Postage Stamp Chat Board & Stamp Bulletin Board Forum
 

There are so many, but what in your opinion is the dodgiest country ever, I have some candidates.

Historical before the 1940s, Countries like Austria and its colonies and virtually anything from El Salvador, Colombia etc.

Then you have countries like Hungary, Poland and Romania that just issued mountains of thematic junk between 1946 and 1990, although they have hardly got better, my first packet experience always included those dreadful Hungarian Postage dues and even other COMMUNIST countries like Mongolia and USSR just pumped out mountains of cheaply printed junk.

Then we have countries like Dominica and all permutations of Grenada and St Vincent making tons of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe derived wall paper. Dodgy places like Gambia and Sierra Leone and Malawi that put out sheet after sheet of Elvis, Dogs, Mushrooms etc.

Plus now we have the Rosen material that issues cheaply printed and badly made thematic sheets such as "Papillions et Disney" (Butterflies and Disney), and "Chemines magnifique du Monde" (Great Trains of the World) for Francophone countries in Africa like Niger and Mali, plus countries like Guinea Bissau, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe etc. These sheets look mega cheep and badly printed.

Plus you have the Trucial States stuff of the 1960s and early 1970s like Manama and Ras Al Khiama. And the leaders of the world garbage of the mid 80s.

Who prints this rubbish and why????

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

Machin Heads from GB - has to be one of the most BORING stamp issues (apart from the MRIL ones) and there are BILLIONS of them. At least the Dominica, Yemen etc wallpaper stamps were pretty & interesting to look at !

D.

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Visit my Website - http://WWW.DJMSTAMPS.COM for Australia & World Stamps, Collections and Accessories

Groan. Machins are a modern design icon.

As to wallpaper, non-existant states, fakes and unauthorised issues etc,

Quote : "Who prints this rubbish and why????"
Short answer... greed.
Long answer... google the threads on this board.

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Greg - Looking for Goulburn Australia Cancels and Grangemouth Scotland Cancels and Covers
Member of the S.T.A.M.P Club for Slightly Twisted And Mad Philatelists - Motto: "Bring back the lick!"

MONEY!!! People are very willing to buy it, so these creations will continue to be printed. Stuff like this is a major portion of the economy and budget to many of these locations. As long as there are collectors who feel they must have them..........

Why so critical of Austria? Examples? Strikes me as an odd choice.

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Always on the lookout for Australian pre decimal First Day Covers.

Yes, I was thinking that - maybe those WW1 Bosnia Fieldpost issues and the like were criticised as "unnecessary" at the time, but I'd like to know more about the reasons.

This surely is a spelling error - should be AUSTRALIA!

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Wolfgang
Papua New Guinea stamps and postal history: http://www.i-ng.org

Who was offending pre-1900? USA for the Columbian set, Canada for the QV Diamond Jubilee set.

Gouging collectors is nothing new.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

I meant there was an American guy (Name escapes me Sewell - Seward?) who in the 1890s printed out issue after issue for Salvador (El Salvador) and Bolivia and a couple of other broke countries, and these stamps had the right to be reprinted by him en masse. Salvador got a new issue every year from 1892 to 1899 (Which was considered flooding at the time).

As for Austria I was referring to Austria Hungary and all those colonial KUK Feldpost issues, they may have been Bosnian, but were in German and showed the Austrian Ruler Franz Josef and Carl (After FJ died in 1916) so they are Austrian in my eyes, but they had a lot of inflation issues too with that same tired Art Nouveau look well into the 1920s. Romania also had a very large number of stamps in the 1920s and 1930s thanks to King Charles 2 dreaming up new issues all the time, so did Hungary in the 20s and 30s.

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

I also Think Togo could be one of the worst too.
Since independence in 1960, this country has been ruled by 3 dictators, Sylvanius Olympio (1960 -1962) Gnassingbye Eyadema (1962 -1997) and Faure Eyadema (1997 - now, his son) and the country has become a convenient one for thematic issues. Togo at 5 degrees north in West Africa between Ghana and Benin has plenty of stamps on the Winter Olympics, Princess Diana, Olympic medal winners, cats, dogs, trains, British Royalty, yet the Eyadema dynasty has issued very few glorifying themselves. This is the same dynasty that issued comics showing them as superheroes and gods (In 1974 Eyadema senior was in a plane crash with 3 of his ministers, they all died, he walked away from the crash and was unscathed, he had a monument built there) and there was even a watch sold in Togo that flashed Monsieur Dictators face every 15 minutes on the dial. The usual Franklin Mint gold coins were issued and yet stamps were pretty much left over to Russian medal winners!!!!!!!
It would have to be the worst of all the French speaking countries, but would not have a shade on Guyana which printed some 1000 types of stamps featuring illustrations from a 19th century plant book. The stamps were overprinted to death and it was virtually impossible to keep up with them all.

