How Many Different Issue Stamps Are There Since 1840?

STUDY STAMPS ---Thanks for that interesting breakdown ,I made a copy of it . Can you give me a year ,please .

The initial 'counting' was completed in October 2020. Since then, individual countries have been checked - several about a year ago. I am hoping to get a chance this fall (maybe!) to do another update (based on the 2026 Scott catalogues), but don't hold me to it.

My counts for each country have varying 'end' dates, depending on the Scott catalogue available at the time. For example:

Belize: Oct 2021
Canada: Jan 2023
Finland: Nov 2022
Iceland: Nov 2018

Of course, dead countries don't need to be done again.

There are clearly many thousands more stamps that have been issued over the last few years that I need to 'count'.

Robin

With perf, watermark, paper, etc. varieties there are probably more than 1,000,000 different stamps. But if we assume 800,000 you would need 800 packets of hinges to mount them all. If you used Dennison hinges, at $30 per packet it would cost $24,000 just for the hinges. I wonder if there are even 800 Dennison packets in existence.

Robin, that is awesome and probably the best most recent count we have. Kudos to you too for including the individual stamps in a larger pane.

I talked to a member of our club last night and he is up to 228,000 different though 2010... told him that he was about a third of the way there. ;)

LANDOQUAKES --- I have to disagree with you ,on how you talk to your fellow club member . Please go back and tell him something like this -------

Amazing with your accomplishment, you reached a level of 99.9% of fellow worldwide stamp collectors never reach. You are in the territory that surpassed many of the greatest stamp collectors of the past never reached .


That is how you need to talk to him . It is like you saying to me "Floortrade -half your stamps are worth 10 cents or less " that is true but that is not how you need to present it . Saying he is 1/3 the way to his enjoyment and goal is not the way .

Tell him your friend on the STAMP COMMUNITY BOARD , wishes him well and hopes he continues to enjoy his journey . Praise his achievement.

Oh it's all good. I'm very encouraging of his progress and I let him know that he is one of the very few people who counts his stamps at that level. All in 52 volumes of Scott Internationals too. I like to pick his brain on how he does it. He says he adds stamps in spirts and comes up with a total once a year. I will let him know he has fans! I don't know of anyone who has put that many stamps in an SI run.

I've had the chance to update my world counts, using Volumes 1-4 of the 2026 Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogues.

My public library has not yet made available Volumes 5 and 6.



Robin

Amazing work! would this be roughly through 2024?

706838?

The more, the merrier! Come on, world, let's go for 800K!

Dale

Is Antarctica included?

Estimates:

Australian Antarctic Territory: 301 regular (to Aug 13, 2024)

British Antarctic Territory: 787 regular, 4 semi-postal, 77 airmail (to Nov 19, 2023)

French Southern & Antarctic Territory: 1069 regular, 149 airmail (to Sep 21, 2024)



The dates do a vary a bit, as seen in the example above. The odd country is into early 2025, but generally speaking most are towards the end of 2024. I guess it depends on how often Scott's has updated certain countries.

Robin

I would like to know more about those people who have spend a life time building those massive collection ,I think a lot of them are very private people and are unknown to the stamp community .

Other than some of the people who claim outrageous claims on the internet , or the many people claim "i know somebody " but forgot their name .

The best place to get information that is truthful would be for a author to write a article and interview the only reliable source to me would be to interview the people about 5 or 8 of them are the owners or head person at a few of the large stamp auction firms . They know which customers have been buying for years even decades of purchases and were not dealers or resellers . But people who spend money over a extend period .

I've had the chance to update my world counts, using all six Volumes (1-6) of the 2026 Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogues (with one exception; I had to use the 2025 edition of Vol 5B as my library did not have the 2026 edition available at the moment - rats!).



I would consider this a pretty close count of what has been issued up to the time that the Scott catalogues were published.

With that said, it is possible that my counting may have missed a few (likely less than a couple of hundred). Varieties (perf, paper, watermark, etc.) given a minor sub-number are not included. Hopefully I didn't make a typing mistake while entering the various numbers into the database!

Robin

Obviously you do not consider postal stationary, parcel post, newspapers, or officials to count. Of course there are probably a million+ revenues alone worldwide, too.