Things You'll Need:
- Stamps
- Stamp album or envelopes
- Collector's information in print or online
- A magnifying glass
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Step 1
Identify stamps by their country of origin. If your stamps come from all over the world, some of the place names will be in originating languages and alphabets. You do not have to know all the countries of origin. Just match them up simply on the basis of language. Put all the Majyar Poste stamps together. Put all the English language stamps together by country.
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Step 2
Consult your stamp album or websites that translate foreign words into English to complete your identification. Majyar says Hungary--in Hungarian. Swiss stamps carry the legend Helvetica.
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Step 3
Identify your stamps next by denomination. Do a simple number-sorting. Put all the 3s together, the 4s, 5s and so forth. You still have things to learn, just as is the case with American stamps. Markings reflect coinage, and different marks denote different values. For example, in American stamps a stamp marked with a 1 is 1 cent or 1 dollar, depending on the mark. Albums, books and stamp-collecting sites are helpful in decoding coinage marks so that you can re-sort by denomination.
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Step 4
Identify your stamps by age. This is the most challenging step, and the one about which you will begin to do serious research. The most common and reliable sorting element is the political leader honored on stamps in many countries. Except in the area of long-lived leaders--Queen Elizabeth II of England, for example--the question of who that is may be very closely tied to when that was. You need to know what Otto von Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm both looked like to sequence your German stamps; Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai-shek must be sorted out to sequence your Chinese stamps.
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Step 5
Continue to identify your stamps by age. Monarchs and political leaders seem like simple work when you are also confronted by stamps showing trains, farm implements, flowers, animals and scenery. Fortunately, experts live outside your album, which is unlikely to have room for all the special issues countries produce. Knowing the train on your stamp is a steam train and the stamp is Russian gives you some clues. Both in books and on websites, collectors exist who are likely to recognize the stamp you're examining--and they may be able to tell a great story about the history of the stamp as well. Their personal accounts might tell you stories--not about the original Trans-Siberian railroad, but a celebration of the railroad that was held when they were young. Or that the people depicted are not threshing wheat but barley.
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Step 6
Remember you're not the first collector to be mystified. When you've hit the end of your resources and still have a stamp without identity, contact one of the searching sites on the web. You will find other mysteries, may get an answer to yours, and will meet fascinating collectors happy to share strategies and information with other collectors at all levels. Perhaps your first question will be easily answered--perhaps the next will be a real puzzler. It's fun to find out.
