We just identified the first one: A duplicate for GERMAN SAAR. And that's not the only error. There are also some questionable things, like making the USSR as a Precedent Country to Romania instead of Russia.
I'm going to spend some time reviewing Europe and I will post a summary of what I took away from the discussion so everyone can comment before we move along to Africa.
Lars
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This post is just for Keijo and Nigel (and anyone else considering expanding on what is in the Smithsonian pages). I will get back to things of interest for the rest of you later, but I want to pose a question:
If we use Finland as an example where just one more stamp gives a "better" or "more relevant" or "deeper" representation of the countries history, what guidelines do we follow? If we assume that all occupation, offices abroad, local stamps, etc. are in the BOB section, when do we make a break? Finland breaks between the Duchy and the Republic. What about other countries?
After going through all of Europe and revisiting North and South America, I have these proposals for when to make a break.
1. PROMOTION: Sub-monarchy (duchy, principality, etc.) to monarchy; or colony (territory, dependency, etc.) to country. Smithsonian already does this in some places, so this is not a change. One could argue which date to use, but this is an established break. (In the Caribbean, Smithsonian uses the date of Associated State instead of Independent State).
2. CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT: Change between, but not within, these categories:
a) Monarchy - including Constitutional Monarchy
b) Dictator - Military Junta, Fascism, Communism (People's Republic)
c) Republic - free elections
d) Anarchy
After studying Central America, I'm tempted to add Oligarchy as a category. That would well describe the CIA installed governments in Central America to support the United Fruit Companies interests just as perfectly as it would describe the Putin regime. How ironic!
Comments?
Lars
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I agree fully with #1 (Promotion), and it is relatively easy to follow.
What causes a lot of headache is #2 (Change of governement) as there are myriad variations of this theme. I'll give you two examples
1) France
The "official list" with history books goes something like Second Republic->Second Empire->Third Republic->French State (Vichy France)->Provisional government of French Republic-> Fourth Republic->Fifth Republic
The difference between various republic is mostly who's in power. 3rd and 4th republic were parliamentary systems, fifth is semi-presidential one.
In a way I'm on the same lines as you - change from Republic to Republic should not be noted. So one could simplify French entities as French Republic->French Empire->French republic (again)->French State (basically a puppet state)->French Republic (again). So down to three entities.
A bigger question is what happens to provisional governments (maybe adding another sub-item to list on #2, or merging it with what follows - like I did above)
2) Belgium... Once independence was established, it has officially remained as kingdom. So it would be just one listing if looking at history books.
But as most of collectors know, Germans occupied Belgium during WW1 and the "Free Belgium" became just a tiny blob that was run by exile governement in Northern France and King at frontier. So I would not consider as same "country".
And during WW2 the Germans once again took over the land. But Belgium remained as independent Kingdom as King Leopold never fled the country and was put into house arrest by Germans, and the government once again exiled. But in reality the life of people down there was run by German appointed military government.
So I'm tempted to say Belgium should be listed as Kingom of Belgium->Free Belgium during German occupation->Kingdom of Belgium (again)-> Belgium under German rule ->Kingdom of Belgium (again)
Possibly the main question here is whether or not to consider ww2 era Belgium as occupied or as a puppet state.
So for item #2 I would add option e) puppet states, oligarchies etc.
But yes, you have well summed up most of the (unwritten) rules I try to follow.
-k-
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Hi Lars and -k-,
Thanks for another two thought-provoking posts!
The more I do think about this the more I feel it's an issue for personal judgement not just in terms of the organisational principles but also for individual cases.
I don't see a need for a BOB (as in the current Smithsonian structure) so I smiled to see your comment, Lars: "If we assume that all occupation, offices abroad, local stamps, etc. are in the BOB..." as I think it's the one point where we would take very different approaches. 
I would move the members of that BOB to the most relevant country:
- Occupations to the country being occupied.
- Offices abroad to the country where the offices were located.
- Local stamps to the country etc.
I would also include international organisations (League of Nations, UN etc.) with either the country of their head office or simply create a new section for them.
I suggest that as well as questions of "Promotion" (although that term is loaded) and "Government" there is also the basic question of "Name" (especially as it appears on stamps).
In terms of promotion, I would suggestion keeping this as simple as possible so Finland as part of Russia and independent Finland still seems a reasonable split to me.
I would include Aland here but probably not Karelia, Eastern Kerelia, Aunus or North Ingermanland which I would keep with Russia.
I would also include the Helsinki and Tampere town posts with Finland but I realise that would be a minority position!
I would probably not make room for changes of government or form of government (at least in most cases).
France is a good example. I would not distinguish between the empire and the various republics.
I think this is mainly because I think of the country simply as "France" rather than as the "French Empire" or the "French Republique".
I find the Petain/Vichy state more difficult but I'd perhaps lean towards excluding this too.
I agree that Belgium is another nice example and it's tempting to represent the timeline as: Belgium / German Occ / Belgium / German Occ / Belgium
but maybe neater would be to have one Belgian stamp and one each from the two periods of German control (and maybe also one from the WW1 Western Staging Area).
DR Congo brings up the issue of whether to reflect name changes as well:
- Autonomous State of the Congo (the Belgian King's private possession)
- Belgian Congo (Belgian colony)
- Republic of Congo / Republic of Congo-Léopoldville
- DR Congo
- Zaire
- DR Congo
and also Katanga and South Kasai.
Another similar name problem is the Central African Republic:
- Ubangi-Shari
- Central African Republic
- Central African Empire
- Central African Republic
and this still leaves the issue of where to put the stamps for Ubangi-Shari-Chad and French Equatorial Africa.
I'll stop here because I don't feel able to contribute useful organising principles.
However, I shall watch how this discussion develops with interest.
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"I don't see a need for a BOB (as in the current Smithsonian structure) so I smiled to see your comment, Lars: "If we assume that all occupation, offices abroad, local stamps, etc. are in the BOB..." as I think it's the one point where we would take very different approaches."
To me, the reason to put occupation, offices abroad, local stamps, etc. into BOB is that it is titled: STAMP ISSUING ENTITIES (SELECTED). The idea being that there are so many of these entities that it would be too daunting of a task for most of us to attempt. Included are a mere 15 offices abroad, 21 local stamps, 31 occupation stamps, 15 international organizations, and 21 military stamps. If something really important is missing, it can be added to BOB. If Aland wasn't already in BOB, I would have added it to BOB or Finland. I plan to stay with that format. The alternative for me is throwing in the towel.
-k-, let's look at your two examples:
1. France: Second Republic->Second Empire->Third Republic->French State (Vichy France)->Provisional government of French Republic-> Fourth Republic->Fifth Republic
If we eliminate occupations and don't differentiate between republics, it's just Republic->Empire->Republic. That's it. You may argue we are missing some mighty important history during WWII, but as it turns out, BOB already has Free French Provisional Gov't, German Occupation of Lorraine, and German Occupation of Alsace.
2. Belgium: Again, if we push occupations to BOB, Belgium is just one listing. Interestingly, German Occupation of Belgium during WWII and Belgian Occupation of German East Africa are both included in BOB.
The big benefit of this approach is that you don't need a Belgium stamp from before WWII and one after WWII. You just need one, since it was really the same government interrupted.
I understand that this is a very abridged collection that World-Wide collectors would see as missing a lot of meat. I feel the same way about face-only US collections. But for those of us who don't collect world-wide, it's a fun and fairly attainable challenge to get some pretty good coverage of the pages. The original Smithsonian pages have about 785 spaces. I don't mind expanding that by 20% or so, but I don't want to end up doubling that number!
For those who are happy with the Smithsonian pages as is, I just want to point out a few mistakes they may wish to address (or ignore). For those who are invigorated by this challenge and read up on each country as we encounter them, I would like to find a way to add a few modest additions that tell a more complete story. It's up to each collector to decide how to proceed.
But I'm afraid we will lose everyone that is on this quest if occupations and temporary coups are not relegated to BOB.
Nigel, even if we come up with a cogent definition of when to make a break in a country for Europe and the Americas, I dread Africa. Hopefully you can help guide us through the Heart of Darkness. (Not too subtle Joseph Conrad nod).
Lars
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"I suggest that as well as questions of "Promotion" (although that term is loaded) and "Government" there is also the basic question of "Name" (especially as it appears on stamps)."
Any suggestions on a label that is more appropriate than "Promotion"? I assume "Elevation" has the same baggage.
As far as country name on stamps, I would hate to keep up with every time St. Kitts changed to St. Christopher and back again. Instead of name, I propose focusing on Government. The Republic of Cuba did not change to the People's Republic of Cuba in 1959, but it did just that, in essence. I don't have a good example off the top of my head, but I recall seeing a name change for another country that was cosmetic at most. Everyone in North America knows Cuba changed dramatically in 1959 even if we don't all know the details or whether the name changed.
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Another example of mostly cosmetic name changes might be Congo and its variations to Zaire and then back to Congo. Although maybe the name changes aren't as cosmetic as they seem given the somewhat volatile politics of the area known as Congo in Africa. I've been reading a fascinating book about the Congo by David Van Reybrouck which has been quite eye opening.
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Let's not forget the recent Swaziland to eSwatini namechange...
-k-
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jbaxter, what you said about Congo is why I'm so concerned about trying to expand Africa. I'm afraid it will be as bad, or worse than, Central America.
I wanted a better picture of Europe so I thought about highlighting major transitions, like Duchy Finland to Republic and Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. I had what I thought was a good plan and decided to revisit North America and see how it went. Just about every country in Central America, when the first stamps were issued, was what O. Henry called a "Banana Republic". Whether it was bananas, or coffee, or something else, the governments were run by an oligarchy supported by Cuyamel Fruit Company (acquired by United Fruit), United Fruit Company (now Chiquita), and Standard Fruit Company (now Dole). If workers tried to organize and influence elections, the fear of Communism lead to CIA support of brutal militaries. But those militaries hungered for more power and military coups were common place. According to Wikipedia, Honduras "since independence, nearly 300 small internal rebellions and civil wars have occurred..."
Then I thought, OK, why not get a stamp from the old Banana Republic days (regardless of whether it was an oligarchy, dictatorship, or junta) and a new one from after a stable republic was formed.
Costa Rica - check (11-8-1949)
Guatemala - check (1-14-1986)
Honduras - oops! Things looked good from 1-27-1982 to 6-28-2009, but now it's back to a Banana Republic.
Nicaragua - check (7-17-1979)
Panama - check (12-27-1989)
El Salvador - check (1-16-1992)
Granted, some of these countries had stable Republics earlier, and I would plan to list those years as best I could.
Looking at the Caribbean, Haiti's longest stretch of democracy was less than 10 years: 10-12-1994 to 2-29-2004.
With U.S. posture toward Central America the way it is now, they could all devolve back to Banana Republics.
I'm still thinking about this.
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This post has gotten very long and really covers two different things so I am going to start a new thread:
A stamp for every country (Standard). That's where we can cover items of interest for everyone pursuing this project. I will start another thread later for those interested in expanding on the Smithsonian pages.
Hopefully that will keep things more relevant for those who wish to follow either or both threads.
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good deal.. This is a great thread and really helping me keep an how to continue the collection I have using the Terra Nova publication Single Specimen albums... really is a lot of room for personal judgement as to what constitutes an entity. This for sure should continue.
Thanks,
J
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I've been making a bit more progress with the World History Stamp Atlas book after finishing the Congo book by David Reybrouck which I mentioned earlier (I highly recommend the book for anyone interested!). It is fascinating the detail the World History Stamp Atlas book brings out in the early sections on Europe as to history as it discusses the development of postal authorities and delivery routes, stamp issues, etc. I find I am astonished by how many non-aligned nations existed during World War II, the mercurial political history of France switching between empire and republic and back multiple times, the political developments in the areas now known as France and Germany, how much political change in Europe followed the 1940's, etc. And all of it ties into the production and use of postage stamps!
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In biological taxonomy, there are lumpers and there are splitters. As for countries to collect, I am probably getting carried away with splitting, while the Smithsonian album lumps countries to much.
I include countries that did not produce stamps of their own, but outsourced their postal service to some other country or entity. One has to examine postmarks carefully to find them. Sikkim was enough of a country to appear in its own color on old maps, but never produced its own stamps, but instead relied on India, so I count Indian stamps postmarked Gangtok, the capital.
For Germany, I have been looking for postmarks from each member of the German Confederation and the Austro-German Postal Union which were both abolished in 1867. Thurn and Taxis served a number of forgotten countries, such as Hesse-Kassel, Reuss-Gera, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the Duchy of Nassau, the Free City of Frankfurt, and so on.
Saxe-Altenburg latched onto the postal service of Saxony. Look for numeral 11 in the cancellation.
Anhalt-Bernburg, Waldeck, and a couple of others used stamps of Prussia.
An exclave of Oldenburg (Birkenfeld) used Prussia, but Hohenzollern, an exclave of Prussia, used Thurn and Taxis, southern district.
Austria was a member, so I split pre-1867 Austria from the post-1867 entity, Austria-Hungary.
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Nice post Greaden.
I would do the same if I could find the stamps!
Many of these countries did have their own revenue stamps either when independent or much more often later as states within the North German Confederation or the German Empire.
Here are four stamps from the independent state of Hesse-Kassel:
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For Prussia, I've been looking for towns on maps, and then searching for them on lists of Prussian numerical cancels.
17 Allstedt (exclave of Saxe-Weimar)
48 Arolsen (capital of the Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont)
65 Ballenstedt (in Anhalt-Bernburg)
110 Bernburg (Capital of the Duchy of Anhalt-Bernburg)
131 Birkenfeld (Exclave of Oldenburg)
315 Dessau (Anhalt-Dessau)
422 Frankenhausen (Exclave of Schwartzburg-Rudoldstadt)
584 Harzgerode (Anhalt)
1180 Pyrmont (Waldeck and Pyrmont)
1191 Raguhn (Anhalt)
1260 Rosslau (Anhalt-Dessau)
1410 Sondershausen (The principality of Schwartzburg-Sondershausen included areas in the Prussian and in the Thurn and Taxis postal systems)
1637 Wildungen (Waldeck)
1703 Zerbst (Anhalt), home of Catherine the great.
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Thanks Greaden, that looks a useful list.
