Stamps From Every Country

I promised myself that I would have at least 1 stamp from each country in my Stamp album. Is this gonna be an expensive venture. Not looking for MNH, so that should help. Which countries are gonna be the hardest to get and / or most expensive.
Thanks,
Jay

You may have to break your promise Jay
your album may have "Mafeking"
administrative headquaters for Bechuanaland
Special stamps were issued during the seige March-May 1900

Good luck in your search. I was doing the same thing, but now I do research in that area of postage stamp issuing entities.

No it doesn't, thankfully by the sounds of it. THink there are gonna be many road blocks along the way, but see them as fun.
Thanks for your answer, and hope to see you all around!
Jay

you will need india stamp for $1000 we can begin to load you up :)

but seriously if you need india let me know I will try to do a lb type listing

I, too, have wondered at the cost of such a collection. Without even knowing it, I'll just bet there is at least 1 deal breaker.

The problem, though a fun one, is that there a countries that aren't really countries, they are cities, provinces & regions that that had stamps issued for postage. There are occupied territories to be considered. If a country changes it's name does that count. There are insitutions some private, some government, some franchised. There area private companies that by charter or contract handle the postage of some nations & territories. Of course there are private companies that handled local or even national mail with or without approval of the government from the country they are in.

It all comes down to where do you draw the line.

Jay-

Which album are you using as your measure? The choice of album will directly affect the enormity of this task. Some will be harder than others.

When I was young, the countries listed in an old family copy of theScott Modern album defined the list for me.

Collin

I believe it is a Harris Travelers album that my son got. I have a list of countries, but much to lenghty to put on here

Jay-

I haven't flipped through a Traveler, but after looking at a description of it on the web, I am going to guess that you could accomplish your goal without breaking the bank.

They've allocated room for 10,000 stamps, so they aren't going to frustrate their customer by spending time on issues that many of us rarely run across. There might be a few "countries" that will be a little bit of a stretch to acquire, but I bet they haven't included any country/issuer where the least expensive stamp is still north of $50.

Let us know when you hinge in that last one.

Collin

A tough job. My mind springs to the Colombia departmentals, the Swiss canonicals and so on.

Of course, you can buy just one stamp from Tierra del Fuego and complete the country!

Hi Jay.....


With a stated goal of a stamp from every country......not, a stamp from every stamp issuing entity.......you should not encounter very many problems and your project will not cost everything you earn for the rest of your life. It's definitely a long term project but with perseverance it is completable.

I think there are two different, but similar, threads intertwined here.

One from everywhere is indeed a difficult proposition. Probably rarely accomplished, and any two of us would collectively have three opinions on whether it was, in fact, complete.

Jay is starting out with a well-defined limit...one from each country represented in a particular album, in this case a Harris Traveler. He already knows his list, and will be 100% sure (more or less) if he is complete yet, or not.

Jay, if you're able to toss out a couple countries represented that seem like they will be a bit "out there" it might be interesting...I agree a list of all the countries in the album would be excessive.

Collin

Is it every country now? Or every country...ever?

For the sake of Jay's original question, it was every country (now, or ever) that is represented in the Harris Traveler album.

I have been planning a collection of every country for many years, but never got past the South Pacific, which is not even that difficult.

First I created a list of all the entities and decided what I thought was best, based on stamp catalogs, The Stamp Atlas and historical information.

For Example, this is how I branched out the old Gilbert & Ellice Islands Colony:

1911 - 1975 : Gilbert & Ellice Islands [Stamps Issued]

1926 : Tokelau Islands separated from G&EIC, put under New Zealand control, using Samoa stamps.

1948 - today : Tokelau Islands [Stamps issued]

1975 : Separation of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. Ellice Islands become Tuvalu
1976 - 1979 : Gilbert Islands [Stamps Issued]
1976 - today : Tuvalu [Stamps Issued]

1979 - today : Gilbert Islands become Kiribati [Stamps Issued]

In my collection I have a stamp from all the entities above in bold.

In 1976, Tokelau Islands dropped the "Islands" from it's name and officially became Tokelau. There was no change in political status, so I decided not to include this as a "separate" country.