Collecting Stamps From Dead Countries




A dead country used to issue stamps, but no longer exists as a separate stamp-issuing entity. Countries come and go throughout history, and many countries were born - and later "died" - during the 19th and 20th centuries. Some dead countries are now provinces or regions of larger countries, having been absorbed into those countries, and the stamps used in those absorbed areas are the stamps of the larger countries of which they are now a part. Other dead countries merged together to form a completely new, larger country, and their stamps are now those of the new "combined" country. And still other dead countries used to be a single country that split into two or more separate countries.



For example, many countries were killed off by the Russian Revolution and the subsequent absorption of those dead countries into the USSR, which as of 1991 is now itself a dead country and no longer issues stamps as the Soviet Union. Some of the dead countries in the area that was formerly ruled by the USSR were very short-lived and include the Far Eastern Republic, the Trancaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and Siberia.



The USSR is now itself a dead country, despite being one of the world's most prolific issuers of stamps while it existed. The same is true for Czechoslovakia, a dead country which split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, two stamp-issuing countries that came into being in 1992.



If you're confused by all this geopolitical re-arranging, you're not the only one. But dead countries present a somewhat unique opportunity for stamp collectors. A person who collects dead country stamps knows, for a fact, that he or she has a finite number of stamps to locate: only those stamps that were issued up until the date the country "died." No more will be issued in the future for that country. So there's no need to constantly buy new issues or try to keep up with the plethora of stamps being issued nowadays. Dead countries represent a finite beginning and a finite end.

Stamp Collecting Tips - Dead Countries

What's a "dead country," you might ask. Well, in the stamp collecting world, a dead country is a country that either used to issue its own stamps and no longer does (for example, Bavaria) or a country that does still issue stamps but under a different name than it did before so that the old name is no longer used on its stamps (for example, the old U.S.S.R. is now issuing stamps as Russia).

Philatelists who collect dead countries enjoy a couple of extra benefits:

1. Since the country they collect no longer issues stamps, they know exactly how many stamps they will need to have a complete collection - there will be no more stamps from that country in the future.

2. These stamp collectors don't need to deal with the flood of new stamp issues by many countries during recent years.