I've made some notes somewhere about postmarks from Waldeck & Pyrmont (and from a couple of other states) and I'll try to find these.
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For Thurn and Taxis numerical cancels:
Hesse and surroundings of Frankfurt:
1-87: Northern District. Electorate of Hesse-Kassel. 14-Kassel, 29-Hanau.
88-165: Southern District. Hesse-Darmstadt. 104-Darmstadt, 134-Mainz (2nd most common after Frankfurt), 163-Worms.
166-217: (S) Nassau. 196-Nassau, 215-Wiesbaden.
218-219: (S) Hesse-Homburg.
220: (S) Frankfurt. By far the most common cancel.
Thuringian States:
221-251: (N) Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. 231-Eisenach, 234-Jena, 251-Weimar.
252-269: (S except Camburg) Saxe-Meiningen. 256-Hildburghausen. 258-Meiningen, 261-Saalfeld. 251-Camburg (exclave in Northern District).
270-280: (straddling northern and southern districts) Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. 270-Coburg, 273-Gotha.
281-283: (N) Schwartzburg-Sondershausen.
284-289: (S) Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. 288-Rudolstadt.
290-299: (N) Reuss-Gera and Reuss-Greiz. 291-Gera, 292-Greitz.
Offices in Hanseatic cities:
300: (N) Hamburg
301: (N)Bremen
302: (N) Lübeck
Outliers:
303-6 (S) Hohenzollern, exclave of Prussia
316-334: (N) Lippe-Schaumburg and Lippe-Detmold. 320-Bückeburg (Schaumburg-L capital),
321-Detmold (Lippe-Detmold capital).
Remaining numbers are small towns allocated later which are literally all over the map.
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Basically, counting Thurn and Taxis as two countries -Northern and Southern districts - misses the point. Scott makes the distinction, but keep in mind that the North German Confederation also issued stamps for the two currency zones as well as for Hamburg.
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I need some help finding a few things in the Scott Catalog
1. Would "French Occupation of Mexico" simply be any of Mexico 26-34? I know there may be a few before and after that I could use, but I prefer a stamp with the likeness of Maximillian.
2. My album has a space for "British Occupation of Togo after WWI", but all I can find is a stamp that I would describe as "Anglo-French Occupation of Togo during and after WWI". Am I missing something?
3. Where can I find "French Legion fighting in Russia with the German Army?"
4. I also can't find two "Ukraine Government-In-Exile" stamps: One for mail from gov't to troops in field and another for a planned invasion which never took place. I suppose I could just wait a few months or years. Looks like it may happen again!
Thanks!
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
Lars,
for number 3, it is NOT Scott-listed, but Lee says it's listed in Michel. There's a nice series of posts on the LVF in our past discussions: http://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=4183#24438
David
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re: A stamp for every country
David,
Thanks for the link! I read through it, but it seems the consensus of opinion in that thread was that those stamps were Cinderellas. That assumption may need to be revisited. I am asking about these stamps because they are listed in an album offered online by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. There are 788 spaces for stamps and I have filled 641 so far. Other than the items mentioned above, the only other stamps in that album that might be considered Cinderellas would be New Zealand - King Edward VII Land and New Zealand - Victoria Land since they were never sold to the public at face value.
The most fascinating (for me) was the French occupation of Mexico during the US Civil War. Fascinating, and news to me!
Lars
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11:42:46pm
re: A stamp for every country
Link to the album pages? I am working on a very similar collection and would love to cross reference. In
Also including all occupation and overprints such as Italian agean islands. Is a ton of fun and educational.
Thx
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12:16:40am
re: A stamp for every country
Lars,
Item #1, I believe your are correct.
Your comment on Item #2 is correct. The stamps are listed under Togo as a British Protectorate, Scott #33-91; French Occupation, Scott #151-192; and French Mandate, Scott #193-331.
Item #3, Dave and Lee are correct about the French Legion stamps not listed in Scott, but listed in Michel. They do not have major status, but rather more like the Scott notes describing the stamps and giving a value.
Your item #4 is noted in Scott following Ukraine Scott #87. It is actually the third set of notes in the block. I did not find these mentioned in Michel.
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re: A stamp for every country
Jeredutt3: Here is a link to the album I am starting with:
http://postalmuseum.si.edu/stampgallery/everycountryalbum.html
I will post my comments regarding this album at the end of this post, but I want to address Michael first.
Michael: Thanks for the excellent info. Unfortunately I don't have the info for #4 in my catalog. I'm working with a 1998 set and the last number for Ukraine is 74 before jumping to the year 1992. I may get a scan of that page from APRL. They are very cool about sending stuff like that and as an APS member it's fairly inexpensive.
Back to the Smithsonian album. For the benefit of Jeredutt and anyone else interested, here are my observations so far:
1. Eastern Rumelia is listed in two places - page 17 (Europe) and page 101 (Asia). It is listed with Bulgaria with dates 1885-1920. 1885 coincides with the separation from Turkish rule, so Scott 20-40 would fit the bill, but it seems they got the date 1920 from the following entry in Scott "Eastern Silesia". Looks like a typo to me. The other listing for Eastern Rumelia (Asia, page 101) lists the dates 1880-1885. It seems like 1880-1884 would be better and any Scott #1-19 would fit the bill. Nevertheless, it seems strange that a specific geographic area would change continents like that. I have other questions (e.g. where Thrace fits in) that I haven't investigated enough yet to air publicly, but there is some puzzlement here!
2. On page 26, there is a box for Bosnia & Herzegovina, then boxes for Muslim Govt in Sarajevo, Bosnian Croat Admin in Mostar, and Bosnian Serb Admin in Banja Luca. I don't understand what the box for overall B&H is intended for.
3. I have suggestions for text on pp 83 and 85 regarding Junagarh, Saurashtra, Soruth, and United State of Saurashtra, but I won't detail it here.
4. Page 117 - why include two issues never sold to the public at face value? (NZ - KE VII Land and NZ - Victoria Land).
5. Page 126 - Togo stamp should be FRANCE and Great Britain and should be "Anglo-French occupation of Togo DURING AND after WWI."
6. Page 127 - RUSSIA - Should that be Russian occupation OF TURKEY before WWI?
7. Page 129 - "West New Guinea" should be "West Irian" for clarity.
8. I'm not thrilled about the choice of Yellow ink for South America.
9. The name of the Continent on the right edge should be flipped 180 degrees for normal mounting in an album.
10. All of Russia should be on page 20.
11. Move province of Turkey from page 27 to 26.
12. Page 35 - row 2, column 2, should be "LEAGUE OF NATIONS ADMINISTRATION 1920-1935"?
13. Page 37 - should have "German States - Continued" like on page 38
14. The modern stamp for South Africa should be on page 63 instead of 64.
15. Page 80 - should be "Feudatory States - Continued".
16. Why was LAS BELA left out of Indian States? I haven't even STARTED looking through the catalogs to see what other countries or states that may have been slighted that should be included!
This is fun, but a LOT of work!
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
As a worldwide collector I find these pages very intriguing; and I definitely like the 'continuous infograph' format they have.
That said, they're far from being complete (my personal stamp inventory has 1,657 postal administrations, and I know there are few that are even more detailed). Take for example Finland presented as 1856 to present. As a Finn I can say it should be:
* 1856-1917 for Grand Duchy of Finland (an autonomous state of Russian Empire)
* 1917 to present for Republic of Finland
And on quick looks I can spot similar 'small' lapses occur here and there. I know these are 'splitting hair' differences for many, but often times they relate and show up in different stamp designs, currencies etc.
Just my 5 cents worth,
-k-
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A Service Dog gives a person with a disability independence. Never approach, distract or pet a working dog, especially when (s)he is in harness. Never be afraid to ask questions to the handler (parent).
03 May 2014
03:09:36am
re: A stamp for every country
scb - I like your diligence in dividing eras. I do not collect Finland per se, but as a collector of Russia I include the period of the Grand Duchy of Finland under what I consider Russian occupation.
Kelly
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The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.
03 May 2014
02:04:42pm
re: A stamp for every country
For me, one of the many enjoyable aspects of Stamporama
is learning how other members classify, arrange and display
their stamps; and how they view the world in which those
stamp-issuing authorities reside. Typically, this thread
is revelatory.
I do believe that even if all the representatives to the
United Nations were dedicated stamp collectors,
political consensus in that institution would be
no less difficult than it is today.
John Derry
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re: A stamp for every country
scb - thank you so much for that input! There are, no doubt, many omissions in the pages we are discussing. After reviewing your comment regarding Finland I agree that there should be TWO stamps on that page. I plan to modify pages that don't meet my satisfaction (and this page does not). Thanks again for the tip!
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
Are there other resources for such a collection? I think scb is 100% correct and I wonder how many other omissions there are. I dread combing through 6 volumes of catalogs to find them!
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re: A stamp for every country
@Lars,
I was tempted to guide you to my blog's My Collection section, but sadly it's under construction (for 3th year already) and does not show all the data I have on topic.
But then I got an idea to import a 'simplified' and somewhat up-to-date list of postal entities from my development database into here: http://www.stampcollectingblog.com/postal-entities-list.php
As with any data like this, take it with pinch of salt as there are some things that need better categorization (for example the division of Italy needs a somewhat complete overhaul between kingdom, Italian Social Republic, Republic etc). But this should still double the volume of 'countries to collect' up to 1600+ entities
-k-
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re: A stamp for every country
Thanks k!
That's just what I was looking for!!!
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
It´s great to discover the existence of such an album I have a similar collection all put into a medium size stock book with one page per letter in the alphabet
Larsdog, in regards to your question 4:
I guess they´re included because they were actually used (even in very small quantities)
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re: A stamp for every country
"I guess they´re included because they were actually used (even in very small quantities"
OK, fair enough! I am also discussing this on k's blog, but when I have some preliminary results I will post them here and there both. So far it's quite clear that there are at least three dozen stamps that need to be added to the Smithsonian pages to approach completeness.
Lars
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07:27:24pm
re: A stamp for every country
I bumped this back up as the topic has found new life.
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re: A stamp for every country
Thank you. Michael. When I saw Roy's post earlier, I thought it was Lars who had tackled this already, but I couldn't find the thread. Thanks for resurfacing it.
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re: A stamp for every country
I got a new 11x17 scan and print capable printer today, an HP OfficeJet Pro 7740 which was onsale , and, in celebration, printed off a copy of the Smithsonian stamp for every country album onto true archival paper as a new album to work on completing. Initially I will work through my collected duplicates to choose items to get a start on the album. I, also, need to find a good solution for a landscape mode binding on the short edge for my two sided printed pages (I only had 100 sheets of the paper available from a test project that I was contemplating a few months ago so printed it two sided, alternating on the short edge.)
The pages look absolutely beautiful printed on the test paper I had purchased from Archival Methods which is true archival quality paper which is 25% cotton content. I had done a couple of test page printings on standard copy paper and on 20lb acid free paper but they felt quite flimsy when mounts were applied whereas the other paper feels much better but is not as thick as the paper that White Ace uses for their albums which is essentially card stock.
Plus I hit a new milestone with my International Parts I-V for 1840-1963 album set of 16.0% complete with an additional pile of new acquisitions from the past six months to sort through to continue filling it towards my current goal of 17.5% complete of the 85,535 stamps that are covered by the albums. Currently the albums contain at least 95% mint or unused stamps and I am targeting replacement of the used stamps in the albums as alternatives show up that are affordable.
Regarding the Smithsonian album, has anyone built an Excel based checklist for the Smithsonian album for keeping track of acquisitions? If no one reports availability I will try to put that together as well. Just have to find a place where it could be posted so that others can download it. I know that both Dilip Limaye's checklist for the International Part I on Jim Jackson's Big Blue 1840-1940 blog and ChrisW's country count lists for the International Part I were both very helpful to me as guides on what can be done for keeping track of my collections.
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Congratulations on the new printer. Wide format printers are very affordable these days.
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Started creation of a checklist in Excel for the Smithsonian every country album and am making good progress with the first 52 of 136 pages done. I'm adding the country, time period, and page number for each entry.
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Hi jbaxter5256,
Any chance you'd share that spreadsheet?
Sounds pretty helpful!
JR
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Yes, I will share it once I complete it. Stopped for lunch and to get the pages bound. Using slightly oversized wire bindings with a frosted front and back plastic page at Office Depot worked out very well. It helped a lot that the woman at Office Depot who installed the binding was a past stamp collector and knew to use an oversize wire ring so that the rings will not be too tight as the pages expand in bulk from adding stamps in mounts.
I, also, had the pages I had printed off for the Big Blue 1840-1940 checklist from Jim Jackson's site bound as well using a clear front cover (over the solid blue page from the checklist) and a navy back page. These also turned out much better than I expected. I had printed them on Permalife 20 lb. acid free bond paper which is not as thick as the archival paper I used for the album but which worked well for this usage.
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I have completed the Excel checklist for the Smithsonian National Postal Museum's Stamp for Every Country Album and should be able to send it to anyone who provides me with an e-mail address through the Stamporama Members Area messages center. If there is any place to post this on the Stamporama site I would appreciate guidance for doing so otherwise I will send it as an attachment by e-mail in response to requests through the Stamporama messages system.
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Here is the cover from the printed and bound album. I am slowly adding countries and now have 30 of 785.
Thanks to Dave Sheridan for mentioning the FastStone Photo Resizer which let me drop the image size from 410KB to 110KB. I still have to work on centering of objects on the scanner as you can tell but thought this might be useful in getting an idea of how the album looks.
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This is what I have so far for my OFEC collection:
http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/smithsonian.htm
I need to get some new scans because I have changed a page or two already. I plan to post info on what I changed and why. I just got the pages into my standard format recently and haven't brought the notes over.
This is what I was working from:
http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/smithsonianOld.htm
Definitely a work in progress!
Lars
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WOW! Lars, you have made great progress on the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country Album!
I have a long way to go to reach that level of completeness. I really like the way you presented your album pages in the scan.
But this evening I found a drawer with some duplicates (and a few stamps which go beyond my International Parts I-V albums which came in some small purchases with other stamps) and went through the envelopes and am now up to 65 of 785 countries! Now if I can just remember where the other duplicates are stored.
