New Owner Of Several Hundred Asian Stamps Looking For Help

Hello All..

As the topic subject says, I am utterly new to stamp collecting and I have recently come into possession of appoximately 400+ stamps of Asian origin.

Not being able to read Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Singaporean? (not sure if that is the right word), I am unable to correctly identify the stamps I have.

From what I have gleamed so far of stamp collecting it seems that identifying stamps is a hard thing to do without the language barrier so I am looking for help from anyone who is familiar with these kind of stamps.

There are so many that I don't know where to start on how to describe them, About 50% of the stamps have been placed carefully in albums and a lot of them are loose, I realise that a lot of these stamps will probably be reprints and possibly worthless but my curiosity is now peaked and I would really like to identify them all and finish sorting the albums out fully if it is worth doing.

I can start scanning some of the stamps if needed, but I have a feeling that may take a very long time, So in order to gauge if there will be any replies I was hoping people could post their interest in my scanning these stamps.

Thank you for your time..

Vyn

This might help, it's an identifier for the far east

http://www.stampmasteralbum.com/For...Oriental.htm

Welcome to SCF, VynDav!

In case you have Thai/Siam stamps in there, I'll definitely help out with IDs. Alternatively, this catalogue is comprehensive for Thailand: http://www.siamstamp.com/catalogue/

If you post images of the tricky ones here, you'll be able to crowd-source an answer :)

Thanks for the quick replies.. ill look at those websites as soon as possible. Ill also try and start organizing the stamps into their respective countries as best as I can, thanks again :)

Update: I have been looking through the collection and I think I've identified a few as being reprints..(although there is a lot of confliction as to what constitutes a reprint in some cases) but also I think there is also some genuine lower value types.

The collection has a lot of sets too.. its just a shame it will take me a very long time to scan each one, so I was debating on taking them to a local philatelic group to see if they could shed some light on its value and or maybe point me in the direction of someone locally that has some time to pour through them all.

welcome VynDav to the forum. A stamp club is a good idea. We often have people come into our club meetings with collections they've acquired looking for help. You might also consider looking to a dealer if you are interested in selling, but, fair warning, they probably won't give you a lot for them.
I see you are in Cardiff. Lovely town, spent a few days there a number of years ago. Don't know what Cardiff has to offer in the way of clubs, but the internet is a great source to help you track them down.

In the mean time, feel free to post some pictures here. We have lots of experts from various walks of life who can help you.
Also, I've found this online stamp identifier which may help with some. Find a country, click on 'identifier' and see if anything matches what you have. You probably won't get the exact stamp, but it will help you with text, fonts, calligraphy etc.

Good luck. Can't wait to see what you've got.

http://www.stampmasteralbum.com/For...entifier.htm

edit - well that's awkward. I sent you to the same site as maiden. Guess I should read the posts more closely. Oh well.

Thanks James..

yes I just realized its the same website, the problem i'm having is understanding the naming conventions used which vary depending on which catalogue is used, the abbreviations are giving me sleeping issues too, not to mention that I've seen so much calligraphy I think i'm starting to recognize some of the symbols haha.

meanwhile I do intend on scanning some of the stamps but I really don't envy the task of having to scan so many small objects one by one, which lead me to think about local clubs in the area, which there are a few, trouble will be getting to them with the collection which is not all in albums but 60% are loose in small boxes and I dont have a car at the moment so not really possible to get the collection to the meeting places.

Either way thanks for the help, and in between balancing my other chores/duties/work ill start posting my scans..

P.s Re: Cardiff.. I grew up here and moved to South Devon for about 7 years but always missed Cardiff.. so we moved back again.. couldn't be happier now :)

VynDav, unless I have misunderstood, you don't need to scan stamps one by one. You can set up a whole sheet, or arrange multiple stamps on your scanner bed (as many as will fit), and scan them all in one pass. You can then crop out stamps or groups of stamps from this source image as you want. Many scanner software packages also offer the option of automatically splitting individual items into separate image files.

That's what I would do, very sensible, providing the club in question has some reasonably experieced members.
Failing that, take to two differnt stamp shops for an appraisal.

To scifi7: The only reason I didn't want to scan a page at a time was to make sure each stamp was scanned at the highest possible resolution so that they could be identified as best as they can, if I scan a page at a time there is a chance the small details that make a stamp a reprint or an original will not be clear or worse misidentified, but if a full page scan will work then I will quite happily do that.. I just assumed it would not be adequate :) but thanks for the reply

Thanks for the advice rod222, two different shops is a good suggestion and I think I may have found a few shops in the local area that I could take the collection to.. just a shame they are not all in nice albums for easy transportation and viewing.. any suggestions for relatively cheap and good binders/albums to buy to present them as best as I can?

First Page scan, I've managed to start isolating the chinese/prc stamps ( I think) there are a lot that still need sorting through.

Hope the scan quality is high enough, if needed it can be increased, and I've yet to find out how to make the scanner software automatically make a file for each stamp individually

Edit: If there are any particular stamps anyone needs a closer look at let me know and ill upload the individual stamp scans I've done.. thanks :)

Instead of cluttering this thread with hundreds of small scans of the stamps... please feel free to leave comments for the scans using this link to go to the photo bucket account I've set up with all the images.

http://s1067.photobucket.com/albums/u422/vyndav/

thanks

I don't think anyone would consider it 'cluttering' the thread. That's the whole point of showing stuff here, so people can comment. All of these appear to be early People's Republic of China stamps from 1949 and 1950. I especially like the doves of peace designed by Pablo Picasso.
Note that some of the higher values are issued for Northeast China.

Yes thats what I've found out from scotts catalogue and the magazines that came with the collection from 1972 and 76, These are reprints then?

Reprints? Impossible to say from these scans or the ones on photobucket. You'd have to zoom in very closely on specific areas where details have been altered on the stamps. These are listed in Scott's.

So no early indicators of value to these stamps yet then?

And im not sure if you realised but the pictures on photobucket are zoomed out, if you move the cursor to the top left of the picture it shows you by how much..

when viewed at 100% they are quite clear.