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

I guess British colonies had quite a bad reputation in KGV's reign as there were a lot of new issues with very high face values. Let's take Malta in the 1920s for an example:

1920: 3 stamps with a combined face value of 3s9d
1921: 2 stamps with a combined face value of 3s3d
1922: 36 stamps with a combined face value of £4.8s.11½d
1923: 1 stamp with a face value of 1½d
1924: 3 stamps with a combined face value of 3¼d
1925: 3 stamps with a combined face value of £1.0s.5d
1926: 28 stamps with a combined face value of £1.19s.5d
1927: 5 stamps with a combined face value of 10s.8½d
1928: 20 stamps with a combined face value of £1.7s.9¾d
1929: no new stamps
1930: 17 stamps with a combined face value of £1.7s.1¼d

Considering a time when most common people earned about 1s per day (about £20 per year), the face values of stamps in some years (especially 1922) were large sums of money (unlike today: Malta's highest face value stamps in these last 50 years were the £M3's of 1981 and 2003, which are equivalent to €7/£5.60). I wonder what collectors would have said back then (and we complain about the face values of today ).

Moreover, Malta did not have a lot of high values compared to other colonies. Kenya and Uganda had a £100 (plus a £75, a £50, a £25, etc) stamp in 1926.

I wonder why so many colonies had their first 10s or £1 stamps in KGV's reign. Could King George V himself have wanted high value stamps for his collection?

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My wantlist for Malta Revenues

Nicholas Seebeck.

IIRC he also did Nicaragua?

His story is legendary, and not in a good way. Seems like IGPC use him as a business role model..."we'll cover the cost of design, production, distribution...in exchange, we have free reign to churn out as much as we want".

I remember reading that there's a way to tell the "original prints" from the "Seebeck reprints"...small differences in the design, a spur here, a dot there. But then, 90% or so of the examples out there are the Seebeck packet material...still better ratio than original v. 'fake' Italian States.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

A lot of these high values were not for postal use - but for revenue use - stamp duty etc.

Many of these issues were inscribed "Postage and Revenue" and were useable (in theory) for both purposes.

However, to post even an elephant in Kenya in the 1920s would have only been a fraction of that £100. However, the tax payable on the purchase of a large chunk of the Masai Mara would have been up there

Revenue / Fiscal cancels are usually easily distinguished and experienced collectors will generally value them at a tiny percentage of Postal cancels.

Experienced postage collectors give them little value. Revenue collectors are glad of that, it makes it easier to obtain them.

Why does SG list them? They don't list the £1000 etc. NZ Arms fiscals (which were also technically valid for postal use).

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My wantlist for Malta Revenues

Totally agree, the 1922 Melita set could have lasted until George VI, as it was well designed and uniquely Maltese (Designed by Dingli and Vella) rather than some Englishman. But they had this Postage and Revenue nonsense, that became postage and then postage and revenue again, and the 1926 designs were not that inspired. The overprints killed the beauty of the sets.
Lets not forget the 6/9 you would have needed in 1925 to buy both of the Postage Due sets (Card paper and the gummed ones). This got you 20 stamps. But I doubt the average Maltese person (Or anyone else was lining up around the block to get them).
Its good that at least (Before 1860, 1885/6, 1899, 1903/4 and 1915) they had been moderate.
Then as far as defs go it was 1938 the big set (And my favourite) only 10 and half pence in 1943 for colour changes and 1/2 and a half in 1953, and the overprint in 1948 things were more moderate. (Lower cats mean the stamps are more common).
At least the 20s stuff is collectable and colourful, whereas a 1993 set of Elvis Stamps from Malagasy Republic or Guyana is much less collectable than 1920s Malta overprints.

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

Has to have been and still is British Colonies/ Commonwealth.

All those long sets from flyspeck locations, for use mostly by officials. I gave up long ago bothering with "gaps" in my SG Imperial & G6th and embraced the ROW, rest of the world. Most of the flyspeck BC mint stamps never saw their homeland and I wonder what the mailing population of say South Georgia would amount to.

So, in my view BC is every bit as bad as the sand dunes. I have lots of postally used East Europe wallpaper.

