Collecting stamps from countries that don’t exist | Hacker News Reader

Collecting stamps from countries that don’t exist

atlasobscura.com

46 pointssohkamyung31 comments

I'm a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to stamp collecting, and only like the pre-WW2 ones when stamps were lovingly engraved.

After the war post offices realized they could sell stamps to collectors who wanted "uncancelled" stamps, meaning they were pure profit for the P.O. Stamps were sold from the P.O. directly to collectors who never used them for postage. Hence, the variety of stamps exploded, and the designs were cheaply done. In my not so humble opinion, they wrecked the hobby with this, and it shows in that stamps printed after WW2 have little to no collector value.

The same thing happened to coin collecting. For example, a US mint collector set from the 1970s is worth its metal value today. They look nice, but that's it.

-I no longer collect stamps, but surely there are countries in which (some) stamps are still made to a very high standard?

While the Norwegian Post have also catered more and more to collectors than to the actual use of their stamps for their intended purpose in later decades, I'd argue that engravers Sverre Morken and Knut Løkke-Sørensen (to name the two most prominent ones) have made quite a number of wonderful stamps also in later decades - all painstakingly engraved.

The Faroes and Iceland also have had quite a few nice issues, however I believe they, too see collectors as their primary market, which kind of defies the purpose of issuing stamps in the first place, I agree!

I gave up on collecting because of that. I dumped the stuff a few years back and invested it in the stock market instead :-)

I'm sure there are some nice ones here and there amid the flood of dreck, but it's not for me anymore. The fraud rampant in the stamp/coin business is pretty off-putting, too. Being an amateur just means your tail feathers are going to get plucked.

What kind of fraud? Counterfeits?

Counterfeits, adverse grading, appraisers swapping your stamps/coins out for lower grade ones, and simply lying to you about the stamps/coins.

It's like the art world. Full of fakes, fraud, etc.

An example of a place where stamp and coin sales provide a significant revenue stream is the Falkland Islands. Despite being tiny, there's a post office there that sells commemorative stamps and coins[0]. It does brisk business every time a cruise ship pulls in to town, with very few of those stamps or coins expected to be used for their supposed purpose: "The presentation of any collector coins for redemption is unlikely as the selling prices and precious metal values exceed face value"[1].

[0] https://www.falklandstamps.com/

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120118140540/http://www.falkla...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Falkland_Island...

Then there’s people like me helping that problem by buying MNH stamps for 50-60% of face value and using them as postage.

Yes, my packages are covered in stamps, but I like working with the numbers.

The clerks at the PO must hate me, but I see it like using a gift card that was bought 10 years ago.

I ordered something online a while ago, and it came covered in stamps from the ‘60s.

I surprised people sell them at lower than face value? I suppose they never mail anything anymore?

Not enough I guess. Even then, a lot of big sellers get a discount from Canada Post, so often not worth it for them to deal with stamps.

And our domestic shipping is kinda expensive: often cheaper to buy internationally...

I've come to the conclusion that anything sold as collectable, won't be. It'll be produced with such a massive supply that there'll be zero rarity value, so when demand dries up in later years it'll be worth much less than what you paid, or be worthless.

Yes. Collectible stuff always seems to be stuff one never thought would be collectible.

Even if something is overproduced, if it wears out over time or is eliminated through attrition, eventually it will be valuable if demand doesn't go away. The comic book collection thrown out by parents is proverbial, as well as the cheap sports car owned by young people who trash them. There's a TRS-80 computer I wish I still had, but at some point it was decided that it was worthless...

I rue the day I got rid of my H-11 computer :-/

USSR' stamps should be there too I think.

Hacker News special: https://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Stam...

This is the stamp featuring first (AFAIK) optical character recognition state wide implemented service - USSR's automatic postal cards and letters sorting by indexes.

Also, you have countries that do not exist anymore; Norwegian author Bjørn Berge published a book (Since translated into English with the title 'Nowherelands') in which he briefly sketches the circumstances that brought countries like Tripolitania, Heligoland and Batum into - and out of - existence, accompanied by a selection of stamps from said countries. It made for quite interesting reading for me, who've always been a geography geek.

Different, but somehow related, in the '90's in Italy there was a funny attempt to send letters via the mail with fake (completely invented) stamps, hand drawn, and satyrical, by three friends, the stamps were hand-drawn but passed just fine the checks (Italian, but not too bad with an online translator):

https://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/napoli/notizie/ar...

Somewhat similar I remember various discussions/articles on various BBS and even sites like the former TOTSE.com (Temple Of The Screaming Electron, now redirects to a mirror https://totseans.com/) that instructed people on how to attempt to reuse actual postage stamps.

It generally involved coating them with a common substance so that your recipient could remove the ink easily with others discussing solvent concoctions telling you how to remove ink on stamps you received.

Also I recall various posts telling you different ways you could defraud vending machines that had different levels of anti-theft devices. Some involved using washers a comparable weight and dimensions of coins that were cheaper than the coins, some involved building tape structures on paper currency and feeding it into the machine and knowing the precise time to begin pulling it back out with just the right amount of force to get the machine to accept the bill but still retrieve it.

Then of course all of the different phreaking boxes, some of which worked and some of which were pure fantasy.

While I appreciate this sort of thing at a hacking level "I wonder if I can do this", it always amazes me when people that would never steal from a store or a person are quick to try activities like stamp fraud, unlicensed violation of radio spectrum, system penetration/data theft, ripping off vending machines and payphones etc.

Mind you in my youth in the 1990's I tried lots of these things too.

Well, the three guys mentioned in the article creating hand made post stamps were actually put on trial but ultimately exonerated because they did not attempt to imitate any existing or valid stamp, if I recall correctly the point was that there was not forgery involved, and thus there was no crime, it was considered like if you mail a letter without a stamp (or with a stamp with a value lower than the needed one) it is up to the Post Office to notice and ask the postage (or the postage difference) to the sender or to the addressee when it delivers the letter.

> coating them with a common substance

Covering stamps in clear glue so that your correspondent could remove the cancelling stamp when steaming them off the envelope for eventual re-use was something that was commonly discussed during the heyday of the zine scene in the 1990s. Now postage has become so obscenely expensive again for anything beyond a letter that maybe I should get back into the glueing trade... :P

No talk of scams involving Italy and Postage should go without mention of the original Ponzi scheme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi#Origin_of_the_te...

The wonderful Robert Arthur short story "The Marvelous Stamps from El Dorado" is a great take on this theme.

Interestingly no mention of the diskworld stamps:

https://www.discworldemporium.com/46-stamp-collecting-for-be...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Discworld Stamps are not stamped?

The article features stamps that have been stamped by imaginary countries. This might make a difference to stamp collectors, I believe.

I’m not sure but I think they have also special editions that are franked.

https://picclick.co.uk/Lot-of-30-Franked-Discworld-Stamps-En...

No an ex country; but I found this episode from 99% invisible about the Great bitter Lake Association (And it's stamps!) rather entertaining:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/great-bitter-lake-ass...

Disclaimer: I found it here in HN a while ago.

Should append "anymore" to the title

Interesting. I happen to have some Siamese and pre-partition Indian stamps and coins. I didn't think there was really a market for these anymore.

The whole premise of Tuva or Bust! stems from a young Richard Feynman falling in love with the stamps from the short-lived country of Tannu Tuva.

Gotta stop borrowing postagr from Jorge Luis Borges. My mail keeps getting returned.

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