Philately mondialist

The philately mondialist consists in collecting all of the stamps emitted in the whole world since the origins for the worldwide of the world. The collector can reduce its field of collection in time or space, but adopts an approach by transmitting postal administration.

An impossible collection?

An impossible collection (even if some hope to approach some) in front of the difficulties presented by this type of collection:

by the cost or impossibility of getting certain stamps which exist only in one or some specimens (thus single “the One hundred” of English Guyana);
by the quantity, in the year 2000 more than 500.000 stamps was referred by principal the catalogs world like Yvert and Tellier or Michel;
by the time necessary to seek, examine, identify and classify with precision such a volume;
by the storage space of the sorters or the albums represented.

Taking into account the extent of the task it is thus necessary to define more precise limits in this type of collection:

per historical periods,
by more or less wide geographical areas,
by types of stamps (air stamps , blocks, service, tax, benevolence,…).

Concept of country

On the matter, one will more often speak about postal administration, the concept of country remaining very variable at the philatelic level. The word indicates as well a city, a province, one period of occupation, a military base, a political regime… in measurement, however, or of the stamps were emitted. One will often base oneself on the distinctions carried out by the editors of catalogs although very many divergences exist on this cutting or the attribution of such or such stamp with an administration rather than another from one editor to another.

One can also put the question of the legitimacy of certain emissions which can be referred in the catalogs or not. Does one have to limit himself to such or such catalog, the emissions recognized by the Universal postal union? What to think of the emissions of the islands Tuvalu which emitted stamps for each of the 8 inhabited islands for an entire surface of 24km ²? There also exists of many stamps emitted by transitory or imaginary whimsical republics which have of another interest only commercial for their promoters.

A transitory stage

The world collection is often the collection carried out by the initial philatelist. Thanks to the stamps collected on the mail of the friends or the family, the purchase of small pockets of stamps of the world, generally cheap, it makes it possible to the philatelists to make their first weapons. For this reason it constitutes a real pedagogy of philately and geography for young people. It makes it possible to better define its centers of interest before continuing or specializing in more precise fields.

A gate on the history

The interest of this type of collection once its suitably definite contour is to discover the history of these last centuries with the many emissions.

Thus, around Germany, one can sail between old duchies, cities, families or kingdoms Germanic (Hanover, Hamburg, Bavaria, Bade, Bremen, the Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony, Tour and Taxis, Wurtemberg…) with the German Empire while passing by the Weimar Republic, IIIe Reich to the Second world war and the many occupied territories by Germany then by the allied forces with the release, East-West confrontation with the zones French, American, British or Soviet, the FRG, GDR and the reunification. One can continue with the African colonies like the German Eastern Africa or the Cameroun. One can thus collect the stamps of more than one about fifty country, to redécouvrir the historical events around the philatelic history of Dantzig, of the Bohemia and Moravie, of the Sudètes, Allenstein or the island of Heligoland.

Catalogs

The identification and the classification of the stamps of the world require an important whole of catalogs. Principal the catalogs proposing a quotation for the worldwide of the world are :

German Michel,
American Scott,
the British Stanley Gibbons,
French Yvert and Tellier.

As example in 2007 the German catalog Michel is composed of 9 volumes for the overseas and 6 volumes for Europe published color (for the last editions) with approximately 20.000 pages of quotations. Vis-a-vis the cost of color printing of these volumes, it decided to sell the pages concerning a country with the request.

See too

List of the postal administrations by sovereign countries
: Category: Postal history

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