Prc?

when talking about stamps what does PRC mean?

Hi Tina.....

Peoples Republic of China.

there you go...I knew it had to be something simple like that.

Sorry, Tina, my bad. I know the board guidelines frown upon abbreviations, and for good reason. Some of my collector friends and I have gotten used to using country abbreviations, and it's a hard habit to break. There are many, but here is an abridged list of some commonly used ones (US, you know )

AAT -- Australian Antarctic Territory
BIOT -- British Indian Ocean Territory
DDR -- German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
DPRK -- Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)
FSAT -- French Southern and Antarctic Territories
GB -- Great Britain
HK -- Hong Kong
IOM -- Isle of Man
KUT -- Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania
NZ -- New Zealand
PNG -- Papua New Guinea
PRC -- People's Republic of China
ROC -- Republic of China
ROK -- Republic of Korea (South Korea)
UAE -- United Arab Emirates
UAR -- United Arab Republic (Egypt, Syria)
UK -- United Kingdom
USSR -- Russia

Anyway, these are the ones you will commonly see used in stamp listings. This is off the top of my head, so I'm sure there are a few other common country abbreviations not included.

khj (also an abbreviation )

[EDIT: removed Libya from UAR list (thanks, Mike!)]

khj, Way to go with the list of Acronyms!

Clarification on the UAR, United Arab Republic was established on Feb. 22, 1958 uniting Egypt and Syria, Libya was asked to join but did not.
Two weeks later, on March 8, a federation called the United Arab States was established between the UAR (Egypt/Syria) and North Yemen.
Syria withdrew on Sept. 28, 1961 while Egypt remained the UAR.
By Dec. 26, 1961, North Yemen withdrew from from the United Arab States.
Egypt would continue as the UAR by itself until Sept. 11, 1971 when it become officially the Arab Republic Of Egypt.

Mike

Obviously, I getting old before my time...



Mike is correct, as usual. If I ever hire an editor, I'll know who to try to get.

Libya agreed in principle, but never formally joined. That is why the only UAR stamps were issued by Egypt and Syria. Quick way to differentiate between the 2 is to look at the monetary unit on the stamp.

I fooled myself into adding Libya into the list. I was sorting some Libya stamps and had them in front of me as I typed the list. Talk about subliminal messages!

k

I remember reading about it sometime ago in my HS haze.

Mike

thats ok kim I emailed one of the other guys from here and my guess was pre-cancel but I had a feeling my guess just wasnt right so when I got an answer he wasnt sure either so hey I put it out here to find out for sure.How can you tell if it is a china stamp or if its another countries with the writing like it is?I want to make sure I dont send you something from Japan or else where but I think there pretty much sorted right how many did you want cause I have a fair amount

Tina,

I'm a little tied down for the next 1-2 hours. If someone else doesn't do it first, I'll try to upload a simple identifier for Japan and China.

k

Tina,
Do you have a Scott's Catalog?
If you do, go to the end Index and identifier,in any volume, the next page over should be the Illustrated Identifier the 1st page is divided into 3 columns the lower half of the third column shows China, both of them, Japan is shown near the top of the third column of the second page, but this entire Identifier can help you a lot.

Mike

Oh, that's right. I forgot that Tina had a Scott catalog. Yes, the identifier is better than what I can make.

Tina, if you can't locate the identifier in your Scott catalog, then post again.

k

Tina,I do not understand well because my broken English,but I can feel that is something about stamps of P.R.China,if you want to find a buyer,I am very interested.

That is a good question and this is the first time I heard someone asked that.So,now you know what PRC stands for,how about ROC?

ROC = Republic of China (ie currently, Taiwan, also called Nationalist China)