Complete Listing Of Olympic Stamps

I have the rudiments of a topical olympics collection, as well as many olympic issues in other country collections. I am planning to expand my olympic gatherings and wonder if anyone can point me in the direction of a complete listing of all the olympic issues from 1896 onwards, to help guide my collecting efforts. I am given to understand there may be upwards of 20,000 issues, which represents quite a challenge! I quite enjoy philatelic challenges & I'm up for it!! Any help with a listing will be much apprecia\ted. Many thanks.

Two obvious (in my mind, anyway) answers are 1) the thematic Michel Olympic Games catalog, available here https://www.safepub.com/product/michel-olympics/ and elsewhere, and 2) the American Topical Association, which offers a checklist for members: https://americantopical.org/Checklist

kered.

Collecting for the enjoyment of collecting, whatever that might be, is the name of the game. Don't hesitate to ask questions especially if you need basic information and especially more advanced sources of information for any possible topic. You should be able to find folks on this board a little further along on their collecting journey glad to share experiences.

My personal bias is a used stamp loses the story of its journey in the postal service when it is removed from the cover it transported to its destination. Collecting postal history adds a whole new aspect to your journey in our hobby.

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ

I don't know if you are collecting only postage stamps, or if you are collecting Olympic cinderellas as well. There are many beautiful poster stamps that have been issued over the years, and I find many of them to be more attractive than the postage stamps.

The standard catalog of Olympic poster stamps is by DuBois, but it is out of print and very hard to find.

Fortunately William Senkus has put a catalog online which is probably better - he's only missing a few stamps and has found many others that are not in the DuBois catalog.

https://alphabetilately.org/Oly/index.html

If you want a little further garnish, there are also various pre- and post-WWII cigarette and trade card sets devoted to the Olympics.

Stampdoc,

Thank you for the link to this incredible website with Olympic stamps and cinderella's

I migght be immiodest, kered, yet you can see (and freely download my own catalogues of Olympic-related stamps here:

http://www.stampsportal.ru/katalogi...astoyashhee/

The catalogues contain ALL postage stamps in the this theme, including formally non-Olympic, where real Olympians or Olympics-related events are featured.

Volumes for Australia/Oceania, Europe (2 parts), North America and South America are available, and I continue to work on 2 left continents, Asia and Africa.

The catalogues are in Russian, however, it is not a great problem as they contain pictures of all stamps and sheets.

@Vicaf60

That is a very thorough listing.

In the Dutch section, I notice some strange issues. A picture of the Royal family in hockey outfits. It is an Olympic Sport, but the stamp has no direct relation with the Olympics. (The current King was a member of the IOC).

Also a sheetlet celebrating the wedding of our current King and Queen. The only remote link is that the then Prince of the Netherlands was an IOC member.

A sheetlet issued to celebrate the province of Friesland with labels showing a football player from Heerenveen, an ice dancer from the province and a horse. Again, all are Olympic sports, but these are not even stamps.

A sheetlet celebrating the coronation of the King, and permanent stamps depicting the King, who, at that time was no longer an IOC member.

Also, in the GB section, I see privately produced 'Smilers' Sheets with labels related to Olympic Sports.

It must have taken you ages to compile that list.

Thanks for your remarks, NSK

What concerns King Willem-Alexander, I do include ALL stamps that feature IOC members (he used to be one), National Olympic Committee presidents and other Olympic official in ANY age (it's indicated in the preface to Volume 1).

It's up to a collector to choose what he/she will include in their OWN collection, and it's easier to do when you have a larger list. For an exhibit, you may even need to expand the list in my catalogues.

The "Royal family in hockey outfits" - I suppose you mean the 1998 stamp (Mi 1658) commemorating the centennial anniversary of the Royal Hockey Union.
It's not the Royal family The families featured are the Kuipers and the Eikelboom, including Olympian Ellen Marchien Dubbeldam-Kuipers and Marten Eikelboom as kids.

The upper label in the Friesland sheet shows Abe Minderts Lenstra, a Dutch footballer who was a part of the national football team at the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Concerning the Smilers and alike (see the Australian section), I do try to catalogue them, though information on them is rather hard to find, and I am not sure that I've managed to include them all. Any additional information (including some better scans - see the Friesland sheet) is wellcomed.

From the PDF, it looked like our King. I am a 'mad' supporter of one of the women's teams.

As such, I come into contact with two of our multiple (one three times, one two times, and among the probable team members that are top favourites to retain the title in Paris) Olympic Gold medalists, world champions and European champions. The Royal family has been known to play hockey.

The sheets were issued after the cut-off date for my Dutch collection and very few post office outlets carried them.

As for the Team GB 2012 Gold Medal winners, I have started a thread on those. It will take some time, but I have all Olympic and Paralympic stamps from all printers. There is some further information there: https://goscf.com/t/85435

If you search the Norphil Blog https://blog.norphil.co.uk/, you will find additional information on the stamps and the process. This blog, also, is an excellent source for information on other GB issues.

Here is another site with information on GB issues: https://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/

I always wondered who all of those Olympic stamps were intended for.

I should take photos of the gold Olympic-winners pillar boxes for you.

Wrong jersey. My colour:

Many thanks all for your very useful links to Olympic materials including stamps. I appreciate very much hearing from you.

I am having a good look at all the connections, but judging by the size of some of the files, it is going to take me some time!!

Thanks classic paper for the link to american topical - I've had a look there & it seems that a subscription will be worthwhile.

Thanks also vicaf60 for your catalogues which I have downloaded.Although I have a very large collection of Russian stamps, unfortunately I do not speak russian. However I will rely on that old adage "One picture is worth a thousand words."

Stampdoc, thanks for your info on poster stamps. Although I have seen references to these, in half a lifetime of gathering stamps, I have yet to come across any of these posters. Obviously I've not been looking in the right places. Sadly the two regular auction houses in Edinburgh, Scotland have packed in during this year past. I have sourced the bulk of my collections from there and now have to surf the internet.

Cheers all

In my online searches I came across this website which has a wealth of info on the Olympiads from 1896 to 2020, which others may find useful. olympic-museum.de/index.html