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I don't go by countries, but by spaces, because there are several other entities in the back that aren't countries. (I have added a few spaces to my pages, so I have more than 785 total). The last count I did was 740/803. The problem you will run into is the areas where fakes and reprints are prevalent. I'm trying to educate myself before tacking each area, but I'm sure I will be hoodwinked on more than one occasion. I feel comfortable spotting US fakes, but I have no idea how the Worldwide folks keep up with everything!
Some of the problem areas I noticed are:
Argentina - Buenos Aires
Argentina - Cordoba
Argentina - Corrientes
Stellaland
India - Jammu and Kashmir, Soruth, and probably others
Italian States - Romagna, Sardinia, Tuscany, and probably others
Germann States - Bergdorf, Lubeck, and probably others
Eastern Rumela
Karelia
Kionga
Spanish Morocco - Tetuan
Griqualand West
Transvaal
Tibet
Annam and Tonkin
Cochin China
Bangkok
New Zealand - King Edward VII Land
New Zealand - Victoria Land
Japan Offices in Korea
Nicaragua - Cabo Gracias a Dios
Venuzuela - Port of Carupano
Far Eastern Republic - General Semenov
Japan - Military personnel
In addition to the challenges with acquiring genuine stamps for the above, there are also a few rather pricey items:
The Canada - British Columbia and Vancouver stamp isn't cheap ($75 CV minimum), but like a dummy I decided to add spaces to include BC alone, Vancouver alone, and then the United Crown Colony, so that's REALLY going to be pricey for me.
Poland Russian Dominion is pricey ($250 CV) and had counterfeits
The biggest expense lies in the early Switzerland stamps:
Zurich $1500 CV
Geneva $1600 CV
Basel $11000 CV
I have some less expensive holes in my US collection I plan to fill before I even think about early Switzerland!
Lars
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I found my first country/issuing entity where I felt including two stamps was necessary. I had a Straits Settlements and a Japanese occupation stamp for Straits Settlements which is not in the occupations section of the album! I, also, located my first India States stamp for the album. I may have to extend to using used stamps for India States as an old album on blank pages has about eight different stamps from different India States in it but I only had one mint stamp in the group. Still thinking about it for now.
This is proving to be a LOT more interesting than I had expected. I got to use a bunch of stamps where I had some mild duplication for some fairly esoteric places. As a minimum I look up each area in Wikipedia and on Jim Jackson's site to get more background on the issuing entity for each new addition to the album. It has also proved useful to do Google searches for some country names where the issuing country name listed on the stamp is not easy to locate in the album due to language changes. This has brought to my attention quite a bit of added information occasionally.
Looks like I need to spend a bit more time perusing the Scott catalog as well. $11,000 for Basel!
That one probably will not happen unless a forgery shows up somewhere.
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JBaxter: Another site that might be of interest is this one:
http://www.dcstamps.com/
which stands for Dead Country Stamps. It's a work in progress by an active collector who I think has done an amazing job researching, documenting and organizing the history and philately of dead countries. One thing I particularly enjoy about his treatment are the "transition charts" he's prepared (again, a work in progress, so some areas are documented and some are not), which are nice flowcharts showing how these entities came and went.
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Thanks for the reference. It is a beautifully done site with much useful content.
And today I added Buenos Aires Scott # 10 to the album! Interestingly it is the lowest cost issue for the issuing entity in mint condition per the Scott 2017 Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps & Covers 1840-1940. This particular copy is unused but without gum. The Buenos Aires Scott #9 in dcstamps.com's page for Buenos Aires was a nice example for comparison.
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I am continuing to locate stashes of duplicates as well as some album leavings where the stamps did not have a place in my International I-V collection (just passed 14,000 stamps in it and still working down a pile of acquisitions from the past year) and now have 143 different unused stamps for the 785 issuing entities included in the Smithsonian album. I had a bunch of new items from the leftovers from the Supreme Global transfer to the International albums and there are still two large binders to check out!
I have found that having the Excel checklist that I created for the Smithsonian album open and using the Find function to type in country/colony names helps me tremendously in locating the correct page in the Smithsonian album since the album is mostly organized by region. Fortunately when I created the checklist I added issuing entity name, any text associated with the entity that was in the album and the page number where it is located.
Again if anyone else would like a copy of the Excel checklist, just send me a message through the Stamporama member messages system with an e-mail address for me to send you a copy of the Excel file. I, also, find that it is fairly easy to work with the Excel document using the Excel application on my iPhone from where I saved it on OneDrive so that I can access it wherever I happen to be. I suspect it would be easy to convert the spreadsheet into either Apple's or Google's equivalent of Excel as well.
Check out Lars' post and web site for his tremendous progress in completing this album as well! He has, also, posted some really nice notes on expanding the coverage of the album. While going through the Minkus Global Supreme album I noted some Colombian States and some occupations issuing entities that could also be added to the Smithsonian album coverage so there is definitely room for expansion if you need a bigger challenge.
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Finished going through the second volume of my leftovers from my Minkus Supreme Global where the stamps were transferred to Scott International albums and now have 225 of 785 stamp issuing entities covered for the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country album! Plus found two typos in my Excel checklist while using the checklist to search for the relevant page for a country. One where Malawi was misspelled due to a transposition in one of three consecutive entries in the spreadsheet that reference Malawi and one place where the issuing date range had 1874 rather than 1974 for the first date which stands out fairly well. Both have been corrected for any new requests.
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Finished the third volume of my leftovers from the Minkus Supeme Global albums and now have 291 of 785 stamp issuing entities covered so I have made excellent progress based on my expectations for the album and so far have only purchased one stamp for the new album which was previously mentioned in my posts. It was for Buenos Aires. I actually purchased two other items but eventually found that they were in the albums but the countries were found in unexpected non-alphabetical order within the albums!
I have continued to e-mail the Excel checklist to those who provide me with an e-mail address through the Stamporam message system since I have not found a location to post the Excel checklist. Several individuals have started new collections based on the Smithsonian album and I would welcome them posting their progress to this conversation. If anyone wants to create a virtual collection rather than pull items from their regular albums and/or stockbooks they could use the Excel checklist to track items found in their regular world collection as well.
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I have managed to tear in half the only mint stamp I had for Cochin China which I was attempting to remove from my Minkus Supreme Global album to move it to my Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country album. Worse, about two hours later I managed to do the same thing for a Tahiti stamp which was severely stuck down. Worse, it wasn't a French Polynesia stamp but a Tahiti overprinted French stamp!
After walking around the building here, I eased my frustration by checking for possible items for Cochin China and Tahiti by checking for listings on eBay, on Hipstamp, and, finally, from a prior recommendation by Antonius Ra, on Stamps2Go where I found suitable replacements and ordered them!!
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So sad! But hopefully a happy ending with your replacements.
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Yes, I am definitely happy with the replacements based on the pictures on the site and looking forward to their arrival. One good thing, I learned a lot about the relationship between Tahiti and French Oceania which I would have likely overlooked otherwise.
While I was looking up information on Tahiti since when I did a search for stamps on hipstamp.com and on ebay.com, French Oceania kept coming up, I found that Tahiti became a part of French Oceania.
I, also, took the time to review the listings for Switzerland in the Smithsonian album and found the entry in the album for Basel. Today, I checked out the Scott catalog entries for Basel and found that, if anything, Lars understated the prices for stamps from Basel. On a whim I checked Basel on hipstamp.com and found two listings, one an "excessively well done" counterfeit at $197 and one genuine stamp at $15,000! Yikes, even the forgeries are very expensive!
This really is proving to be a fun, highly motivating album filling exercise and interesting collection.
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Well a silver lining to many clouds! Do people really intentionally pay hundreds of dollars for known counterfeits? I can't quite wrap my head around that.
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Found a couple of old Scott Global Award albums and after checking out the stamps in them for the Stamp for Every Country album, I now have 327 of 785 different stamp issuing entities using mint/unused stamps pulled from albums containing duplicates. I did receive the two items I purchased through Stamps2Go.com for Cochin China and Tahiti so to date I have now purchased stamps for three stamp issuing entities for the album, one for Buenos Aires which I am sure I would not have and two to replace two stamps that were damaged trying to remove them from their original album due to being stuck down on the page. I had expected to come up with around two hundred different so actually did much better than expected. The Global Award albums had some stamps from later time periods up into the 1970's which allowed me to fill in several new countries that were previously British colonies.
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Wow, you are nearly at the half-way point, very impressive!
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Attended a local stamp show today and started talking with a dealer about the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country album. He thinks he has recently added a Basel stamp to his inventory which was cut into at the top. I doubt that even with that issue it would be affordable but he will check with his partner to see what price they would need for it as the partner made the acquisition. At least it was a very entertaining discussion and he was very interested in the album and had not heard about its availability from the Smithsonian. He operates a stamps only operation in Portland with a storefront and regularly comes to Seattle area stamp shows as a dealer participant.
I arrived late at the show due to other commitments today but did manage to find one new mint stamp for the album from another dealer with a 10 cent u-pick set of really worn International albums. Also, found 84 other mint stamps for the International I-V albums with an emphasis on stamps from Turkey and Part V so it was a fun visit. With some other items I have purchased on Stamporama recently I am up to 16.5% coverage yet still have about a nine inch stack of other items to go through so continue to hope for 17.5% completion once I complete the stack.
I continue to work on moving some stamps from Great Britain from a stockbook to new Scott album pages using clear Scott mounts as well and am now into the 1970's working from older stamps for QEII up through newer issues. It took me quite a while to locate 29mm vertical mount strips due to them being out of stock at both local stamp dealers plus at Amos Media and Global Stamps in Olympia, WA which slowed me down dramatically on the move as a significant number of stamps seemed to need either 29mm or 31mm tall mounts.
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I realize this is a bit off topic, but I started my stamp OFEC (one for every country) project at about the same time as a similar coin OFEC. The difference is that I picked a specific time-frame (circa 1980) for coins, so the number of coins needed was only 190 (and that includes a few examples of what didn't fit my criteria). I just completed that collection a few days ago and posted it to a coin forum. I won't post images here, but anyone that is interested can see the final product on the Coin Community forum:
https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=326313
You don't have to log in to read the message board.
Anyway, now that I finally got THAT finished, I'm ready to start spending time on stamps again! And that means picking up my OFEC album again! 740/803 = 92% completion.
Next focus: Those pesky stamps with "BEWARE OF FORGERIES" in the catalog listing!
I plan to add links to helpful pages for these dangerous stamps on my web page for OFEC
http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/smithsonian.htm
so if there are any links you would like to suggest I can add those as well so as other folks walk this path we can provide some guidance.
Lars
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That is a fascinating collection. Thanks for sharing!
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06:18:25am
re: A stamp for every country
Lars, great job! Why did you pick 1980? I am a little surprised at you estimate of value. I'm assuming they are all lower denomination base metal coins. Seems like you place an average value of about $4. It would seem that most could be had for far less. I guess that gets into what the lowest cost for which a dealer would be willing to handle and inventory a piece. I love the way you have them organized and presented. Thanks for sharing.
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11:12:37am
re: A stamp for every country
A few questions (hopefully not already answered here and I just missed them)...
1. Are any of the albums available free?
2. Do they cover current countries only, or do they include former countries/colonies/dead countries, etc.
I think this might be something worthwhile to add to the purview of The Holocaust Stamps Project (Canada) as an educational tool for the geo-political evolution of our world as seen through stamps over the past 150+ years (new countries, occupations, dismantled countries, colonization, etc).
Dave has already started something like this, based on the US "Over-Run Countries" issue, with information on each of those countries and the impact of the Holocaust in the devastating effects on their Jewish and "Undesirables" population - and any stamps issued commemorating The Holocaust.
But this would certainly be more expansive and bring a world-view into focus.
Thanks, Craig (& Dave LeMaven)
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12:18:12pm
re: A stamp for every country
Here's the link you can download the entire album, or get it by section. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to get the downloads.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/stampgallery/everycountryalbum.html
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03:12:44pm
re: A stamp for every country
Thanks Michael.
I downloaded the album and did some customization to support both geo-political and Holocaust education through stamps. Hopefully this is compliant with their terms-of-use.
Here's the sample cover page and one country to start (Canada, of course). I am going through my personal collection to pull out duplicates (or stamps from not-collected countries) to begin replacing images with actual relevant stamps.
If anyone has suggestions for improvement, it would be greatly appreciated.
Dave Lemaven (& Craig)
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03:19:21pm
re: A stamp for every country
DUH!!!
And here are the images.
(Dave LeMaven alone - Craig will not accept responsibility for my stupidity...)
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That looks really nice Dave! Don't sell yourself short!
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This looks like a nice start on a custom version. I will be looking forward to your future content additions.
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Yes, I like that as well. Please keep us posted. Personally, I added a space for United Crown Colony of British Columbia and Vancouver Island as well. In 1865 British Columbia issued stamps in pence and Vancouver issued them in cents. (There was a combined issue in 1860, but the colonies were still separate then as far as I can determine, so I'm not sure of the purpose of that stamp). The two colonies combined in 1866. The stamps of the combined colonies would be the British Columbia stamps with overprints in cents (1867-69). The combined colony joined the Confederation in 1871.
Lars
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Continuing to make progress with the Smithsonian album with new additions bringing my total to 340 of 785 different stamp issuing entities now present in the album.
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On a related note, I recently purchased a 1935 edition of Scott's Modern Postage Stamp album and after cleaning it up by removing some old stamps in the album (fortunately the old stamps were all hinged with really nice quality hinges which peeled off perfectly from the album pages so the album now looks almost brand new!) decided to make an Excel check list of all of the stamp issuing entities referenced in the album. Imaging my surprise at discovering there were 395 different stamp issuing entities in this quite compact (less than 1 inch (24mm) thick) album. In particular I noted that a lot of Italian related forerunners are in this album which are not part of the Smithsonian album. Similarly there are some Colombia forerunners as well.
Now I need to do the same thing for the five volumes of the Scott International that I have for comparison.
