Vietnam: Is It A Good Country To Collect?

Are the stamps of the country of Viet Nam today popular to collect today in the U.S. ?

If YES: Does it include the War Period of 1955 to 1975 with North Viet Nam included?
Pre 1955? Post 1975 to modern?

All comments appreciated. Thanks for your input in advance.

Hal

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Speaking purely for myself, Vietnam, like Cuba, would probably not have held a lot of interest to me either historically, nor philatelic -wise, were not the two countries tied to the US historically in my lifetime. Now, particularly during the Vietnam war era and the Cuban embargo they hold the attraction of forbidden fruit and some of the engraved Cuban stamps from 1890-1915 are beautiful indeed. Vietnam stamps of the era stated above seem to me to be somewhat primitive on not the best paper. They do not have the quality in my opinion to some of the multicolored stamps of Laos such as the elephants in the the 1960's-1970's.

I can't speak for the US, but Vietnamese stamps turn up regularly at auction here and sell. The South Vietnam issues can mainly be acquired quite cheaply. The Vietnamese and North Vietnamese issues, which are more interesting, particularly where they were printed locally, include more expensive material. You get a real sense of the immediacy of the struggle against the US invasion. The post-liberation issues are largely philatelic market stamps of the kind you fund across the world, although I like the issues that have a genuine local flavour. The stamps from the French period run well into the first Vietnamese issues of 1945.

Thanks for the input. The period I'm considering is post WWII (1945) period through 1990. The expression of the human condition and a countries' social-progress, as demonstrated through its modernization of printing techniques, has always fascinated me. There is a beauty in the early, sometimes crudely done, "native" issues. The paper is inconsistent, as it may have been made by hand and contains impurities not seen in modern European, Canadian & U.S "factory" papers. Many issues were printed under war conditions, by hand, without electricity, without temperature or humidity control, and in Viet Nam case, perhaps underground in Hanoi or in caves to avoid bombs.

While writing this, I was considering a collection I built of North Korea 1945-1970. I see many parallels between the two, and oddly enough, Korea and Viet Nam do have a connected postal history, which is a story for a different string. HINT: The opening of Korea's First Post Office in Seoul in October, 1884, the Japanese coup d'état staged in Korea in conjunction with opening of the post office, and the Tonkin Campaign 1883-1885.

Post WWII is interesting,and scarce issues especialy on cover.
http://www.histoire-et-philatelie.f...dochine.html

I'd give it a go. You get a fair amount of variety. Overprinted Vichy issues, the rough-and-ready issues prepared in the North, the issues in the French manner that appeared in the South. Might I also recommend Norman Lewis's A Dragon Apparent, a travel book written in the dying days of French rule?

Thanks you perf12 and GeoffHa!