I will not even mention Machins, at the chance of upsetting Norvic.

At least the machins are postally used stamps. I have a vast array of Paraguayan stamps that never saw a post office, and I dare say, the same would go for many african countries too.

I had forgotten about the postage dues.


I agree with you.

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My wantlist for Malta Revenues

I wonder how many collectors ordered an elephant from Kenya, just to get the high-value stamp on its trunk?

I used to collect the Cook Islands when a teenager, but felt increasingly distressed and fleeced after Finbar Kenny took over their issuing. When NZ (and the Crook Islands) changed to decimal currency in 1967 (a year after Finbar won the stamp-production contract), they surcharged the definitives with decimal equivalent. But then they also surcharged the few remaining NZ "Arms" fiscal stamps left: 1 pound, 3 pounds, & 5 pounds. Quantities surcharged of those were in the low hundreds, and the Crook Islands then concluded that they must ALWAYS have $10 stamps. (Now they are even greedier!) I sadly gave up collecting the stamps of the Crooks, even though the earlies are fascinating. I was never brave enough to request a crate of coconuts with high-value stamps on, just to get postally-used ones!

So my nomination for second-worst reputation among stamp-issuing lands (after Guyana, as Princestamps pointed out earlier) would have to be the Crook Islands.

Speaking of which, Spink had/has a sale this month for the original artwork, proof material et al from Kenny's private collection, for the Cook Islands and its money-making outlying bits, Aitutaki, Niue...

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

Equatorial Guinea!

And, as a bonus, I understand one of the elephant's by-products is very good on your rhubarb...

...though, personally I prefer custard on mine

As a collector of Hungarian stamps, I'm offended at its disparaging. As a Yankee, I'm a bit unsure as to what you mean by "dodgy." Ignoring your snobby attitude for a minute, what do you find most offensive with these releases? You seem to be all over the place. Are you accusing them of dumping needless volumes of stamps on the collecting public? Do you doubt their authenticity? Are you criticizing the quality of printing? Sure, Hungary could have eased off the accelerator when it comes to the paintings, but many of them are beautiful.

I've been covering the printing industry for 15 years. If you want a nomination for poorly printed stamps, I would select Greece. Issues from the 60s and 70s are printed on atrocious paper stock, thin and brittle. The colors are weak, faded. Registry stinks. Or maybe every stamp I've ever seen from Greece appears to have been soaking in a bucket for the past 10 years. I'm sure it's not the case, but...

That's the beauty of stamp collecting. If you want to be arrogant and snobbish, you can collect only those issues with pedigree. If you think Elvis is the greatest thing since sliced bread...or butterflies...puppies...fine, there's a little something for everyone. Let me be amused by large, gaudy and colorful stamps from Hungary while you avoid those dodgy African stamps that would cause you to bust your monocle if they every came into contact with your collection.
Erik

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"Me fail English? That's unpossible."
—Sir Ralph Wiggum

Made me look.

"However, to post even an elephant in Kenya in the 1920s would have only been a fraction of that £100. However, the tax payable on the purchase of a large chunk of the Masai Mara would have been up there"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_Mara

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"I don't have a lot - But I like what I got"

I'll second that...just why have we persisted with them for so long?

Before anyone else does....I'll answer that.....because they're cheap & 'orrible, uninspiring........

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If it ain't broke.....fix it 'til it is!!

http://www.lanarkshireps.co.uk

Mostly the volume of them, and the fact they appear in every packet ever issued here between 1950 and 1990. I mostly refer to the communist period. They had those large issues of butterflies, lace, 1952 olympics, the 5 year plan, cartoons, the 1973 one with the bird holding the letter, all the postage dues, those ones with the buildings on them and they always had values of 8filler up to one forint. Those yellow 1975 ones showing space. Just as bad as their good commie mates Romania.
I mean erick, how many of them have any real value, and do we really care about how many medals were won at Olympics between 1952 -1980 by Soviet Bloc nations, whose athletes were mainly doped up or forced to win them or they would have been shot.
I am sorry to hurt you with the truth, but nearly all were CTO and sold cheep to packet makers everywhere. I am not insulting Hungary, its a lovely place and I love Tokay style wines and Budapest is a beautiful city, but the regimes that made this stuff was pretty despised by the people any way. Hungary like most of Central and Eastern Europe really wanted a liberal government, and the communist regime was not popular.

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

No worries; I don't become vicariously insulted or hurt on behalf of any nation. Taste is subjective. That Hungary overproduced stamps is not debatable. As you pointed out, it hardly stands alone in that regard. The United States has been guilty of mass releases, to a degree.