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Just finished checking out the number of different countries represent by the Scott International albums by comparison to the 1935 edition of the Scott Modern Postage Album and came up with the following totals:
International Part 1A1 through 1B2 - 370 stamp issuing entities not including Indian States
International Part 2 - 246
International Part 3 - 224
International Part 4 - 207
International Part 5 - 215
These totals are for new pages from Scott/Amos Media. I continue to be amazed by the number of stamp issuing entities included by the original 1935 Scott Modern Postage Album which sparked this review.
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Continuing to locate stamps for the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country album and have now reached 373 of 785 stamp issuing entities.
Also, had an opportunity to go through a Minkus Master Global Stamp Album, most likely copyright 1960, since it doesn't have Minkus numbers in the spaces and the listings go through 1958 or 1959 except for one or two countries which mention an ending date of 1960. (No title page or United States pages are present for a definite answer. ) It had spaces for 549 different stamp issuing entities which would make for quite a challenge. For more information on the Minkus Master Global Album see Jim Jackson's really nice article in the July 2018 section of the http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/ web site where he discusses several different printings for the album and its suitability as a single volume world wide album.
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re: A stamp for every country
"373 of 785 stamp issuing entities"
You're only 20 stamps short of half way there!!!
I hope to find time to look through my extras when it turns cool and dark and I can't golf. Right now stamps are on the back burner for me!
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Enjoy the outdoors while it is cooperating. Found 5 more this evening going through an old stock book that was in the box with the Minkus Master Global Album so now at 378 of 785.
Looked at a Trindad stamp three times before I realized it wasn't Trinidad and Tobago so got to add it!
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I am curious about one thing. Is there a system to what stamp you select to put for each country? Do you go as far back to number 1 (ideally) as possible, or do you select for looks, or strictly M/MNH, or do you pick something topical or indicative of something in particular like first president/king/ruler/hero picture or ???
This is an interesting idea to motivate younger stamp collectors, and teach them a lot about geography, history etc... I see a lot of customization potential, but it may be hard to fill all spots.
Wondering if I should get into it too?
At the risk of being thrown out of the house, I will delay a decision. Maybe after getting rid of my 26 Volume Europa (and still a few holes?) which would clear up some shelf space.
Great information to all the pioneers here.
rrr...
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"I am curious about one thing. Is there a system to what stamp you select to put for each country?"
You get to select your own system, but you probably already knew that deep down. In some cases you don't have a lot of choices, like the India Feudatory States, so you may have to use what you can find. In other cases there are prevalent counterfeits so it may be wise to avoid certain ranges of catalog numbers.
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re: A stamp for every country
In general, I choose whatever shows up. If multiple issues arrive simultaneously, I tend to pick stamps that I consider to be of most interest to me personally or occasionally the less expensive stamp if I am purchasing them from a dealer's pick book. My primary goal with this collection is to get an uncancelled stamp from each country. In some cases I will accept a mint no gum stamp but I prefer a clean mint stamp with gum. I don't care about non-hinged for this collection at all.
The goal for me is to fill the stamp issuing entities with relatively minimal cost. It has proven amazing just how difficult it is to find suitable entities at all so trying to find #1's or similar seems inappropriate. I am finding that more people are actually interested in seeing the album just because it covers so many countries and is fun to look at as a quick review whereas most non-collectors have little interest in more advanced albums.
I may even try doing a second version with all used stamps (although I will probably not include the non-country stamps in the last sections in that album, i.e. no military police action, occupied nations, etc., if I do it).
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Hi everyone,
I printed out the album as well. I really don't like the fact that it is landscape format, and I am seriously considering converting it to regular pages (lots of work there, though the checklist helps-thanks Jerrel), or, in the alternative, using a stock book or stock pages, which has the added bonus of being more flexible.
Is anyone else doing the stock page / stock book method? Don from Stampsmarter has some wonderful stock book label templates which could be adapted for this purpose.
Anyway, right now, I'm in the "choose a presentation method" that I can live with part of the process.
John
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I like the idea of freedom in this type of collection. You are free to pick the stamps as they come along, and swap them out at will. It’s good to be king!
For my own, I’m more of a cover guy so I believe I’d go that way with “A Cover From Every Country”.
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re: A stamp for every country
I started this project after Jerrel provided his spreadsheet listing all the countries in the album. It became easy to track what has been put into the album. Thank you for all the hard work on that listing.
I initially was going to do this as a landscape project but was not happy with that layout, primarily for working with the pages. I decided to go with the standard 8.5x11 3 ring binder with holes punched at the top of each page. See the attached sample page. I am glad I made that decision. The pages are laid out to work with either setup and still look good.
I am not a world wide collector but like the idea this album offers. I am starting with a 1933 Scott Modern Postage Stamp Album from my Dad's collection and my 1954 New Ambassador Postage Stamps of the World album. I am picking from these albums; my favorite or best quality or only stamp that I have for each country to put into the Stamp for Every Country album.
So far I only have inserted 37 stamps. I have gone down a dozen rabbit holes of interest as I find countries I never new existed or forgot existed since I have the stamp for that country. For me, reading an article about the country or the stamp on Wikipedia or Scott's catalogs has been a bonus from starting this collection. I will end up moving several hundred stamps from the two old albums but it will be an enlightening around the world journey of old and new interests. I was so glad to find this album on the discussion boards. It rejuvenated my collecting interests for world wide stamps (while limiting the volume of stamps required).
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KMARS,
I did the same as you, using a three hole punch and placing the pages into a standard 3-ring binder.
What I also did was print on 67 lb (147 g/m*2) card stock and use a 3/8" corner cutter (available at any scrapbooker's supply) to emulate the thickness and appearance of my White Ace pages from my other albums.
What's great about this project is that it is so easy to personalize!
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
Those pages look great!
I like to use top-loading mounts (Hawid, etc.) and I don't suppose there is any way to do the landscape method that makes any sense with that kind of mount.
John
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re: A stamp for every country
Larsdog,
I like the idea of the corner cutter. I am going to buy one. I use White Ace Pages for my USA collection so that look would be consistent and it seems to make the pages easier to turn.
I printed on 8.5x11 Springhill Opaque Offset Digital Colors Cream 70lb 104g/m2. It took Epson Claria Inks nicely.
I am using Showgard mounts and writing in pencil the Scott # underneath the bottom fold. It lifts without any pressure on the stamp.
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05:55:25pm
re: A stamp for every country
Hey Lars, speaking of "personalize", wouldn't be SO kuhl to marry a topical collection to this one?!?
Like, maybe, monarchs on stamps (a political theme)?
Or, local geology/landforms (an earth sciences theme). That seems to be a pretty common topic among countries...
-Paul
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re: A stamp for every country
I just got a copy of the International Postage Stamp Album - Junior Edition from Scott with a copyright of 1924 and counted and prepared an Excel list of the different countries present in the album to compare with the Modern Stamp Album copyright 1935 which I mentioned earlier. This one has coverage for 388 different stamp issuing entitites (not counting 37 Indian States, 9 Italian Offices in the Turkish Empire entities with unique surcharges, and 13 different Italian occupied Aegean Islands with unique surcharges which would yield a total of 447 different entities). I differentiated the called out areas as there is a simple linear list of the issuing entities at the top of a blank page in the album for these issues rather than a traditional section with suggested stamps and/or empty spaces.
This is album is about an inch and a half in thickness with a much roomier layout than the Modern Stamp Album. It claims to offer spaces for roughly 18,000 stamps. By comparison the Modern Stamp Album after a detailed review contains 5031 illustrations and 13208 total spaces for stamps in a much more compact layout. Both albums are printed on both sides of a page and have countries that are mixed on a page, i.e. new countries don't start on a new page.
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re: A stamp for every country
"Like, maybe, monarchs on stamps (a political theme)?"
I like that! And if you can't find a stamp with royalty, you can always opt for the butterfly!
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re: A stamp for every country
" I differentiated the called out areas"
I would love to do a deep dive on this. Most of my spare time for stamps is when the weather gets colder, so I can't offer too much right now. (I still haven't had time to go through my duplicates to see if I have anything useful for you). Perhaps we can start slow and just tackle North America right now. We can start with the Smithsonian pages and then country by country talk about what we considered changing, or actually did change.
I will lead off with page 1: CANADA
BEFORE:
AFTER:
I opted to have a stamp for the British Province prior to 1868 and another from the Dominion after 1868. I also elected to add a space for the United Crown Colony of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. Does anyone else have any inputs on this?
Perhaps our friends in the Great White North can weigh in on Canada?
My next departure is page 6, so once we move beyond Canada, if anyone has any inputs on pages 2-5, please speak up.
Lars
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07 Sep 2018
08:42:53am
re: A stamp for every country
"I opted to have a stamp for the British Province prior to 1868 and another from the Dominion after 1868....Does anyone else have any inputs on this?"
Only that we celebrate our birthday as July 1, 1867 (not 1868).
The first new issue of stamps appeared in 1868 (the Large Queens), so it's your choice whether your dates reflect those of the stamp issues, or the political division. Personally, I would go with the political division.
Roy
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07 Sep 2018
08:48:51am
re: A stamp for every country
Personally, I would rearrange the order of the forerunner provinces to group Province of Canada (which was modern day Ontario and Quebec together), PEI, NS and NB together, reflecting that these provinces together became Canada in 1867.
BC joined in 1870 (after the railway link was completed) and Newfoundland in 1949.
Roy
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re: A stamp for every country
I've just had a look at the catalogue and while I think the idea is interesting I'm not keen on the layout.
However, I guess any layout and choice of countries would be open to criticism.
I'll limit my comments to Crete.
I'd expect to see:
A British Administration 1898-99
B Russian Administration 1899
C Crete 1900-1913
D French Post Offices 1902-14
E Italian Post Offices 1900-14
F German Feldpost 1944
I only see:
- Crete 1898-1913 ... I would split out both the British and Russian issues
- Austrian Post Offices in Crete ... although these French currency stamps were not issued specifically for Crete (despite Scott listing them under this name).
The other foreign post offices in the Turkish Empire could be tidied up too.
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re: A stamp for every country
Just curious, is this your main collecting interest? Or do you all have other collecting areas, making this a sideline collection?
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re: A stamp for every country
"so it's your choice whether your dates reflect those of the stamp issues, or the political division"
Unfortunately I don't have a great deal of choice unless I want to reprint a lot more pages. It looks like the dates on the pages are issue dates.
"Personally, I would rearrange the order of the forerunner provinces"
Not a bad idea. The order I used was essentially the order given with minimal changes, but as long as I'm printing a new page anyway, that may be a better way of doing it.
"Just curious, is this your main collecting interest?"
This is not only a sideline, but a secondary sideline. My primary is US. Secondary is a Topical collection. This is just for fun, for me.
"I'll limit my comments to Crete"
We will need to revisit that when we get to Crete. Any other comments on Canada or pages 2-5 of North America?
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re: A stamp for every country
I have a number of other collections in progress but started on this as a sideline to use some of my duplicates and just see how far I could get with it. In the process I found it to be an amazingly motivating experience which has significantly broadened my exposure to the history of different countries and their postal emissions. All, so far, at a relatively minimal expense.
I have found it to be interesting to a number of people whom I have run into who are not stamp collectors so it has been an interesting social experiment as well. That I can point others to the Smithsonian site for a copy of the album if they want to get involved themselves is quite useful as well.
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I agree. It's pretty darn cool! And the perfect album to show a non-collector.
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"Personally, I would rearrange the order of the forerunner provinces to group Province of Canada (which was modern day Ontario and Quebec together), PEI, NS and NB together, reflecting that these provinces together became Canada in 1867.
BC joined in 1870 (after the railway link was completed) and Newfoundland in 1949.
Roy"
Roy,
What I can find on www.canada.ca shows PEI joining AFTER BC. I could sort by order they joined (BP + NB + NS; BC; PEI; NFL) or earliest issue (BP + NB + NS; NFL; PEI; BC + VI; UCC) or I could just go West to East (UCC, VI, BC, BP, NB, NS, PEI, NFL). I'm leaning toward option 1 as you suggested. Any comments?
Also, while we are on Canada, I am assuming that the Canadian Provinces listings before Canada in the Scott Catalog for "British Columbia and Vancouver Island", numbering 1-18 are as follows:
#1-2 ???
#3-6 Vancouver Island denominated in cents
#7 British Columbia denominated in pence
#8-18 United Crown Colony (cents overprint on pence impressions)
Then in the main listings under Canada, 1-20 would be the Province (Ontario and Quebec) and 21+ would be the Dominion (initially ON, QC, NB, NS). Sound right?
Comments?
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08 Sep 2018
08:10:25am
re: A stamp for every country
"What I can find on www.canada.ca shows PEI joining AFTER BC."
You are correct. My fingers were faster than my brain.
PEI joined Canada on July 1, 1873.
BC&VI #2 (#1 was never used) was issued for use in both of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, which were separate colonies until they were combined on November 19, 1866.
The rest of your list sounds correct.
Roy
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re: A stamp for every country
"BC&VI #2 (#1 was never used) was issued for use in both of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, which were separate colonies until they were combined on November 19, 1866."
Thanks, Roy!
The order of precedent countries is typically done with the most recent at top left, so I ordered the stamps with the original 4 provinces (represented by 3 stamps) at bottom right and then BC+VI, PEI and finally NL top left.
Regardless of how everyone feels about including a stamp for the United Crown Colony of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, it seems that the Smithsonian page for Canada leaves a hole for pre-Dominion Ontario and Quebec (Canada #1-20) that is hard to ignore. Here is my new page for Canada:
I could see collapsing BC and VI into a single entity, especially if you want to keep the cost down, but leaving out pre-Dominion Ontario and Quebec (Canada #1-20) seems to be an unacceptable omission.
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re: A stamp for every country
Things aren't so complicated with the rest of the pages.
Here are pages 2-6:
(page deleted since we have moved on from this continent)
The only thing I added to page 2 was a note to see page 125 for French Occupation of Mexico. If the US includes a CSA stamp, it makes sense to include a Maximilian stamp for Mexico, but if it's already on page 125, a note will suffice.
(pages deleted since we have moved on from this continent)
What I am considering changing on this page is Cuba. It seems that two additions are in order:
1. Spanish West Indies (Cuba 1-3,9-14,17-21,32-34,35A-37,39-41,43-45,47-49,51-53, and 55-57 were also used in Puerto Rico). I propose adding an example before the Spanish Dominion issue for Cuba and adding a note to Puerto Rico.
