I'm getting fed up of seeing so-called 'mint' stamps from places that I never heard of until I looked them up on the internet . . . Ajman, Stroma, Fujeira, Sharjah, Tuvalu, Pabay, etc.

And then there are the dubious 'stamps' from places such as Grenada, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mongolia, Dhufar, Venda, etc. who print pretty pieces of perforated, gummed paper - but are they ever used as actual stamps on envelopes?

I have yet to see one with a real postmark, not just a CTO. No more room in my albums for these charlatans. I understand there is one central printers somewhere in Africa who prints all those 'iffy' stamps.

Re: attached image. Stroma has been uninhabited since prehistoric times, so how could the postmark be genuine? There is no Post Office and no letterbox to post a letter there.

Don't forget good old GB producing eight or nine sets of "commemorative" stamps every year when postal use is falling and it's much more convenient to buy postage on line.

Some of these 'junk' country issues are worth a considerable premium if you find them on a genuine cover particularly from the Trucial (Gulf States).

There is a plethora of this rubbish because the main stamp agencies involved in producing it (like Stamperija for example) target poor and underdeveloped countries offering to provide their postage stamp needs free of charge and in return they are given the freedom to produce what they like cancelled to order. So you get rubbish like Britney Spears stamps issued for Burundi (for example) which probably never see Burundi or are used in Burundi.

I was in Bujumbura recently and was offered a box of this crap by someone who worked in the main post office there. In Congo DR you can buy this stuff by the Kilo in their main post office in Kinshasa (Zaire issues printed for the Mobutu regime).

So . . . is one agency producing all this crap? I believe that delcampe should have some sort of filter which allows us to buy real stamps that have been used on letters and have been through the postal system. What on earth is the point in buying those useless pieces of pretty paper? Philately is supposed to be about collecting actual stamps, not rubbish that has never seen a post office.

To me, the main areas to avoid like the plague are:

Afghanistan,
Ajman,
Benin,
Burkina Faso,
Burundi,
Cambodia,
Cuba,
Equatorial Guinea,
Fujeira,
Guinea Bissau,
Guyana,
Laos,
Mali,
Manama,
Mongolia,
Mozambique,
Nicaragua,
Niger,
North Korea,
Paraguay,
Parbay,
Rwanda,
Sao Tome,
Sharjah,
Sierra Leone,
Somalia,
Stroma,
Togo,
Venda,
Vietnam,
Yemen.
. . . . and I'm sure I have missed some.

Please ask delcampe to introduce a filter for CTOs.

There are Moderators that remove a lot of the fake rubbish or move it into the fantasy/cinderella sections.

To see which stamps are not 'recognised' one needs to go to the UPU web site which used to to - and maybe still does - list the fake rubbish that is issued. If you see things like Staffa, Stroma, Pabay and the myriads of other uninhabited islands with jam labels issued in their same you should report them as they should not be in the stamp listings.

Moaning in the Forum will get little done - one needs to be more pro-active and report. If you are particularly incensed you could volunteer to be a Moderator. If you do be careful and only target items you are sure should not be listed in the stamps sections or are fake bits of rubbish issued for a country that has not issued them.

I have to do something. It's ruining my hobby of 50 years. I didn't mean to 'moan' though, I just wanted to see if many others felt the same as I do because some of the crap is on sale for big prices. I'm just hoping that no collector would pay these prices for what amounts to absolute rubbish.

This link from another stamp collecting forum might be of interest to you - hope you have plenty of spare time as it has lots of interesting links and comments.

Link (https)

The real concern must be that collectors of stamps intended solely for postal use have become gradually overwhelmed over many years. The boundary between legitimate use and catching the eye, and pocket, of collectors has blurred almost beyond discrimination. In my own thematic domain I suspect it lead to the demise of the 'Butterflies and Moths on Stamps Society' and its journal, 'Swallowtail'.

How does one volunteer to become a moderator?

Thanks. That's an interesting discussion. It seems I'm not alone!

Contact Delcampe - 'Contact Us' at the bottom of every page and you will be given details about the Moderator programme.

Sad to see places like St Vincent and Grenada churning out agency junk by the yard, once upon a time they produced beautiful stamps such as the St Vincent 5 shilling (SG 53). from 1885.
Likewise Tuva, which I believe is an autonomous republic in Russia, with their brightly coloured labels featuring everything from the Teletubbies to Jerry Garcia, most of which would be met with a blank look by your average Tuvan. That said, I did love the crazy 1930s Tuva stamps with camels racing steam locomotives (hey, they were good enough for Richard Feynman!) And at least those saw some postal use, albeit rather limited - most of which was sent from the postmaster in the Tuvan capital Kyzyl to a stamp dealer in Antwerp. I'm sure the current holder of that job won't have any of this junk at the post office.
As for some of the uninhabited islands off Scotland, google the name "Clive Feigenbaum".. Interesting chap to say the least, was our Clive. You'll get into a bit of a rabbit hole concerning this guy, his businesses, and his issues for places like Eynhallow that appear to be inhabited only by seagulls.
As for the brightly coloured and brash Emirati issues of the late sixties/early seventies, well how many of us here had these in our kiddie packets when we were just starting out collecting stamps back before we learned about cancelled-to-order issues? I certainly did, and I'm sure others a few years younger than me would have had similar from Equatorial Guinea and the like. Suffice it to say these things do not appear in Gibbons or Scott or Yvert for good reason (though I do believe Michel are more lenient here) But that said, do look out for genuinely postally used Trucial States stuff from before about 1967 if that floats your boat, some of these do actually go for crazy money now.

My particular beef, personal though it is, concerns my two collecting interests. The Solomon Islands and GB. I won't collect anything issued after the year 2000 from either postal administrations, since they are, in my view, nothing more than revenue raising labels. I have been collecting on and off for over 50 years and have noticed that it is not just a tendency limited to "Fringe" postal administrations but seems to be a malaise affecting the whole hobby. Similarly quite a few dealers seem to be cutting corners when assessing the value of their stock by looking at catalogue values and then pricing their offerings at anywhere between 60% - 80%, regardless of condition.