Stamp Column Archives

The Glassine Surfer Column Archive

This column originally appeared in the American Philatelic Society's monthly magazine, "The American Philatelist." Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

April 2001

Winkey is free and is on the Copernic Internet site, and technically is what they call a shell extension, which doesn't complicate things but knowing it will help you understand that it's simply a logical extension of the operating system's capabilities.

While you're at the site looking at Winkey, you might also check out the site's title program, Copernic.  It's been reviewed here in the past and is still one of the choice desktop search engine applications.  Insert a term and it searches multiple engines and then collates and organizes the results on your hard drive which you can then save.

Winkey
http://www.copernic.com/winkey/

Bears on Stamps

This is a very simple topical site, that is just about bears on stamps, not the warm, fuzzy ones but the rough and tumble salmon catching kings of the mountains.  It's a simple page of links to scans of bears on stamps arranged alphabetically by country, and a good starting point for someone wanting to see the wide range of such issues.

Bears on Stamps
http://terriwaddell.www4.50megs.com/Bears/Bear_Stamps.html

Online Catalogs

These days the 'Net seems to be solely about sales receipts, and perhaps with good reason.  Sales over the Internet are increasing each and every year, and it's no secret that stamp collectors are using the Web to track down stamps and covers at auctions and dealers around the world.  

We're collectors who have a voracious appetite for any information about finding and acquiring stamps, and one of the best sources for such are the varied and motley online catalogs scattered around the World Wide Web.

France's classic pre-1900 issues can be studied online at "Les émissions de timbres classiques."  Though it's in French, I would assume a collector would have no trouble understanding the stamp-related text.  

Les émissions de timbres classiques
http://www.chez.com/memorial/timtyp.html

Besides, you can still use an online service like Alta Vista's Bablefish to translate entire pages if you get stuck.

Bablefish
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

"I Francobolli d'Italia" hosts an online catalog of Italian stamps from 1861 through 1961.  The site is in Italian

I Francobolli d'Italia
http://www.mediasoft.it/francobolli/

"Postage Stamps Catalog of Switzerland" breaks the pre-WW 2 era into periods and the post-war era into years.  The does a good job of explaining the design and plate nuances of the early issues, too.  

Postage Stamps Catalog of Switzerland
http://www.stamps.ch/ch/CH_EN/e_cat.htm

Collector Hesham Hallouda has an Egyptian catalog on his Website called "Egypt Stamps."  It's in English, can be sorted by date and theme, and is very active.

Egypt Stamps
http://members.tripod.com/hallouda/index.html

"The Stamps of Belurussia" hosts a catalog of the country's issues from 1996 through 2000, previous years are in the works, and as you can tell by the URL, it's in "eng."

Belurussia
http://beltelecom.minsk.by/~belpost/eng_ver/index_eng.htm

A Russian Federation stamp catalog for issues is online for the years 1992 through 2000.  It's a well designed site that starts off with a straight forward chronological list in English.  A Russian version is also available, a click away.

Russian Federation
http://www.aha.ru/~stamp/catalog.htm

Unfortunately, a very promising Ukranian online catalog hasn't added any listings since
1998, but you can see the 1992 through 1997 issues here in English

Ukrainian Stamps
http://wvnvaxa.wvnet.edu/~roman/Ukstamps.html

Iceland is well represented online. Frimerki.is (stamps."iceland") splits Icelandic postal history at 1943 and 1944, and provides year lists with illustrations and issue data.  You can also view Iceland's issues by motif, theme or topic: Volcanoes, Vikings, etc.

Frimerki.Is
http://frimerki.is/vipenglish/

Lastly, the ACS stamp page for New Zealand's issues is somewhat more Net-sophisticated than the rest, but essentially does the same job as the others.  The issues are shown and listed by year, though you can use Ctl+F to search the main index page for topicals if you need, and prices given are those of the dealer hosting the catalogue.

NZstamps.com
http://www.nzstamps.com/Stamp-list.html

Lastly, many of the philatelic bureaus throughout the world have considerable online stamp archives.  Austria Post has one.  The Faroe Islands and Finland also come to mind.  They're all different in style, purpose and Web design, but that should not deter any of us of putting them to good use.

For a list of online philatelic bureaus you can check out the link below to my About.com site.

Philatelic Bureaus
http://stamps.about.com/cs/postoffices/index.htm