2. I am also inclined to divide modern Cuba into 1902-1958 (pre-Revolution) and 1959 to present. I like the idea of a similar treatment for Nazi Germany, but does that open a Pandora's Box in places like Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, etc.?
I would like to hear what other opinions might be before proceeding.
If you have any comments about the first half of North America (pages 1-6), please chime in no matter what your opinion or concern might be. The rest of North America (pages 7-12) and all of South America (pages 13-16) should be fairly straightforward.
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
Lars,
This effort of yours is important, and I appreciate it.
The problem as I see it is that if you get as little as three people together,
you will have three different opinions as to what should be included, or shouldn't.
Understanding, at the same time, what to include or not include is a matter of personal preference.
Because of this, I've just about concluded that the stock book/stock page method
is right for me. It is easier to make changes, and move stuff around. Changing labels
for stock pages/books is a trivial matter. Not so much for the printed pages!
This project is not as easy as it looks, and I appreciate the knowledge and ideas
from the advanced "stamp from every country" collectors.
John
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re: A stamp for every country
Yes, I agree that using stock books/pages are a good option for this kind of collection. Here's an example of how one could label stock pages:
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re: A stamp for every country
Very nice example of using stock pages for a stamp from every country collection showing an extension to sets of stamps and/or extension into a possible full album, so should it be labeled as a Collection for Every Country?
This really does look like a good approach especially where you want to build a general encompassing collection with areas of specialist intensity due to interest or availability of material yet still organized as a single collection. I must admit personally that I fit the album filling profile much better as it tends to provide some limits to my collection which might otherwise easily get out of hand. Of course, currently I do have about nine different albums in various stages of process with three more albums on order so limitations are easily bypassed.
And, yes, the albums do overlap their coverage and leaving spaces empty since I know I have the needed items in another album isn't working for me. So, I am duplicating content in that my International album in particular has duplicates from my country collections for USA, France, Great Britain, and Canada in particular. Plus I even have two International collections, one that has essentially all mint stamps and covers parts I-V and one that has a mixture of mint and used stamps and is part I only. And so it goes!
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re: A stamp for every country
No, not really meant to be an example of how to do a "Stamp from Every Country" collection, but more of an example of how to label stock pages.
Here's an example of how I started a Number One's collection early in the year...could be adapted for a Stamp from Every Country collection.
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"The problem as I see it is that if you get as little as three people together,
you will have three different opinions as to what should be included, or shouldn't."
While that is true, some opinions are likely more authoritative. If Roy provides guidance regarding Canada, I'm going to listen. If Keijo makes a suggestion about Finland (and he already has), I will pay more attention to that.
"Understanding, at the same time, what to include or not include is a matter of personal preference."
Yes, and that's why I take all inputs, make a decision for my own collection, and move on.
Whether the stamps are mounted on album pages or placed on stock pages is a matter of personal preference but does not impact what should be included. Using the Smithsonian pages as a starting point, I don't see it as an impossible challenge to have a dialog about some of the glaring errors. For me, the omission of the pre-Dominion stamp of Ontario and Quebec is a hole. British Columbia / Vancouver Island is more of a matter of preference.
Going through the pages one section at a time allows everyone a chance to make their opinion known if they see a deficiency. Then each person can make their own decision as to what to include and how to store them.
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
I have stamps for Central Lithuania but did not see it included in the Stamps for Every Country Album. I modified page 18 to include it in Poland. This seems to make sense to me but I would appreciate input from those better informed to determine if there is a better place for this country. Thanks for any input. My modified draft page is shown below.
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re: A stamp for every country
KMARS,
That's a great one to discuss! Let me get us up to page 18 first...
If there are no further comments on pages 1-6, here are pages 7-17.
The only notes I had were:
1. Page 10 has one stamp for St. Kitts 1903-1980. I plan to split that into 1903-1966 and 1967-1980 since Britain granted Autonomy in 1967 but not independence for Anguilla from St. Kitts and Nevis. Anguilla unilaterally declared independence in 1967 and started issuing stamps, but the stamps issued from 1967-1980 for St Kitts-Nevis all included Anguilla. Britain didn't grant Anguilla independent status from St. Kitts and Nevis until 1980.
2. Page 16 I added another spot for Suriname since it was an integral part of the Kingdom on Netherlands from 1954-1975 and an Independent country since 1975. (I also changed the color of South America since the yellow in the original document was hard to read).
3. Page 17 - Eastern Rumelia 1885-1920 is listed here for Bulgaria, but Eastern Rumelia 1880-1885 is also listed on page 101 under Turkey. Does anyone know the significance of this? This is what I posted 4-1/2 years ago when I first started working on this:
"Eastern Rumelia is listed in two places - page 17 (Europe) and page 101 (Asia). It is listed with Bulgaria with dates 1885-1920. 1885 coincides with the separation from Turkish rule, so Scott 20-40 would fit the bill, but it seems they got the date 1920 from the following entry in Scott "Eastern Silesia". Looks like a typo to me. The other listing for Eastern Rumelia (Asia, page 101) lists the dates 1880-1885. It seems like 1880-1884 would be better and any Scott #1-19 would fit the bill. "
I have yet to revisit the issue since I just now finished with North and South America. (Yes, it's taken that long).
So please make any comments you wish about pages 7-18. (Refer to KMARS post for the proposed addition to page 18). Hopefully we can close discussion of North and South America and start looking at what comments there are for Europe. I can edit my posts to delete the pages for North and South America once everyone has had a chance to comment. Not everyone has a printed copy of the pages so I posted images of what we are talking about. Page 17 (see #3 above) and Page 18 from KMARS are the first to consider for Europe.
(pages deleted since we have moved on from this continent)
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re: A stamp for every country
I don't see any further comments for the Americas, so on to Europe!
There are two pages under consideration right now:
Page 17 Eastern Rumelia
Page 18 Central Lithuania
Obviously if anyone has any inputs about anything else on these pages, now is the time to speak up!
Page 17 Eastern Rumelia - I still don't understand this one. The album page has EASTERN RUMELIA 1885-1920, and another entry (on page 101 for Turkey) for EASTERN RUMELIA 1880-1885. Scott lists Eastern Rumelia 1880-1885. All I can figure is that Eastern Rumelia 1-19 is intended for page 101, Eastern Rumelia 20-40 is intended for page 17, and the entry for Eastern Rumelia on page 17 should read 1885, not 1885-1920. If that is correct, all of the Eastern Rumelia stamps for page 17 (Scott 20-40) are overprints and, per Scott, "Counterfeits of all overprints are plentiful".
If anyone reads that differently, please chime in.
Page 18 Central Lithuania - KMARS correctly identified this deficiency and the proper placement under Poland. The only thing I will do differently is flip the order of presentation of precedent countries to keep with the established standard.
If there are any comments about ANYTHING on pages 17-18, please make your opinion known!
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re: A stamp for every country
Larsdog,
Below is Page 18 modified per your suggestion for Central Lithuania as a precedent country to Poland. Any other comments would be appreciated.
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KMARS,
That looks perfect! If you can send it to me via email in PNG or JPEG format it would save me the trouble of creating it for myself.
If anyone has any comments, speak up, but if not we're on to pages 19-21 to cover the remainder of Eastern Europe:
I am fairly ignorant when it comes to Eastern European history, but does it strike anyone else as odd that USSR and RSFSR are precedent countries of Romania instead of Russia?
We seem to be finished with North and South America. Any comments on Eastern Europe (pages 17-21)?
I need to find my keijo notes for Eastern Europe!
Lars
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09:42:13am
re: A stamp for every country
Something's really fishy about Romania. Moldova and Wallachia, yes. But Tannu Tuva is in Siberia, and the Transcaucasian Republic was made up of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. None of those have any connection to Romania. The Russian issues don't seem to have any basis at all.
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re: A stamp for every country
"Something's really fishy about Romania. Moldova and Wallachia, yes. But Tannu Tuva is in Siberia, and the Transcaucasian Republic was made up of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. None of those have any connection to Romania. The Russian issues don't seem to have any basis at all. "
I'm glad I'm not alone on this!
It sure looks like the stamps SHOULD be organized as follows:
Page 19
ROMANIA
Precedent countries - MOLDAVIA-WALACHIA
MOLDAVIA
RUSSIA 1922-PRESENT (start on bottom half of PAGE 19)
Precedent countries - USSR 1923-1991
TANNU TUVA 1926-1943
RSFSR 1918-1923
Page 20
RUSSIA (continued)
Precedent countries - KARELIA 1922
SIBERIA 1919-1922
NORTH INGERMANLAND 1920
FAR EASTERN REPUBLIC 1920
PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT - Civil War 1917
EMPIRE 1857-1917
Page 21 - erase Russia entry at top left on this page.
That covers everything except Transcaucasian Federated Republics, but that really belongs in Asia, so I propose moving it to page 95 as a Precedent country to Armenia and adding a note to Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Comments?
Lars
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13 Sep 2018
09:22:49pm
re: A stamp for every country
Anyone seriously interested in this topic of the history of stamp issuers should seek out this book:
For example, here are the pages for Romania and other parts of the Balkans:
Now the best news!
The book is avaialble from Abe Books online for US$6-7 postage included!
Here is a link (note there are multiple editions. Mine is 1989)
World History Stamp Atlas on Abe Books
Roy
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"The book is avaialble from Abe Books online for US$6-7 postage included!"
This is GREAT!!! Just what we needed! Order placed. I look forward to this addition to my library. It's also available on Amazon for the same price.
Lars
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You guys are awesome!
I just grabbed mine (1989 hardcover) from Amazon for less than $6 (used some rewards points), including shipping... I also saw one on eBay for $5.50 postpaid in USA.
This will be a great edition to the library.
John
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Thanks for the tip, looks like a great book! Just ordered mine for under $6 including shipping.
I'm thinking about starting a "Number one from every country" collection
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While I am waiting for my book to arrive, I will post the final Eastern Europe pages that I made. There is little of substance other than one dubious addition, one typo corrected, one stamp moved to Asia, and making Russia more organized. I will leave these posted for a few days and then delete them to prevent clutter in this thread. All of these images and additional comments can be found here: http://www.larsdog.com/stamps/smithsonian.htm
Of course, I will review what we have already covered so far after I get the book.
Lars
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I ordered a copy of the book as well. It looks very interesting.
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Brilliant Roy!
I have spent countless hours going back and forth between Wikipedia and Scotts trying to put together the same thing for the countries and areas Im interested in, specifically the significant changes around the two world wars.
And the breakup of the British Empire.
I have compiled a sadly small number of pages over the past year, at a "billable hours equivalent cost" of at least 200 times the cost of this book. Who says age makes you wiser...
Question: do they accept PayPal?
Many thanks, Dave.
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15 Sep 2018
10:54:17am
re: A stamp for every country
"Question: do they accept PayPal?"
I presume you mean Abe Books, since others mentioned the book on both eBay and Amazon.
No, I don't think so. I have always paid by credit card. Fast and easy, never a problem.
Roy
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re: A stamp for every country
I too bought mine at Abe Books, no PayPal, just used a credit card.
Very good service so far, even got an e-mail from them saying that my delivery may be delayed because of Hurricane Florence.
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I built an online database with stamp issuing country successors/predecessors info and was aspiring to add vintage maps. I was hoping to get some help on this project but when that failed to come through the database has just sat there unfinished. I got the basic data entered and a few maps...
http://www.stampsmarter.com/stampIssuing/Bycountry2.aspx
Don
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05:49:24pm
re: A stamp for every country
"Precedent country to Armenia and adding a note to Azerbaijan and Georgia. "
Don't forget Batum as a predecessor to Georgia. It had its own stamps issued during the 1919-20 British occupation.
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Don,
Thanks for posting the link. That is very useful. I have a similar list Keijo put together several years ago but is no longer available without subscription. I like having multiple sources to look over each country.
I have a question about your list, though. The next area we have to cover is Northern Europe and the one country where I had a previous suggestion on from more than one person is Finland. The suggestion is to split Finland between the Grand Duchy (1856-1917) and the Republic (1917-Present). I only see the Duchy on your list.
As I was posting the question I found my answer when I went back to your listing one more time, so in case anyone else out there is dense like me, if you pull up a country like Finland on Don's list, and select Finland as the Sub-country, if there are subsequent entries for that country, there is a NEXT button at the top of the listing. I missed that the first couple of times through.
Thanks for sharing your info! Great info, Don!
Since we have that out of the way, splitting Finland is the only suggestion I have for Northern Europe. Any other inputs?
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"Don't forget Batum as a predecessor to Georgia. It had its own stamps issued during the 1919-20 British occupation."
dollhaus, I added a note to Georgia to bring this up when we get there. Georgia is on page 96.
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re: A stamp for every country
I have question relating back to Central Lithuania.
Are you looking to group territories under the current country?
If so, I'd suggest that Central Lithuania be listed under Lithuania.
This was basically the unofficial Polish Occupation of Vilnius/Wilno and the area around it.
It was subsequently annexed by Poland and then returned to Lithuania by the USSR, with small parts given to Belarus.
If the basic criterion is a geographical one, I'd expect to see occupation and foreign post office issues included in the relevant geographic area rather than grouped under the occupying country or the country administering the foreign post office.
This is the way I organise my collection so I am biased!
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re: A stamp for every country
"Are you looking to group territories under the current country?"
Nigel,
That would seem to be most logical to me as well, but it doesn't appear that the Smithsonian pages are following a strictly geographic theme. I am trying to remain as consistent as I can with the theme presented by the Smithsonian pages, but I could see organizing them as you suggest. I just don't want to create any more new pages than I have to. For those collecting in stock books, that is a very viable and attractive option!
To your point about the Smithsonian pages not having a strictly geographic theme, I think that is clear from Eastern Rumelia appearing as a precedent country in both Bulgaria and Turkey. It appears that their theme is a geo-political one: Eastern Rumelia was considered a part of Turkey when the 1880-1884 stamps were issued, but was considered a part of Bulgaria when the 1885 stamps were issued. If one chose to do so, the Eastern Rumelia stamp or stamps could be listed only under Bulgaria to adopt a modern geographic theme. Like I said, that certainly sounds reasonable to me.
