are those 'real' stamps?
Hello, I hope you do not mind me joining in the discussion, and that I respond in English; I do live in London and I do not have any hebrew software. If you intend buying stamps from any country, perhaps you should first check in an atlas or on the net whether the country exists at all. There is something called Universal Postal Union which was established in 1874, and regulates international postal movement of articles.http://www.upu.int is the website, and it lists the current memebers. You should also be aware of history, where political developments and wars lead to countries being created, merged or re-named themeselves. A good example is the ex Yugoslavia. Something else to check is what sort of a country it is. Falkland Islands is a member of the UPU, a british colony that makes money from issuing not too many stamps- but there are only 1800 people living on the islands and about 40 stamps issued per year. you can make an educated guess as to how many stamps are actually used and how many of them are sold to collectors. As a stamp collector, I am very much aware that there are many postal admins that wish to exploit the collectors by issuing far too many stamps. there are many commercial organisations that are keen to make money out of printing lots of stamps. at the end of the day, it is up to a collector to make a judgement. In the UK, where there is a keen stamp market, most of those colourful stamps that were printed solely for the collectors are worth very little and if you ever try to sell them you will get nothing at all. regards Yoram in London