Frankly, future value is not a motivating factor behind collecting. My sports card collection values in the tens of thousands of (US) dollars; it doesn't add to the satisfaction the hobby brings me. When it comes to stamps, I do it for the enjoyment, the excitement of filling another gap in my Hungary collection. If that makes me a bottom-dweller collector, it's of no consequence.

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"Me fail English? That's unpossible."
—Sir Ralph Wiggum

I agree with you totally, value is in the eye of the beholder, I just find some stamp authoities funny rather than offensive and I agree that the USA amd several other countries are guilty now (Hungary has cleaned its act up a lot recently), I think of British Carribean and Francophone states. New Zealand my country is notorious for its junk sheets it has been putting out lately.


The worst stamp I have seen of this type (Francophone) was a Malagasy Republic showing a picture of Elvis (It was a pair) that looked nothing like him, he had blond hair and on the pair was two overprints in gold foil with a badly drawn guitar saying on one stamp "Gitare d 'Elvis" and on the other in English "The Elvis Guitar". This pair was at the place I worked at for years. It was priced at $17, I am not surprised it hasn't sold, has anyone else seen this travesty

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

Here is the stamp I was talking about, total cash in

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

Elvis's natural hair colour was blond.


The current issuing policy of neoliberal capitalist regimes like UK, Australia, Poland and Jersey of gaudy 'souvenir sheets' and new series of 'commemoratives' with over 10 in the set every two months even though there is no postal demand nor use of them and they won't cancel them if you do use them and don't get me started on the bloody Olympics you may as well collect Ajman Ras al Khaima Manama and all those labels from those brutal gulf regimes.

Just realised one of the biggest culprits was sitting under my nose. Liberia, in the 1990s and early 2000s they issued on average some 770 stamps and 200 miniature sheets per year. None were about Liberia, but all thematic, dogs, cats Elvis, Marilyn, Cycle tours, Hokusai prints, Mickey Mouse, Teddy Bears, ships, trains, elvis movies, Elvis 68, Elvis in jail house rock, Diana, Elvis, Disney, cars, Titanic, Elvis, Flowers and Elvis etc.

Apparently its improved since Sirleaf Johnson has become president there. Its a shame that a country independent for as along as that (1847) is still a subsistence level basket case that has no real postal service to think of. Before 1990 the Post Office there was prolific too, but at least locally controlled. SG lists no real stamps after 1989.

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

Liberia was in the throes of civil war, along with Sierra Leone...those hostilities lasted a good decade...hence SG's last of listings post-1989...yet they supposedly could produce hundreds upon hundreds of colourful (garish?) stamps every year...hmm, is there something odd with this picture.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

It may not be in the worst offender class - without a doubt, it isn't - but throughout its philatelic lifetime, Gibbons refused to recognise the (philatelic) existence of Idar State





It was only after Idar had gone to the Great Sorting Room in the Sky that Gibbons condescended to recognise that it had had a functioning post office, that was used by the locals, and was not simply grinding out packet trade stuff.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

Since we're on the subject of the Uglies, maybe some some of the infamous bicolours of...Orccha is it...those were pretty unnecessary issues.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

Whaddya mean about Orchha? It had every need of 15 Rupee stamps (around $US3 at the time),



even if the letter rate was only 1/240 of that. Collectors wanted to buy them although they were sold at a healthy discount to face.

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'First I'll steal all the money, then I'll kill everybody, and then I'll go away', Père Ubu

"Austria and Colonies" ??? No way! I love those KUK and other issues at the end of the Empire, especially used stamps.

I would even defend the Hungary issues, these no way belong in the bottom-of-the-barrel class as Tuvalu Leaders of the World or IGPC issues of many nations today.

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Don't pull my perfs, I may become unhinged.
http://brcStamps.com

At least from the standpoint of a philatelic uproar ---

I think the Boston Lithograph stamps of the Kingdom of Hawaii with the portrait of King Kamehameha IV, should be high up on any list of stamps with a bad reputation. Two printings (1861 and 1863) caused quite a stir in the philatelic world, because the stamps were of such low quality, and frankly would compete quite adaquately with the Indian States "uglies" for in any description of an un-attractive stamp.

Here is an 1869 re-issue (Scott #29) of that stamp sold only at the Honolulu post office.


In 1864, stung by the criticism from the philatelic press, the Hawaiian post office turned to the National Bank Note Company in New York, and created new stamp featuring the King using a design concept from the Nova Scotia 10c stamp. This was followed over the next few years with additional stamps of a similar design featuring various royal personages.



