Need New Identifier Resource

I have been away from my collection for about 20 years and find that all my identifier resources are no longer identifying some of the more recent countries, (some didn't even exist when I was last active).

Can anyone recommend are really good country identifier resource?

Hello stillnesssage, welcome to Stamp community!

There are a lot of new resources on the internet, that you can save or print off in black and white or colour, perhaps evena t a library if available.

Different countries have some own special web sites, either official or voluntary.

Catalogues are available somewhat only online, as people have actually accessed the actual real stamps.

New countries can be searched for on Google or Stamp Community here for discussions and or inclusions in standard paper catalogues like Scott or other countries world catalogues.
The German made Michel catalogue system has been recently refernced as a very good world wide resource to have, albeit not always in English, although I have no personal knowledge of it.

Scott id generally a good reference but lacks listings of some stamps from countries whose postal use is in question, the catalogue people themselves seemingly needing to have to have access to postal material themselves to prove this perhaps.

There could be some countries that are indeed not real countries at all but made up imaginary countries, and still fun and axciting to collect.

Any questions?

The International Worldwide Stamp Collectors Society has a pretty good online stamp identifier. Try this link:

http://www.iswsc.org/iswsc_ident.html

stillnessage,

If you are trying to identify what country a stamp may be from based solely on words/characters on a stamp, the "World Stamp Almanac" published by Linns is a good resource. It has a full section devoted to phrases/text on a stamp that will help lead to an issuing country. This book also lists all the stamp issuing countries along with their current status (Active or inactive). Additionally it contains a section with the before and after names as countries have come and gone or joined together as well as dead countries. This book is a bit thick and has several sections devoted to US stamps issues that may or may not interest you but it does have a wealth of other information.

If you are trying to identify a country for a stamp that only has pictures no text/letters then the Linns 'Stamp Identifier" is a good choice.

Both of these books can be found at the Linns website or via ebay/amazon for reasonable prices.

As noted above there are countless other resources many of them free and online you just have to search for your specific needs.


Welcome back to the hobby.
Hobsun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ve_languages

A list of countries in their OWN language...has been very helpful to me in the past. Not that wikipedia is THAT great a source, but it has helped me so far.

rascal, thanks for the ISWSC Identifier link. More extensive than my Linns Stamp Identifier and I really like their section on Bogus stamps. Adding it to my quick links and expect to be using it often.

When I click on the "iswsc identifier" link I don't see any pictures of stamps. Should I see an image or is there just a description?

No Pictures. Just a list of words that appear on stamps and than the country that probably issued the stamp.

Thank you for the clarification. I was afraid there was something wrong with my computer settings. It will be very helpful even without pictures.

Hank