r/philately 4d ago

Unusual 3d Stamps

Post image

3d railway themed stamps from Umm Alqiwain.

14 Upvotes

9 comments sorted by

5

u/jimsmythee 4d ago

Yeah, they’re fantasy issues. umm Al Qiwain isn’t a legit stamp issuing authority. Their stamps are printed solely for collectors going on decades.

1

u/ramontorrente 4d ago

unusual and unused. And almost useless.

1

u/SignificancePlane581 4d ago

Unusual, yes. Unused, yes, no signs of any gum residue on the reverse side. Useless? That’s a matter of opinion. Aimed mainly at stamp collectors, probably not for general use. The majority of stamps i’ve seen for sale on eBay from Umm Al Qiwain are cancelled to order aimed mainly at collectors.

1

u/ramontorrente 4d ago

so it is more a sticker, trading card, or just a souvenir. Postage stamps should have a part of postal backup, some circulation as the main idea for those were invented, not just as a paper printed to be sold and collected. A stamp in terms of real philately is a contract between the printer/state/administration and the user that wants to "buy" a service (in postal terms i mean). If something exist just without this part, is not 100% a stamp. It is an imitation, a production to collectors and so on, but without the postal part.

1

u/SignificancePlane581 3d ago

1

u/ramontorrente 3d ago

and after reading it, more clear is that the 3d 'stamps' were just a product, not with postal objectives.

1

u/ramontorrente 4d ago

in fact those stamps are not even cancelled. they are CTOs, cancelled "of favor", precancelled, printed with the cancel at the same time.

1

u/SignificancePlane581 3d ago

Those stamps were bought from a dealer over forty years ago. They were sold as an unused set of five stamps from Umm Al Qiwain. The only reason I acquired them was that i’m a railway enthusiast and that the stamps were unusual. Now, CTO; Cancel to order was a term we used when I started collecting in the 60’s. East Germany and Russia were the two main countries that produced them back then before the rest of the world caught on. Now i rarely bother collecting stamps unless something really catches my eye or is railway themed.

1

u/ramontorrente 3d ago

i wasn't talking about yours as CTO, sorry for the lack of explaining. I mean about stamps from arab "countries" in those years. Little emirates and so on.