As Angola is these days part of the “evil empire of IGPC” (philatelic agency, which produces most of the topical stamps for small islands and developing countries), I was not hardly surprised when I lately received a selection of pretty CTO-used Angola topical stamps. But I was slightly amazed when they all turned out as complete and utter bogus (for some I suspected it, but not all).
In early January I wrote a short introduction about Seebeck reprints on some Nicaraguan stamps. Well, it’s time for a short revisit on the topic as I’ve received few more Nicaraguan stamps from various stamp exchanges. The following examples are from the 1891 “Goddess of plenty” / “Allegorical figure with cornucopia” series (with very attractive design).
The name of Seebeck is something that many stamp collectors and philatelist recognize at some level. He was a stamp dealer and printer, best known for his stamp-printing contracts with several Latin American countries in the late 19th century producing loads of stamps to collector markets.
One of the requested topics for the blog entries has been CTO (Cancelled-to-order) stamps. As the recent post about East German definitive stamps showed several CTO-examples, I think this is an excellent time to demystify CTO.
The Isö cinderellas are somewhat interesting phenomena in Scandinavian philately. Some sources (such as Wikipedia) mention Isö stamps as “local post stamps from Eastern Sweden (Gotland)”, but in reality these are complete bogus stamps.
Besides Somali Republic (see yesterdays blog entry), Sahara OCC R.A.S.D (or officially République Arabe Saharouie Démocratique – Arab Republic of Western Sahara) is one of the most common sources of modern topical bogus / cinderella stamps. None of the RASD issues have postal validity anywhere. At best, they can be considered as local propaganda labels or cinderella issues.