If A Country Ceases To Exist, Do You Collect The Successor?

Say, you were a Czechoslovakia collector. Do you now collect the Czech Republic and Slovakia?

Do collectors of the Soviet Union continue their collection with Russian stamps?

Do German collectors collect both East and West Germany?

You follow my general trend here?

There are no hard and fast rules in philately, except one must not glue down one's stamps in an album.

And Crystal Mounts are out too.

Yes, but I think that on completing a country many try going back earlier to collecting a predecessor country from before it that it came out from.

This topic raises an interesting question about the seeming inconsistent Scott treatment of successor countries. For example, Ceylon became Sri Lanka. The stamps issued by each country are listed under their own name, in different volumes of the catalogue, although the numbering continues from one to the next as though they were the same country. On the other hand, Upper Volta became Burkina Faso, and all the stamps from the beginning are listed under Burkina Faso (and because I have an old album, they're sorted in my collection under Upper Volta, which gets confusing).

Does anyone have any insight into why there is this inconsistency? It's not critical - just something I've been curious about.

I only collect the successor states to the Indian States until they stopped being Indian States. I have no probkems collecting Cochin after it became part of the United State of Travancore-Cochin, and then Travancore-Cochin



and Soruth after it became part of the United States of Saurashtra



and Jaipur and Kishangarh after they became parts of Rajasthan





but I lose interest once they started using Indian stamps.

tonymacg, Greetings:

quod erat demonstrandum

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

French Sudan ---> Senegambia & Niger ---> Upper Senegal & Niger ---> French Sudan (again) ---> Mali

The joys of collecting the French colonials and early post-colonials :)

ETA : Crystal Mounts....*shudder*

Yes, this is what happened and started me collecting Kosovo stamps.I only collect a few prior Yugoslavia stamps that strongly relate to Kosovo.Nice stamps.

KD,

I think it works like this:
When a country changes its name but not its political status, then it is listed under the same entry in the catalog. When it does change status (for example colony to independent state) then it gets a new entry.
And for the first question: that's ultimately up to you.

It's purely anecdotal since I don't collect post-1945, but judging by old albums of Germany collections that I've purchased over the years, a lot of Germany collectors go with either Allied Zone/BRD or Soviet Zone/DDR. I haven't seen a lot of collections with both. Of those that have pre- and post-1945, most I've seen collect Allied Zone/BRD.

Hi,
My collection is time framed, rather than country framed. Said another way, I collect ANY country that existed from 1840s thru 1959.

I don't collect any of the former East block countries. I was contemplating keeping East Germany some years ago because I have a large German collection anyway. This idea was clinched when East Germany collapsed. I now collect them as well. This is the only communist country I do collect.

I also collect Belgian colonies, to independence only, then stop after that.

Chimo

Bujutsu

I collect Ukraine. I have no interest in collecting Soviet Union stamps. I was just curious how other people handled political boundary shifts.

I think it is critical. Scott is terrible in handling transitions with countries.

Just to name a few additional:

The Czech Republic is incorrectly listed under Czechoslovakia.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is incorrectly listed under Russia.

Kiribati and the Gilbert Islands are under separate listings in separate volumes despite being the same country. "Kiribati" is just the native spelling of Gilberts.

For most countries - Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, for example - their demise makes for a nice, clean break and a really easy place to call it quits. I collect a lot of countries and I really don't want to keep up on all the new issues, but it's sometimes tough to find an obvious spot in the catalogue to stop collecting.

Germany is one example where I collect the predecessor, successor and splinter states, but that's my favorite country.