Irc

Is there any literature available or websites about International Reply Coupons. History, countries, types, values?

Listed in US Scott Specialized. Also, there is a Commonwealth catalogue available and France and various other countries listed in their representative countries catalogues.Also, there are US examples for sale with catalogue numbers on the Eric Jackson revenue web site. Also, google Alan Hauck and IRC.

There was a wonderful and very complete website from France a few years ago, but, unfortunately, it's disappeared. However, I created PDFs of the entire website for my use. Email me and I'll send the PDFs to you. The PDFs are in French.

If you contact the American Philatelic Research Library, they have a complete set of of literature created by Alan Hauck, who is now deceased. There is no current publication in English for IRC collectors. The Scott listing is very rudimentary.

There is a society in Germany, Forschungsgemeinschaft Internationale Antwortschein, that issues a publication quarterly with current IRC news. The publication is in German, but can easily be understood based on the pictures of IRCs that are used in the text.

I have also done a complete search of the USPOD/USPS Postal Bulletins and have screen shots of information that was printed in various PBs since 1907.

There is a listing for German IRCs in the Michel postal stationary (ganzsachen) catalog for Germany.

The website http://bmyhre.com/bjmy2/pdfs.htm has a detailed listing of Norwegian IRCs as well as an overview of all IRC types, including non-UPU types.

The first half of a comprehensive catalog on IRCs of the world was published through l'Académie de philatélie in 2010. The second half was to be published in 2011, but that keeps betting pushed back. Currently their website says "à paraître en 2015" (forthcoming in 2015). The catalog is in French, but the listings are not too difficult for those of us who do not read French. There is also a catalog of French IRCs available from the l'Académie de philatélie. Information can be found on the webpage http://www.academiedephilatelie.fr/...uvrages.html.

The wonderful webpage that Glenn mentions was probably that of the author/editor of these catalogs. I remember it well.