Worldwide Post Offices List? - By Country. Does It Exist?

Was just curious if anyone knew if such a resource exists? For instance, if I was looking at cancels on Albania, Afghanistan or Algeria stamps, is there a reference anywhere for the Town Names that may appear on cancels from a certain era?

I did find a list of algeria post offices, but no luck really with Albania or Afghanistan.

So - Just wondering, do resources like this exist?

Eric

Here are 2 I have found:

Aden:

http://www.rjbw.net/ADEN.html

Algeria:
http://www.stampdomain.com/country/...Numbers.html

Here are two that operate and display quite differently:

www.placesnamed.com
and
www.fallingrain.com/world/index.html

But both should be in your philatelic resources. FallingRain, for instance, unleashes a mammoth amount of geographic data for Algeria, I just looked. But the key to real utility is a "string search" like that found on www.postalhistory.com

This is not exactly a list, but it provides you the ability to look-up Post Offices in 192 Countries worldwide -- IT IS MAINTAINED BY THE U.P.U. --THE UNIVERSAL POSTAL UNION, the group established in 1906, well before the United Nations, to facilitate mail exchange between nations.

http://www.upu.int/en/the-upu/membe...untries.html


To learn about the U.P.U. you may wish to listen to this rather "corny" 1955 Radio Presentation: http://news.upu.int/insight/history...-drama-1955/

The UPU is now part of the United Nations and has played a key role in the movement of mail INTERNATIONALLY between ALL countries. It is the reason why the color of stamps of the major Countries at the turn of the 20th Century started to appear in uniform colors: Green = 1c; Red = 2c; Purple= 3c; Brown = 4c; Dark Blue = 5c; Orange = 6c; Black = 7c; Olive Green = 8c; Red Orange =9c, and; Black = 10c.

This international color coding of stamps allowed a postal clerk, lets say in Japan, Korea or China, who couldn't read English, to immediately recognize that the correct postage was paid for mail entering their country; and the reverse held true.

Interested in seeing Illegal stamp issues reported by various countries? Click this link: http://www.upu.int/en/activities/ph...ilately.html

How about International Reply Coupons - click here: http://www.upu.int/en/activities/in...out-irc.html

Interested in International Postal Security? (some areas restricted): http://www.upu.int/en/activities/po...andards.html

Do you think e-mail, e-commerce & ICTs have only impacted the USPS or Canada Poste? Want to/do you have an Interest in future effects? View the impact on Postal Services on a worldwide scale.
http://www.upu.int/fileadmin/docume...rvicesEn.pdf

Hal

"Countries at the turn of the 20th Century started to appear in uniform colors: Green = 1c; Red = 2c; Purple= 3c; Brown = 4c; Dark Blue = 5c; Orange = 6c; Black = 7c; Olive Green = 8c; Red Orange =9c, and; Black = 10c..."

Being a contrarian, I went looking for an exception. The National Parks of 1934 correspond to this system for 9 out of its 10 stamps. The "6c Crater Lake" is blue, not orange. Maybe orange reminded the POD too much of molten lava, which Crater Lake will spew s-o-m-e-d-a-y.

In the collection I was given years ago the gentleman that had it sent reply SASE to many canadian post offices that offered fancy cancels. There is about 150 covers all with special cancels he did and I can't imagine the effort/cost to do so. Figure at that time 45c for sending and 45 back . One of these days I will scan them all for reference but affraid alot are already closed down. Compiling a list especially if it includes all these new retail Non postal outlets would be huge.

I'd say the task is quite impossible.

There are any number of post offices which have opened for a while, and then closed. A current list of functioning post offices won't show them.

Then there are places that changed names (in China, Peking - Peiping) or the spellings of their names (in India, Bombay - Mumbai; Cawnpore - Kanpur). Good luck chasing down the locations of the British Indian 'Seealcote' and 'Umritsur' post offices on this 19th century cover from Jammu:



You'll find them these days as 'Sialkot' and 'Amritsar'.

I recognized Umritsur.

Ah, but did you get Seealcote? Eh?

No.

The Prosecution rests its case, M'Lud.