Madeira Stamps/Trip/ Store

Last year I started organizing Portuguese stamps. Stamp collecting has always been a way to learn geography for me. I have some Madeira stamps 19 th century and research led me to find that it is really not far from East coast of USA… perfect weather

So I recently returned from Madeira . Most of my friends have no idea where Madeira is located nor that it is Portuguese. I told my wife about it. She was intrigued when I showed her some pictures so we went over there from Lisbon. I didn't tell her about the airport approach as it is ranked as one of the most dangerous

What a gorgeous island!!! I'm a soccer fan . Christiano Ronaldo is god there. It is just as beautiful as Hawaii, with drier weather and closer.

Snapped a picture of stamp store in Funchal. Unfortunately it was closed both times I walked by it.

Regardless… I will be working on collecting Madeira now that I have visited the place.

Sounds like a nice place to visit .Only piece of advice stay away from Madeira stamps .

Nobody knows the full story or they are lying.

I was a stockholder of Greg Manning and ran into Asfinsa {Spanish stamp catalog makers and stamp dealers } people at G.M. office during a few stamp auctions . These people from Spain were collecting money from the retired public and investors from all around Spain with the promise of high returns They collected billions from investors . .

Well when you collected Billions of dollars and needed a place to put it with high returns, you got problems .

You call up the little post office in places like Madeira and ask the Postmaster what is your next printing and he says "we are printing up $5,000 worth of stamps " So Asfinsa says that is not good enough , print up $50,000.00 of your next issue and I will drop a check off for you for $45,000 .00

So what has never been discovered by the Good cops of Spain is what to do with $45,000 worth of one stamp issue from Madeira with all the other "extra issues " of Madeira and all the other countries that also issued stamps for the buyers at Asfinsa ..........so explain to me what was billions of dollars used for if it wasn't stolen .

Nice story. The weather sometime causes the closure of Funchal Airport.
Cristóbal Colón (Columbus) lived on one of the smaller islands in the Madeira Archipelago before his 1492 crossing of the Atlantic.

Cristiano Ronaldo - Queen among the drama queens that football is rich in - was born in Funchal.

What is that based on?
This was a pyramid construction that overvalued stamps, used forgeries, and laundered money.

I don't collect new issues
Are there many forgeries of old stamps from
Madeira?

Political corruption is a problem in Madeira. Extremely safe there. You can walk around at night… no issue and safer than USA

However the President of Madeira recently resigned after arrested for corruption as well as mayor of Funchal ( corruption involving real estate development I think)

I can tell the people of Madeira are embarrassed by this. But they are very proud of their beautiful island.

Airport closes a few days a year due to wind issues. All pilots flying into Madeira have special training. I believe they can land in Porto Santo if wind is issue. Porto Santo is close by with large runway

You miss the part ---- "Nobody knows the full story or they are lying "

Why don't you ask the Spanish Authorities because they are not talking ,where is the Billions of Dollars spend on stamps. The money is from older retired people mostly from Spain . Its 30 years !! Who got the money ???

So, you feel called upon to fill in the unknown?

These pyramid constructions rarely recover the money when unwound by authorities. So, it should not be too much of a surprise that a lot of money went missing. It was not set up by boy scouts.

I think we are getting to deep into the weeds here .

First it wasn't a case of a pyramid scam . This was a honest case of too much money to fast coming in .

These were stamp dealers who didn't understand inflation rates and didn't understand human greed.. First you can't tell people you can guarentee then 5% or 7% per year ,stamp dealers don't understand how fast that balloon inflates . The growth gets out of control in a few years ,that is the first problem.

Then the second problem is human nature ,they tell all their friends about the good thing and before you know it tons of money like billions of dollars show up on your door step because they all want the high return .

That sir is what happen ,selling or promising something good and too many people want in .

Now we get to my story , me I go a stamp auction around New York City . I am trying to buy entertaiment but every lot I want this Company from Spain is outbidding me , who knows why ? This goes on all day , so piss on them , I am going to run up the bid on a huge lot and play chicken with them . We run it up and they don't blink ok ,lets double the lot and they don't quit ,so I call it quits that 3x estimates ......that is how I met the owners of Asfinsa , they needed to fill demand for money they were getting from retire people .

It all sounds so innocent.

They were accused of running a pyramid fraud. This was not pursued because the court found it was a mercantile and not financial scheme, it did not offer more than 50% returns, and within a period of time of 6 to 9 months. In essence, it was set up as a pyramid scheme. Instead it was called a scam.

Among the things done, prices were inflated to ten times catalogue value, and the German justice department informed the Spanish they had intercepted a large collection of German stamps of which only the first page held genuine stamps and the others only forgeries. They were also prosecuted for money laundering.

Most of the scamming was done by Fórum Filatélico with Afinsa being involved in the offering of the investments - although technically not investments as these were mercantile and not financing operations.

Some more information compiled in the name of the people who were scammed: https://web.archive.org/web/20150410085241/http://www.pbalava.es/Documentos/Fe...umAfinsa.pdf

That reminds me a little bit of Maui's Kahului airport, which also has crazy crosswinds.

Every time we go there, I wonder how exciting the landing is going to be. There have been a lot of minor incidents there with planes overshooting the runway and such. Its best to land there on an empty stomach.