I think the geo-political instead of strictly geographic approach is why the Smithsonian pages omitted the British Province of Canada. To me, the British Province of Canada (Ontario and Quebec) joined with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to create the Dominion of Canada, then other provinces joined later. To the Smithsonian pages, the British Province of Canada WAS Canada, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia just joined later. Perhaps Roy can weigh in and tell us if that's the way he interprets it.
Right now I'm just trying to go through the pages and highlight anything that anyone suggests needs consideration. It's up to each individual to decide which, if any, need to be added to their version. I'm posting what I came up with because I am offering the files to create the updated pages for any page someone may wish to use. Others are welcome to post alternate versions using different criteria. KMARS is creating some pages on his own as well that he was kind enough to share with me.
Who knows, I may eventually decide that a purely geographic approach is the only way to go, and I may ultimately decide to remove Central Lithuania from my album. For now I am committed to my other additions, but I admit Central Lithuania is dicey since it was a Puppet State and only in existence for two or three years. Personally, I don't plan to add all of those WWI and WWII occupation stamps. Others may have a different take on occupation stamps.
And some folks may think the Smithsonian pages are perfect the way they are, and that's OK, too.
BTW, Nigel, you made specific observations about Crete earlier, and we will be covering Southern Europe next, so I will repost you comments. Feel free to elaborate when we get there. Waiting for feedback on Northern Europe, especially Finland.
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
Re Nordic countries... This is how I do them with my collection
Denmark:
Denmark (1851-)
Faroe Islands (1919)
British Occupation of Faroe Islands (1940-1941)
Faroe Islands (1975-)
Greenland KHG (1905-1937)
Greenland Thule (1935-1936)
Greenland (1938- )
Iceland (1873-)
Finland:
Grand Duchy of Finland (1856-1917)
Finland (1917-)
Aland Islands (1984-)
Aunus (1919)
Eastern Karelia (1941-43)
Norway (1855-)
Sweden (1855-)
And of course one could dive in way deeper with various local posts etc (which are plenty).
-k-
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re: A stamp for every country
scb,
I like your list. I would have said much the same.
I'm intrigued by the way you have split the Greenland stamps before and after 1935.
What does "KHG" stand for, relating to the period of the polar bear parcel stamps?
I would have guessed that you might have split Greenland in 1953 when the colony became part of the Danish realm (but I see no need to do this).
Perhaps you could include Slesvig/Schleswig?
This brings up the question of plebiscite issues such as Marienwerder etc.
I don't want to complicate things much further but in my own collection I like to include pages for stamps of another country used in that country.
For example, I start my Poland pages with pages of "Russia used in Poland" (as I don't have Poland #1!) and I do the same for "Russia used in Finland" for the appropriate period in my Finland album.
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re: A stamp for every country
Larsdog,
Sorry to go back to Russia before it disappears over the horizon...
I appreciate you don't want to include all the transient Russian Civil War armies and territories but I'd suggest including South Russia along with Siberia and the Far Eastern Republic.
If you wanted to drop one to keep the Russia area neat I would drop the Provisional Government.
I have a soft spot for Wenden so that's another candidate (here or under Latvia).
Even though it was a local issue it is still listed in most general catalogues.
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re: A stamp for every country
I'm glad Keijo (scb) shared his list. I started working from that almost 5 years ago, but it's no longer unrestricted so I couldn't share it myself. It's his work and he put a lot of effort into it. A very valuable resource!
We can use his list for Nordic countries as an example:
Faroe Islands is only one listing in Smithsonian. I don't see a political difference between Faroe Islands 1919 and now, so Smithsonian would not typically make that break. Regarding the British Administration stamps of 1940-41, there is a section in the back of the Smithsonian album (BOB) for examples of Offices Abroad, Local stamps, Occupations, and Military stamps. The British Administration stamps would be in the BOB section if they are included. As a result I did not personally alter Faroe Islands, but someone else may deem otherwise.
Greenland is only one listing in Smithsonian. Keojo's Greenland KHG (I think it's KGH) were privately produced local stamps, so they would be BOB. Thule would fall under military stamps and be BOB. As Nigel suggested, there is a possibility of making a split at 1953.
I agree that Finland should be split at 1917.
Aland Islands - Local Stamp (BOB)
Aunus - Occupation (BOB)
Eastern Karelia - Occupation (BOB)
That was my thinking. Other opinions will undoubtedly vary, but it's still useful for different opinions to weigh in, and I do wonder what the difference is between Faroe and Aland.
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"I appreciate you don't want to include all the transient Russian Civil War armies and territories but I'd suggest including South Russia along with Siberia and the Far Eastern Republic."
South Russia would be considered a Military stamp and thus BOB. One of the selected military stamps is the General Semenov stamp. I suppost one could replace that with a General Denikin stamp if desired!
Wenden, as a local issue, would be BOB. That starts on page 119.
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08:06:12pm
re: A stamp for every country
are there any stamp issuing entities that you already know are just simply Out Of Reach based upon price?
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"are there any stamp issuing entities that you already know are just simply Out Of Reach based upon price?"
The biggest expense lies in the early Switzerland stamps:
Zurich $1500 CV
Geneva $1600 CV
Basel $11000 CV
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08:50:00pm
re: A stamp for every country
What would be some of the newest stamp issuing entities? I'm thinking the countries formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia. It would be nice to have all engraved stamps but I dont think its possible. I would want to avoid having a classic 19th century stamp right next to a Disney stsmp.
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One possibility for the Switzerland items is to include some revenue stamps as placeholders to keep the empty spaces from getting to you. Each of the areas has specific inexpensive revenue stamps I believe. I haven't done it yet but the stamps keep coming up when I do searches for the issuing entity.
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"What would be some of the newest stamp issuing entities? I'm thinking the countries formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia. "
You can look through the entire album to see what the most recent entry is. There are several post-USSR break-up.
"I was thinking it would be nice to have all the stamps engraved but I dont think its possible. I think I would want to avoid having a classic 19th century stamp right next to a Disney stsmp."
You get to pick whatever stamp you want in most cases, especially modern issues.
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"One possibility for the Switzerland items is to include some revenue stamps as placeholders to keep the empty spaces from getting to you. Each of the areas has specific inexpensive revenue stamps I believe. "
What a great idea! Perhaps there are other work-arounds as well.
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re: A stamp for every country
You take a good nights sleep and there's ton of new responses to digest. The hordes of being a worldwide collector
Re, Greenland KGH... That's Royal Greenland Trading Department ( Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, KGH). I don't see it any different as say Mozambique Company or North Borneo Company - which are usually listed as 'postal entities'.
Re, Slesvig/Schleswig... True, I could include it with Denmark. But with my collection I have got separate category for German Plebiscite Territories. In a way this kind of separation makes life easier (especially when recalling that plebiscites were just a temporary political solution due to complexity of making up under which country should the territories end up).
Re, Faroe Islands 1919 entity... This is/was a local 'postmaster' release (due to lack of proper Danish stamps, the Danish stamps were first bisected then overprinted for local use)... All in all I'm not sure that there should always be 'political reasons' to make something a postal entity (this here being a prime example of such practice).
Re, difference between Faroe Island and Alands Islands... Nothing. Both are regions with complex past, but currently autonomous regions (sorry for poor quality of below pic - it was pretty late when I arrived there with a ferry) with independent postal administrations.
-k-
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re: A stamp for every country
Hi ernieinjax and larsdog,
These Swiss canton stamps are classics and it would be a shame to exclude them as locals.
However, the prices would be a huge problem for most of us!
I really like jbaxter5256's idea of using revenue stamp as placeholders.
As an alternative you could always use forgeries if you didn't mind including them.
If you did include locals another classic one that would have a scary price (if you could find a seller) would be Tblisi/Tiflis in Georgia where only six stamps have been found so far.
If you wanted to extend the scope of the collection a little further, you could perhaps include revenue stamps from countries that didn't issue postage stamps.
For example, some of the smaller German states used the service of the Thurn & Taxis postal service but issued their own revenues.
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re: A stamp for every country
Hi scb,
"Re, Greenland KGH... That's Royal Greenland Trading Department ( Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, KGH). I don't see it any different as say Mozambique Company or North Borneo Company - which are usually listed as 'postal entities'. "
Thanks for explaining this. I hadn't heard of this organisation before.
Another classic example would be Thurn and Taxis which was a business not a state.
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re: A stamp for every country
Dave Lemaven: I will be in Paris on Oct 1. If you want me to grab you a copy? I don't deliver, but I can mail it to you when there.
rrr...
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re: A stamp for every country
"Re, Greenland KGH... That's Royal Greenland Trading Department ( Den Kongelige Grønlandske Handel, KGH). I don't see it any different as say Mozambique Company or North Borneo Company - which are usually listed as 'postal entities'"
This is from The Posthorn, May 2000, page 16:
"1905 – 1938 Period
This was the Pakke-Porto period, i.e., the period when the KGH wanted a fee for carrying mail to and from Greenland. As a fee for letters would conflict with the monopoly of the Danish Postal Service, only a parcel fee was permitted."
I think the difference was the KGH stamps were not allowed for use as regular postage.
"Re, difference between Faroe Island and Alands Islands... Nothing. Both are regions with complex past, but currently autonomous regions"
CORRECTION: Aland is in the BOB section of the Smithsonian album on page 121.
I'm not going to post my new pages for these because there are just so many ways to go and everyone can make their own decisions. (And honestly, I'm still doing a little more digging for myself before making a final decision). Thanks for all the inputs everyone. That helps in making these difficult decisions. Feel free to keep discussing Eastern Europe and Northern Europe as we continue.
The next section (Southern Europe) is even more complex, so let's break it into more manageable pieces:
Southern Europe - PART I
My initial comment is:
I don't like the presentation for Bosnia. The dashed box at left makes no sense and why put the last precedent country on the next page?
The last page includes Crete, so please refer back to Nigel's comment from 9-7-18:
"I've just had a look at the catalogue and while I think the idea is interesting I'm not keen on the layout. However, I guess any layout and choice of countries would be open to criticism. I'll limit my comments to Crete.
I'd expect to see:
A British Administration 1898-99
B Russian Administration 1899
C Crete 1900-1913
D French Post Offices 1902-14
E Italian Post Offices 1900-14
F German Feldpost 1944
I only see:
- Crete 1898-1913 ... I would split out both the British and Russian issues
- Austrian Post Offices in Crete ... although these French currency stamps were not issued specifically for Crete (despite Scott listing them under this name).
The other foreign post offices in the Turkish Empire could be tidied up too."
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re: A stamp for every country
"Dave Lemaven: I will be in Paris on Oct 1. If you want me to grab you a copy? I don't deliver, but I can mail it to you when there"
Thanks gggrrr. I appreciate the offer but have one on the way to me...
Dave.
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re: A stamp for every country
I like the idea of combining "a stamp for every country" with "collecting #1 from every country".
I don't want to collect worldwide broadly, but I would like to build an album representing the changing world as seen through stamps. So I think that combining these ideas might be a good compromise: I can include a nice representative stamp for each country, but defer to a #1 if I have it.
SUGGESTION: Since these two collecting areas seem to be quite popular, would it be worthwhile to create a new Discussion Group dedicated to "A stamp For Every Country / #1 Stamps For Every Country"?
Dave
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re: A stamp for every country
Dave,
This was my thinking too (see my early post above). I am starting out focusing on building a collection of #1s. There's actually a surprisingly large number of #1s that are affordable. I am doing this using Vario pages using black labels and white text.
Right now, I'm thinking that this will be the main focus of the collection, but for those countries that a #1 is clearly out of my reach, you could have separate pages containing the earliest stamps that are affordable. These would be sort of "runner's up" pages so that those countries would be represented.
This would, in effect, be a combination of "a stamp from every country" and "a collection of #1s"
-Chris
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re: A stamp for every country
WooHoo!
World History Stamp Atlas arrived today!
Great idea, Roy!
I plan to look over the Americas and Europe over the weekend to see if there is anything glaring that we missed. If anyone else sees anything, let us know.
Lars
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Just received my World History Stamp Atlas today. It cost me about $7.00 on Amazon. received it in one week from Great Britain. Should make for some interesting reading.
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re: A stamp for every country
I too got a World History Stamp Atlas - I've been reading it on the bus each morning on the way to work. So far I'm up to Germany 1945-89. The book was published just before the fall of the wall and German unification.
Nevertheless, it's a very good read. Lots of maps. But a bit heavy for the bus.
I wonder if SOR members have cleaned out the market for this item!
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re: A stamp for every country
"I wonder if SOR members have cleaned out the market for this item! "
If not, at the very least someone in big data land has seen the spike and is now desperately trying to make sense of it!
Back to Southern Europe Part I, the only suggestions were for things that fall into the BOB section, and I have made a note to revisit what Nigel mentioned when he was discussing Crete. The one outstanding question is this:
Does the dashed line box at upper left make any sense?
If anyone can explain how that is relevant, please do so. Otherwise it's an easy fix with white-out, but it appears to be the first actual error in the Smithsonian pages. Everything else has been a judgment call so far.
I look forward to any inputs on the stray box, but on to the rest of Southern Europe:
(Please ignore the first 3 entries for Western Europe. We will get to those next).
I don't have any questions or concerns on these pages from my notes, but if anyone has any concerns (keeping in mind that Offices Abroad, Local Stamps, Occupation Stamps, and Military Stamps are in BOB), let us know what you think.
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
I received my order today. The book looks very interesting. Just started reading about the Channel Islands and Great Britain. There is quite a story in the different postal practices especially before the advent of stamps in Great Britain.
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re: A stamp for every country
I bought David’s international cover lots and that will be the start of my “Cover From Every Country” collection. I’m planning on keeping it light, no obscure and rare Indian states, no countries I never heard of.... in other words “The World According To Tom”. It’s good to be king!
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re: A stamp for every country
Go get'um Geiger
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re: A stamp for every country
"I bought David’s international cover lots and that will be the start of my “Cover From Every Country” collection. I’m planning on keeping it light, no obscure and rare Indian states, no countries I never heard of.... in other words “The World According To Tom”. It’s good to be king!"
Great idea, Tom!
