What Country Issues The Most Beautifully Crafted Stamps?

First, about me. Just getting back into stamp collecting after putting it aside when I started high school. I had no money and couldn't afford anything. I remember riding my bike to the post office in the late 70's and buying 2 stamps (!) of each commerative issues. One to put in my Scott Minutemen Album and putting the other on an envelope to get a FDC.

Now I've invested in a new album and am amazed how much easier it is to find stamps with the advent of the Internet.

I don't care so much for self adhesives stamps and the lack of quality of the art. And the fact that the USPS issues commentaries for anything. I'll probably limit my collecting to no later than US 1990's

I'd love to hear peoples opinions of countries that still issue beautiful, artfully crafted stamps like the "golden age" of the USPS. And what do you think WAS the golden age?

To me the Golden Age of stamp issues were basically from the first stamps all the way to when they quit engraving the stamps!
And my apologies: Welcome to this forum!

Peter

France.

The Czech Republic and the Faroes are strong contenders.

I would like to say it was Panama, and while Panama does have a few beautiful stamps, it does not compete well with the classic stamps of France or Canada or Spain.

Post World War II, I would say Austria and Sweden have put out a consistent run. I was also surprised by a display of modern Ukraine.

(This is outside my chosen era, so I'm not intimately familiar with all of the players...the Golden Age for stamps was the era of the engraved British Commonwealth issues.)

My 2d.

France, back during the period when they were engraved.

I am quite impressed by modern Ukraine, as you can tell from my signature!

It depends whether you're talking vintage or modern stamps. I have a preference for 19th century material overall, but of the modern material I think that some of the engraved material put out by Scandinavian countries, especially Sweden, are quite attractive... probably because they utilize old-world traditional printing methods that result in simple, clean, artistic renderings rather than "throw the Crayola box at the wall and see what sticks" designs.

Search for the thread "Collecting by Engraver", more than 118 pages of inspiration. It is fairly cheap to collect Slania's engravings, which many consider top of the line. He engraved app. 1000 stamps primarily from Scandinavia.

Country wise I agree with Zipper, France are simply beautiful.

Welcome back to the world of stamps!

I would have to agree with Cjd...Austria

Classical & Others...

"Collecting by Engraver" is probably my favorite thread on SCF. You can start here...

https://goscf.com/t/9106

and there are 118 pages to browse

In my view Austria, Sweden, the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia) and France. I also like the Machin series.

My collecting area has long been Japan, but I have come to really like the earlier stamps of Czechoslovakia and Hungary (through the 1950s). Also, Czechoslovakia issued a lot of stamps portraying art and artists, and those are quite nice through the present. In addition, the first series of Czech stamps were designed by the artist Alphonse Mucha. (Not so attractive because of the early printing limitations, but a wonderful design.)

Finally, I think most Japanese stamps in the 1980s-1990s are very nice, both for their representation of traditional Japanese art (especially ukiyoe) and in their incorporation of a Japanese design aesthetic into contemporary subjects.

Hungary of course, especially the early souvenir sheets.

I think one of the most interesting stamps from a printing perspective is the 1938 Brazil coffee bag stamp. Most stamps I have seen from that era are one color maybe two. But this one has way more.

An example can be found here

http://www.goingpostalt-shirts.com/...roductID=915