Just Starting To Lookat My Inheirited Foreign Stamps

I know nothing about foreign stamp so I will start with this. My dad has glassines filled with Helvetia stamps. The stamps are all pristine except they appear to have no gum. They all seem to be from the 1990's. Does the gum used overseas differ from what we are used to seeing here in U.S. stamps?

Also, when I was identifying U.S. stamps I had the luxury of having Mystic Stamp and StampSmarter websites to find the SC numbers. Is there a website where I can find these numbers or is there a different way?

He seemed to concentrate on Austria, Switzerland and Hungarian stamps as well as Nazi Germany stamps

Any Help appreciated
TY, John

European gum does not disappear after 20 to 30 years.

Geza - You can look for your stamps here:

https://www.stampworld.com/en/stamps/Switzerland/

I dont see a way to search on that site. It appears I would need to already know when the stamp was from in order to zero in on it Am I missing something?

If you have a smart phone, you can download the Stamp Identifier App which has some ads, but also is very easy to use and find your stamp.

How is that different from a catalog. You have to do some work.

i wish I knew how to do the quote window on this sit, lol, anyhow...


about: How is that different from a catalog. You have to do some work.

I used the wesites I mantioned to get a good ID(ea) about the stamps easily and then finding them in the catalog was easy. If you have no idea where ti start looking through a catalog at every picture until you find it is very hard. I cant imagine doing this now without the internet.

You can also try hipstamp or ebay or another large sales site. If you search for "Korea train" on hipstamp you get all sorts of images, and many different stamps on the first page of results, alone.

Postmark dates can sometimes get you close. After a while you'll get a feel for some countries and be able to guess the decade, at least. The event reference on a stamp might be a clue (e.g., Tokyo Olympics). Don't forget that the year is sometimes on the face of the stamp. I know that sounds obvious, but...don't forget.

Click the Switch to Full Reply button, you'll see a row of formatting options like italics, justification, etc.
Stampworld is just like a catalog. Have you explored the site for more than five minutes? In this case, you know that to find Helvetia, you look up Switzerland. Once you do that, in the lower right are options to search and filter by color, amount, etc. It's actually easier than a paper catalog, in many ways.

The quote button is this button with the red arrow.



Copy what you want to quote from the post in question and paste it between the bracketed words that appear when you hit the Quote button.

NICE! Thank you

Geza,

Once you're on the first page for a particular country, there's a set of search options in the lower right-hand corner.



When I'm having trouble locating a particular stamp, I'll often use the Denomination option to narrow down the possibilities. You may still need to navigate through a number of pages, but it should be fairly straightforward.

With some practice, you'll get the hang of it.

Dale

if there's a stamp that gives you no clues at all take a picture (phone or scan) and use google images search.

It's a while since I did that so I can't provide any sort of tutorial or tips but I remember it wasn't hard to suss out.

If I'm thinking that it must be easy - this is pretty much a technology free zone here.

You will find it easier to ID stamps the more you look at them, but speaking personally there are still ones that are a bit of a puzzle