I did something similar with an OFEC coin collection. I really didn't want to get into all the old roman coins, obsolete countries I had never heard of, and all the revalued currencies. So I picked a year and used an Atlas from that year to determine what the current countries were at that time. Even something that modest is 178 countries!
It is nice to be able to create what you want to fit your needs. It sounds like an exciting project!
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re: A stamp for every country
Time to finish up Europe with Western Europe.
I have a few concerns in this section, all on page 35:
1) Page 35 - there is no space for Nazi Germany, but there was a space on page 29 for the Italian Socialist Republic (1944).
2) Page 35 - there is no differentiation between pre-Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany, West Germany (circa Cold War), and re-unified Germany. Should there be?
3) Page 35 - I believe there is a TYPO on this page. The second entry for SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION makes no sense. Should that be LEAGUE OF NATIONS ADMINISTRATION 1920-1935?
Items 1 and 2 come down to how you view Germany. I can see how some would consider Nazi Germany to just be the same old Germany under different management and West Germany was a diminished Germany, but Germany still the same and DDR (or GDR - East Germany) was never really recognized, so after reunification Germany was back to "normal". That would lead to the view that ANY stamp from 1872 to present would properly represent modern Germany. I am having a hard time with that so I'm interested in what others think, especially our friends in the EU.
It's hard to escape the fact that #3 represents a TYPO. Am I missing something?
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
Hi Lars,
"1) Page 35 - there is no space for Nazi Germany, but there was a space on page 29 for the Italian Socialist Republic (1944)."
The situations in Italy and Germany were different.
The Italian Social Republic existed in the north of Italy as a German puppet state at the same time as a non-fascist royalist Italian government operated in the south (and gradually took control of the whole country).
Both issued stamps.
"2) Page 35 - there is no differentiation between pre-Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany, West Germany (circa Cold War), and re-unified Germany. Should there be?"
Up to you I guess.
I would suggest splitting it into German Empire / Weimar Republic / Nazi Germany / West Germany / Germany (reunified).
However, I expect this would annoy some collectors by splitting the Federal Republic into two sections, before and after reunification.
Others might prefer having just one section to reflect the basic continuity of German history from 1871 onwards.
"3) Page 35 - I believe there is a TYPO on this page. The second entry for SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION makes no sense. Should that be LEAGUE OF NATIONS ADMINISTRATION 1920-1935?
"
No, I'm sure this is deliberate. I think the overall handling of Saar in the album is silly but I don't think this section is the problem.
This section reflects stamps issued after France handed the Saar back to Germany but before the German currency was reintroduced.
I'd prefer to see the pre-war French administration included here as you have suggested but not at the expense of the German 1957-59 issues.
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re: A stamp for every country
Nigel,
Your response, as always, was concise and to the point.
"I would suggest splitting it into German Empire / Weimar Republic / Nazi Germany / West Germany / Germany (reunified).
However, I expect this would annoy some collectors by splitting the Federal Republic into two sections, before and after reunification.
Others might prefer having just one section to reflect the basic continuity of German history from 1871 onwards."
I agree that this is the space within which the differing opinions are likely to reside. Thank you for making the point more accurately and clearly than I was able to. We seem to agree that this is a matter of personal preference, and while the approach taken by the Smithsonian pages is a reasonable one, personal preference may factor in here. Anyone else care to offer an opinion?
"I'd prefer to see the pre-war French administration included here as you have suggested but not at the expense of the German 1957-59 issues. "
Perhaps I'm missing something here. On page 35, the top right position is:
SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION 1957-1959. On the bottom row center is SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION 1957-1959 again. I have corrected that in pencil to be LEAGUE OF NATIONS on my copy, but this seems to be a typo in the original document. Am I wrong?
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
Hi Lars,
Sorry, I misunderstood your point about the Saar typo as I hadn't noticed the Saar entry on the top row.
Yes, I agree it's a typo to have the German Administration repeated.
I'd suggest keeping the Saar entries in date order so updating the first of the German Administration as you have suggested.
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re: A stamp for every country
"I'd suggest keeping the Saar entries in date order"
Nigel,
I believe the "date order" for "Precedent Countries" used in the Smithsonian pages is descending by end date, so if I were to eliminate the duplicate Saar and replace it with League of Nations (1920-1935) then it would actually go to the right of Danzig. (Once they get into "German States", THEN they go in alphabetical order).
So, to recap, there is a typo that needs to be addressed in one of the following ways:
1) Ignore it and leave it empty
2) Insert a duplicate
3) Print a new page with that space omitted
4) Replace the duplicate with League of Nations Administration (1920-1935)
5) Replace the duplicate with something else
My plan is option 4 unless further inputs change my mind.
You make very interesting points about the main German entry, and I'm really torn right now, so I plan to ponder a bit, but it raises a question about your comment:
"However, I expect this would annoy some collectors by splitting the Federal Republic into two sections, before and after reunification."
If one takes the approach that FRG was the successor to Nazi Germany, does that mean we need to not recognize the legitimacy of GDR and therefore the GDR stamp belongs in the BOB section along with other occupation stamps? Whether or not we split German Empire / Weimar Republic / Nazi Germany should be based on how we treated similar questions. A recent example was Finland. I split it into two spaces because I agreed with the analysis you and Keijo presented. Would I need to make the Empire / Weimar / Nazi split to be consistent?
I see what you are saying about post-WWII Germany and what I do there may depend on how I treat pre-WWII Germany.
Thanks for all the insight!!!
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
Though the goal of Smithsonian pages is noble, they seem to simplify to extreme at times
As far as Germany goes, I use very simple and straightforward split into:
German States (Baden,Bavaria, Bergedorf...)
Germany (Empire, Weimar, Greater German Reich, Bohemia, GeneralGovt)
German Plebiscite Territories (Allenstein, Danzig, Saar etc)
Germany Occupied (various zones)
Germany divided (West Germany,East Germany, Saar, Saarland,Berlin)
Germany re-united (modern day Germany)
And that one-stamp listing of Austria, sigh... IMHO it should be Austro-Hungarian Empire, Republic of German-Austria, First Austrian Republic, Occupied Austria, and then modern day Austria... If this division feels illogical, then please study the maps on how Austrian borders have morphed over change of power & wars.
-k-
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re: A stamp for every country
K,
I always love to get your inputs!
Let's take Germany first. Splitting pre-WWII Germany into Empire and Weimar makes sense, just as splitting Finland between Duchy and Republic made sense. Doesn't that mean we need to do the same for Great Britain and France? What other European countries (besides Austria) would require similar treatment in order to maintain consistency? Romania? Denmark? Norway? Sweden? Greece? The list seems rather long. And if we go down this path, what does that mean for Africa and Asia?
I am actually inclined to take this path myself, but I want to differentiate what I personally choose to add from what I believe to be a typo or major error in the Smithsonian pages.
Let's assume I am committed to this path. What you call Greater German Reich has a connotation for Germany after 1943. If you mean Nazi Germany (starting 1932), then I agree it should be separate.
Bohemia (and Moravia) are already listed under Czech Republic. I don't know what you mean by GeneralGovt.
It looks like states and territories are covered. If, after replacing the duplicate SAAR GERMAN ADMINISTRATION 1957-1959 with SAAR LEAGUE OF NATIONS ADMINISTRATION 1920-1935, you believe there is a major omission in territories, let me know.
Occupation stamps are covered in the BOB section, so we can ignore them for now.
That brings us to Austria. Why did you leave out the Austrian Monarchy with stamps issued 1850-64? I agree with A-H Empire, but Republic of German-Austria was just a temporary post-WWI rump state that would belong in BOB, in my opinion. I agree with 1st Republic and 2nd Republic (modern Austria), but why not include the Federal State of Austria (1934-38)? I would dismiss Occupied Austria as BOB.
I look forward to your reply!
Cheers!
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
"The list seems rather long. And if we go down this path, what does that mean for Africa and Asia? "
The list for Europe is indeed long, mostly because Europe has complex history filled with way too many invasions & wars (talking hundreds just for 1840 to date). Not sure if anybody has ever build a proper "index" for all of it (even my records are constantly under construction and evolving as I learn more).
Fortunately rest of the world seems much more straightforward (or alternatively I need some more education, LOL).
All in all I think a lot of this "how we view the world" boils down to what makes "sense", and that is where personal views/opinions and prior knowledge play a major role. I sure would give an arm & leg if I could just talk with the folks who build the Smithsonian pages on why the decisions they made at times.
Re,Austrian omission... Simply "forgot" those from my list. But you are correct, they should be part of Austrian split.
-k-
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re: A stamp for every country
I concur, just getting people to agree upon the definition of a ‘stamp issuing entity’ is problematic.
Add in complex histories and the task by definition is ‘wrong’ in some people’s eyes. This was one of the reasons I stopped development on the SQL database I was working on; you pour large amounts of time into something only to have others tell you that it is all wrong and/or incomplete. This makes this kind of development well-suited for someone who wants to spend a lifetime trying to please everyone.
scb, if you would like a copy of the Stamp Smarter SQL table let me know and I can send it to you.
Don
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re: A stamp for every country
"This was one of the reasons I stopped development on the SQL database I was working on; you pour large amounts of time into something only to have others tell you that it is all wrong and/or incomplete. "
And for me (as well as the late SWH/Gerben van Gelder) this was one of the reasons that inspired and motivated both of us to create postal entities list of our own (with heavy weight on the last word). Every list out there was so "wrong" that we ultimately had to build something to match our specific needs.
"
I concur, just getting people to agree upon the definition of a ‘stamp issuing entity’ is problematic. "
Possibly the understatement of the year
Here's a small story that might say a lot about the difficulty of it all. Though I and Gerben both worked years (more honestly decades) first separately and then later shared and compared our data with long talks, our lists are like day and night. My postal entities list has got 1733 rows (and still growing with random new rows once and awhile), Gerben's list stopped at 3100+ entities. Both of us had more or less the same resources and data, where the differences come are scope and some approaches of where to draw the line. Possibly the hardest bit of it all is to maintain consistency and same set of rules for each and every country out there. (I admit that my work is constantly under progress on this part).
"scb, if you would like a copy of the Stamp Smarter SQL table let me know and I can send it to you."
Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass for now. It's not that I would not be interested, but I do have literally years (possibly decades) of new data to digest & migrate into my current database.
-k-
PS. Sorry for hijacking the topic away from Smithsonian pages...
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re: A stamp for every country
This is getting way too complicated and is sucking the fun right out of the collection!
I am going to take my "Cover For Every Country" the same direction as I have my New Jersey postmark cover collection. I will have a slot for every cover I currently own. When I acquire new covers, I will create the slot for those. My collection will always appear complete, but allows for expansion as I find new material. And I won't have a bunch of empty pages waiting for obscure Indian states that existed for a few days in the 1890s!
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re: A stamp for every country
"This is getting way too complicated and is sucking the fun right out of the collection!"
Nah, fun is still in there (at least for me). This kind of detailed approach is just where 30+ years of worldwide collecting can lead into. Depending on how one looks at it, it can be called evolution, progress, specialization - even madness.
I do realize that for most collectors having just single "Austria" or "Germany" or "Russia" is enough (and complex enough). But the thing is when you have collected the world for decades, there really becomes a true need to be able to pinpoint entities on more granular level.
Just my 5 cents worth (and with no offense meant/taken).
-k-
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"This is getting way too complicated and is sucking the fun right out of the collection!"
That is a major concern for me as well. That is why I want to differentiate between a real error (a duplicate for GERMAN SAAR) and something that is optional (like splitting Finland between Duchy and Republic). I have no desire to expand my collection by any significant amount, but if there are a few places where it makes logical sense to add a few stamps, I am inclined to do so. Whether I decide to include a particular stamp or not is almost secondary to the discussion and research involved that makes my collection more meaningful to me personally. If you are not inclined to add anything beyond the Smithsonian pages, that is a very reasonable approach, but you may want to follow along to be aware of actual errors in the pages. We just identified the first one: A duplicate for GERMAN SAAR. And that's not the only error. There are also some questionable things, like making the USSR as a Precedent Country to Romania instead of Russia.
I'm going to spend some time reviewing Europe and I will post a summary of what I took away from the discussion so everyone can comment before we move along to Africa.
Lars
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This post is just for Keijo and Nigel (and anyone else considering expanding on what is in the Smithsonian pages). I will get back to things of interest for the rest of you later, but I want to pose a question:
If we use Finland as an example where just one more stamp gives a "better" or "more relevant" or "deeper" representation of the countries history, what guidelines do we follow? If we assume that all occupation, offices abroad, local stamps, etc. are in the BOB section, when do we make a break? Finland breaks between the Duchy and the Republic. What about other countries?
After going through all of Europe and revisiting North and South America, I have these proposals for when to make a break.
1. PROMOTION: Sub-monarchy (duchy, principality, etc.) to monarchy; or colony (territory, dependency, etc.) to country. Smithsonian already does this in some places, so this is not a change. One could argue which date to use, but this is an established break. (In the Caribbean, Smithsonian uses the date of Associated State instead of Independent State).
2. CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT: Change between, but not within, these categories:
a) Monarchy - including Constitutional Monarchy
b) Dictator - Military Junta, Fascism, Communism (People's Republic)
c) Republic - free elections
d) Anarchy
After studying Central America, I'm tempted to add Oligarchy as a category. That would well describe the CIA installed governments in Central America to support the United Fruit Companies interests just as perfectly as it would describe the Putin regime. How ironic!
Comments?
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
I agree fully with #1 (Promotion), and it is relatively easy to follow.
What causes a lot of headache is #2 (Change of governement) as there are myriad variations of this theme. I'll give you two examples
1) France
The "official list" with history books goes something like Second Republic->Second Empire->Third Republic->French State (Vichy France)->Provisional government of French Republic-> Fourth Republic->Fifth Republic
The difference between various republic is mostly who's in power. 3rd and 4th republic were parliamentary systems, fifth is semi-presidential one.
In a way I'm on the same lines as you - change from Republic to Republic should not be noted. So one could simplify French entities as French Republic->French Empire->French republic (again)->French State (basically a puppet state)->French Republic (again). So down to three entities.
