The Unitrade Postage Stamp Identifier

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and the editor of Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

Despite some errors in editing, this brief guide is a useful tool,
especially for beginning collectors who need help with identifying the
world’s stamps. The editors point out that many reference works are
dated with respect to the political changes that have occurred in recent
years. Somewhat cryptically, they also state that because of
“political decisions,” some of the world’s major stamp publishers
are obliged to ignore the stamps issued by some countries—and that, as
a result, their identifiers do not include these stamps. Since no
examples are given, one can only wonder who the parties involved are.

The first section is devoted to inscriptions and overprints, while the
second lists former and new stamp-issuing authorities, including the
dates for when stamps were known to have been issued. The latter is
quite interesting to read, for it shows the extent to which the global
political map has evolved in the past 150 years. Countries that have a
long history of issuing stamps (e.g., France) are not included. Capsule
guides to Chinese numbers, Arabic, Hebrew, and the Cyrillic and Greek
alphabets complete the presentation.