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If interested, here is the Nova Scotia stamp

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Collector of Stamps and Banknotes from Countries that no longer Exist
http://www.DCStamps.com

Whats wrong with them? Hawaii was an island kingdom which needed stamps for everyday usage, these stamps plain as they are, were hardly wallpaper junk, they are worth quite a few dollars. If anything I think the portrait and surround are quite good by 1860s standards, especially if you compare them to some of the poorly and cheaply designed German and Italian states stamps of the era. IGPC, Illegals, Hungary and Leaders of teh world versus Hawaiian locals of the early 1860s - I don't think so.

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.

I think you're comparing apples and oranges to some degree, Princestamps.

ILikeMaps is probably putting forth those Hawaiian issues as being "bad" when viewed through the lens of a contemporaneous viewer, that is, to someone in the 1860s, they were probably looked down upon.

Granted, Hawaii was a country, and had legitimate reason to operate a postal system. The 'problem' with the stamps ILikeMaps shows is, by their statement, the poor quality of the paper and printing. Since stamps were viewed by some as a 'messenger' to the world of the state of your country, a high-quality product gives outsiders a good impression of your country.

All-in-all, Hawaii never did hundreds of stamps showing birds and pineapples aimed at being a money-maker, it seems to me their stamp-issuing policy was always well within the bounds of 'genuine need'.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

IGPC seems to produce some stamps for Liberia with local themes... Featuring their president Sirleaf Johnson.

Anyway is there a working postal service there?

But isn't this the answer. Postal use. The 'wallpaper' eastern european issues from 1960's to 80's can be found postally used whereas most of the sand-dune rubbish is only available mint or officially CTO.

Even the machins are postally used.

Current day wallpapers from Guinea Bissau or Mozambique or Liberia, are never found to be postally used. And they have excessive face values - that are not suitable for postal usage.

But isn't that what I said..if it isn't available postally used then forget it..its rubbish designed for the packet market.

My bottom line is that if it cannot be found postally used then forget it-it is just a scam designed to separate a collector from his money.

Since people are throwing the word 'unnecessary' around at Austrian Bosnia, can we take the trouble to learn a bit of history first?

Of course, in theory Austria could have used Austrian stamps in Bosnia from the beginning (viz. 1878), and so, at the surface level, all Bosnian stamps were unnecessary. But that entirely ignores the political situation at the time. Although Austria had an agreement with Russia as early as 1877 that Russia would not look on an Austrian occupation of Bosnia as a hostile act, and further in 1881 the protocols of the Dreikaiserbund allowed Austria to fully annexe Bosnia when they wanted to, these agreements were SECRET. Moreover Austria did not risk that annexation until 1908.

We can, if you wish, argue whether this reluctance on the part of Austria was fired by unwillingness to offend the Serbs who regarded Bosnia as part of Greater Serbia, unwillingness to further destabilise the Ottoman Empire who were the previous ruling power in Bosnia, or part of an agreement with Russia to keep things on the QT.

But one thing is absolutely clear. The last thing Austria wanted to do was to draw attention to their actions by a philatelic statement that Bosnia was now part of the Hapsburg Empire.

And so they produced a vast number of unnecessary stamps. Well, actually, a total of 8 stamps in the first 20 years. All the other SG numbers for that period are simply the result of the determination of philatelists to distinguish a variety of shades, perforation and printing methods. If Austria hadn't changed its currency in 1899 the same issue would probably have carried on for several more years.

And so Bosnia got used to having its own stamp issues, and when annexation came in 1908 they continued. Hardly surprising and hardly excessive. I strongly suspect that the Austrian secret police welcomed the idea of being easily able to distingush letters coming out of Bosnia, inhabited by a million people, the bulk of whom had no desire to be part of Austria.

One of my friends gave me this catalogue and I suspect that these dealers deal in illegal wallpaper. The catalogue shows a few legal dodgy stamps from Belarus, but the rest is for places like Togo and Centreafricain and Burundi and this stuff has printed on post marks. I suspect the dealer is working in collosion with the producers, does anyone else know of these people.



Cover



Contents showing dodgy sheets that are purely thematic

I notice too, they are a mix of new and stuff issued a few years ago, its all thematic and generally poorly and cheaply printed.

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I collect Malta, Ireland, Malta, Tristan da Cunha, Malta, various Pacific Islands, Malta, New Zealand, Malta, Australia and Malta.