A bigger question is what happens to provisional governments (maybe adding another sub-item to list on #2, or merging it with what follows - like I did above)
2) Belgium... Once independence was established, it has officially remained as kingdom. So it would be just one listing if looking at history books.
But as most of collectors know, Germans occupied Belgium during WW1 and the "Free Belgium" became just a tiny blob that was run by exile governement in Northern France and King at frontier. So I would not consider as same "country".
And during WW2 the Germans once again took over the land. But Belgium remained as independent Kingdom as King Leopold never fled the country and was put into house arrest by Germans, and the government once again exiled. But in reality the life of people down there was run by German appointed military government.
So I'm tempted to say Belgium should be listed as Kingom of Belgium->Free Belgium during German occupation->Kingdom of Belgium (again)-> Belgium under German rule ->Kingdom of Belgium (again)
Possibly the main question here is whether or not to consider ww2 era Belgium as occupied or as a puppet state.
So for item #2 I would add option e) puppet states, oligarchies etc.
But yes, you have well summed up most of the (unwritten) rules I try to follow.
-k-
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re: A stamp for every country
Hi Lars and -k-,
Thanks for another two thought-provoking posts!
The more I do think about this the more I feel it's an issue for personal judgement not just in terms of the organisational principles but also for individual cases.
I don't see a need for a BOB (as in the current Smithsonian structure) so I smiled to see your comment, Lars: "If we assume that all occupation, offices abroad, local stamps, etc. are in the BOB..." as I think it's the one point where we would take very different approaches.
I would move the members of that BOB to the most relevant country:
- Occupations to the country being occupied.
- Offices abroad to the country where the offices were located.
- Local stamps to the country etc.
I would also include international organisations (League of Nations, UN etc.) with either the country of their head office or simply create a new section for them.
I suggest that as well as questions of "Promotion" (although that term is loaded) and "Government" there is also the basic question of "Name" (especially as it appears on stamps).
In terms of promotion, I would suggestion keeping this as simple as possible so Finland as part of Russia and independent Finland still seems a reasonable split to me.
I would include Aland here but probably not Karelia, Eastern Kerelia, Aunus or North Ingermanland which I would keep with Russia.
I would also include the Helsinki and Tampere town posts with Finland but I realise that would be a minority position!
I would probably not make room for changes of government or form of government (at least in most cases).
France is a good example. I would not distinguish between the empire and the various republics.
I think this is mainly because I think of the country simply as "France" rather than as the "French Empire" or the "French Republique".
I find the Petain/Vichy state more difficult but I'd perhaps lean towards excluding this too.
I agree that Belgium is another nice example and it's tempting to represent the timeline as: Belgium / German Occ / Belgium / German Occ / Belgium
but maybe neater would be to have one Belgian stamp and one each from the two periods of German control (and maybe also one from the WW1 Western Staging Area).
DR Congo brings up the issue of whether to reflect name changes as well:
- Autonomous State of the Congo (the Belgian King's private possession)
- Belgian Congo (Belgian colony)
- Republic of Congo / Republic of Congo-Léopoldville
- DR Congo
- Zaire
- DR Congo
and also Katanga and South Kasai.
Another similar name problem is the Central African Republic:
- Ubangi-Shari
- Central African Republic
- Central African Empire
- Central African Republic
and this still leaves the issue of where to put the stamps for Ubangi-Shari-Chad and French Equatorial Africa.
I'll stop here because I don't feel able to contribute useful organising principles.
However, I shall watch how this discussion develops with interest.
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re: A stamp for every country
"I don't see a need for a BOB (as in the current Smithsonian structure) so I smiled to see your comment, Lars: "If we assume that all occupation, offices abroad, local stamps, etc. are in the BOB..." as I think it's the one point where we would take very different approaches."
To me, the reason to put occupation, offices abroad, local stamps, etc. into BOB is that it is titled: STAMP ISSUING ENTITIES (SELECTED). The idea being that there are so many of these entities that it would be too daunting of a task for most of us to attempt. Included are a mere 15 offices abroad, 21 local stamps, 31 occupation stamps, 15 international organizations, and 21 military stamps. If something really important is missing, it can be added to BOB. If Aland wasn't already in BOB, I would have added it to BOB or Finland. I plan to stay with that format. The alternative for me is throwing in the towel.
-k-, let's look at your two examples:
1. France: Second Republic->Second Empire->Third Republic->French State (Vichy France)->Provisional government of French Republic-> Fourth Republic->Fifth Republic
If we eliminate occupations and don't differentiate between republics, it's just Republic->Empire->Republic. That's it. You may argue we are missing some mighty important history during WWII, but as it turns out, BOB already has Free French Provisional Gov't, German Occupation of Lorraine, and German Occupation of Alsace.
2. Belgium: Again, if we push occupations to BOB, Belgium is just one listing. Interestingly, German Occupation of Belgium during WWII and Belgian Occupation of German East Africa are both included in BOB.
The big benefit of this approach is that you don't need a Belgium stamp from before WWII and one after WWII. You just need one, since it was really the same government interrupted.
I understand that this is a very abridged collection that World-Wide collectors would see as missing a lot of meat. I feel the same way about face-only US collections. But for those of us who don't collect world-wide, it's a fun and fairly attainable challenge to get some pretty good coverage of the pages. The original Smithsonian pages have about 785 spaces. I don't mind expanding that by 20% or so, but I don't want to end up doubling that number!
For those who are happy with the Smithsonian pages as is, I just want to point out a few mistakes they may wish to address (or ignore). For those who are invigorated by this challenge and read up on each country as we encounter them, I would like to find a way to add a few modest additions that tell a more complete story. It's up to each collector to decide how to proceed.
But I'm afraid we will lose everyone that is on this quest if occupations and temporary coups are not relegated to BOB.
Nigel, even if we come up with a cogent definition of when to make a break in a country for Europe and the Americas, I dread Africa. Hopefully you can help guide us through the Heart of Darkness. (Not too subtle Joseph Conrad nod).
Lars
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re: A stamp for every country
"I suggest that as well as questions of "Promotion" (although that term is loaded) and "Government" there is also the basic question of "Name" (especially as it appears on stamps)."
Any suggestions on a label that is more appropriate than "Promotion"? I assume "Elevation" has the same baggage.
As far as country name on stamps, I would hate to keep up with every time St. Kitts changed to St. Christopher and back again. Instead of name, I propose focusing on Government. The Republic of Cuba did not change to the People's Republic of Cuba in 1959, but it did just that, in essence. I don't have a good example off the top of my head, but I recall seeing a name change for another country that was cosmetic at most. Everyone in North America knows Cuba changed dramatically in 1959 even if we don't all know the details or whether the name changed.
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re: A stamp for every country
Another example of mostly cosmetic name changes might be Congo and its variations to Zaire and then back to Congo. Although maybe the name changes aren't as cosmetic as they seem given the somewhat volatile politics of the area known as Congo in Africa. I've been reading a fascinating book about the Congo by David Van Reybrouck which has been quite eye opening.
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re: A stamp for every country
Let's not forget the recent Swaziland to eSwatini namechange...
-k-
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re: A stamp for every country
jbaxter, what you said about Congo is why I'm so concerned about trying to expand Africa. I'm afraid it will be as bad, or worse than, Central America.
I wanted a better picture of Europe so I thought about highlighting major transitions, like Duchy Finland to Republic and Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. I had what I thought was a good plan and decided to revisit North America and see how it went. Just about every country in Central America, when the first stamps were issued, was what O. Henry called a "Banana Republic". Whether it was bananas, or coffee, or something else, the governments were run by an oligarchy supported by Cuyamel Fruit Company (acquired by United Fruit), United Fruit Company (now Chiquita), and Standard Fruit Company (now Dole). If workers tried to organize and influence elections, the fear of Communism lead to CIA support of brutal militaries. But those militaries hungered for more power and military coups were common place. According to Wikipedia, Honduras "since independence, nearly 300 small internal rebellions and civil wars have occurred..."
Then I thought, OK, why not get a stamp from the old Banana Republic days (regardless of whether it was an oligarchy, dictatorship, or junta) and a new one from after a stable republic was formed.
Costa Rica - check (11-8-1949)
Guatemala - check (1-14-1986)
Honduras - oops! Things looked good from 1-27-1982 to 6-28-2009, but now it's back to a Banana Republic.
Nicaragua - check (7-17-1979)
Panama - check (12-27-1989)
El Salvador - check (1-16-1992)
Granted, some of these countries had stable Republics earlier, and I would plan to list those years as best I could.
Looking at the Caribbean, Haiti's longest stretch of democracy was less than 10 years: 10-12-1994 to 2-29-2004.
With U.S. posture toward Central America the way it is now, they could all devolve back to Banana Republics.
I'm still thinking about this.
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re: A stamp for every country
This post has gotten very long and really covers two different things so I am going to start a new thread:
A stamp for every country (Standard). That's where we can cover items of interest for everyone pursuing this project. I will start another thread later for those interested in expanding on the Smithsonian pages.
Hopefully that will keep things more relevant for those who wish to follow either or both threads.
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12:04:08am
re: A stamp for every country
good deal.. This is a great thread and really helping me keep an how to continue the collection I have using the Terra Nova publication Single Specimen albums... really is a lot of room for personal judgement as to what constitutes an entity. This for sure should continue.
Thanks,
J
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I've been making a bit more progress with the World History Stamp Atlas book after finishing the Congo book by David Reybrouck which I mentioned earlier (I highly recommend the book for anyone interested!). It is fascinating the detail the World History Stamp Atlas book brings out in the early sections on Europe as to history as it discusses the development of postal authorities and delivery routes, stamp issues, etc. I find I am astonished by how many non-aligned nations existed during World War II, the mercurial political history of France switching between empire and republic and back multiple times, the political developments in the areas now known as France and Germany, how much political change in Europe followed the 1940's, etc. And all of it ties into the production and use of postage stamps!
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07:31:42pm
re: A stamp for every country
In biological taxonomy, there are lumpers and there are splitters. As for countries to collect, I am probably getting carried away with splitting, while the Smithsonian album lumps countries to much.
I include countries that did not produce stamps of their own, but outsourced their postal service to some other country or entity. One has to examine postmarks carefully to find them. Sikkim was enough of a country to appear in its own color on old maps, but never produced its own stamps, but instead relied on India, so I count Indian stamps postmarked Gangtok, the capital.
For Germany, I have been looking for postmarks from each member of the German Confederation and the Austro-German Postal Union which were both abolished in 1867. Thurn and Taxis served a number of forgotten countries, such as Hesse-Kassel, Reuss-Gera, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the Duchy of Nassau, the Free City of Frankfurt, and so on.
Saxe-Altenburg latched onto the postal service of Saxony. Look for numeral 11 in the cancellation.
Anhalt-Bernburg, Waldeck, and a couple of others used stamps of Prussia.
An exclave of Oldenburg (Birkenfeld) used Prussia, but Hohenzollern, an exclave of Prussia, used Thurn and Taxis, southern district.
Austria was a member, so I split pre-1867 Austria from the post-1867 entity, Austria-Hungary.
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re: A stamp for every country
Nice post Greaden.
I would do the same if I could find the stamps!
Many of these countries did have their own revenue stamps either when independent or much more often later as states within the North German Confederation or the German Empire.
Here are four stamps from the independent state of Hesse-Kassel:
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12:06:29pm
re: A stamp for every country
For Prussia, I've been looking for towns on maps, and then searching for them on lists of Prussian numerical cancels.
17 Allstedt (exclave of Saxe-Weimar)
48 Arolsen (capital of the Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont)
65 Ballenstedt (in Anhalt-Bernburg)
110 Bernburg (Capital of the Duchy of Anhalt-Bernburg)
131 Birkenfeld (Exclave of Oldenburg)
315 Dessau (Anhalt-Dessau)
422 Frankenhausen (Exclave of Schwartzburg-Rudoldstadt)
584 Harzgerode (Anhalt)
1180 Pyrmont (Waldeck and Pyrmont)
1191 Raguhn (Anhalt)
1260 Rosslau (Anhalt-Dessau)
1410 Sondershausen (The principality of Schwartzburg-Sondershausen included areas in the Prussian and in the Thurn and Taxis postal systems)
1637 Wildungen (Waldeck)
1703 Zerbst (Anhalt), home of Catherine the great.
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Thanks Greaden, that looks a useful list.
I've made some notes somewhere about postmarks from Waldeck & Pyrmont (and from a couple of other states) and I'll try to find these.
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01:29:45pm
re: A stamp for every country
For Thurn and Taxis numerical cancels:
Hesse and surroundings of Frankfurt:
1-87: Northern District. Electorate of Hesse-Kassel. 14-Kassel, 29-Hanau.
88-165: Southern District. Hesse-Darmstadt. 104-Darmstadt, 134-Mainz (2nd most common after Frankfurt), 163-Worms.
166-217: (S) Nassau. 196-Nassau, 215-Wiesbaden.
218-219: (S) Hesse-Homburg.
220: (S) Frankfurt. By far the most common cancel.
Thuringian States:
221-251: (N) Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. 231-Eisenach, 234-Jena, 251-Weimar.
252-269: (S except Camburg) Saxe-Meiningen. 256-Hildburghausen. 258-Meiningen, 261-Saalfeld. 251-Camburg (exclave in Northern District).
270-280: (straddling northern and southern districts) Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. 270-Coburg, 273-Gotha.
281-283: (N) Schwartzburg-Sondershausen.
284-289: (S) Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. 288-Rudolstadt.
290-299: (N) Reuss-Gera and Reuss-Greiz. 291-Gera, 292-Greitz.
Offices in Hanseatic cities:
300: (N) Hamburg
301: (N)Bremen
302: (N) Lübeck
Outliers:
303-6 (S) Hohenzollern, exclave of Prussia
316-334: (N) Lippe-Schaumburg and Lippe-Detmold. 320-Bückeburg (Schaumburg-L capital),
321-Detmold (Lippe-Detmold capital).
Remaining numbers are small towns allocated later which are literally all over the map.
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10:33:29pm
re: A stamp for every country
Basically, counting Thurn and Taxis as two countries -Northern and Southern districts - misses the point. Scott makes the distinction, but keep in mind that the North German Confederation also issued stamps for the two currency zones as well as for Hamburg.
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