Well the answer is yes, here are the statistics which I have collected from eBay today:
On the UK eBay site, there are less than 150 philatelic items for sale with any Iraq connection. Of those, only 10 have bids at this moment. That’s a 7% chance of anyone bidding on an item.
On the USA eBay site, there are less than 350 philatelic items for sale with any Iraq connection, only 35 have bids at this moment. That’s a 10% chance anyone bidding on an item.
On the Australian eBay site, there are less than 30 philatelic items for sale with any Iraq connection, NONE have bids at this moment. That’s a 0% chance anyone bidding on an item.
In my experience, these are the worse figures for a long time and shows a remarkable slowdown.
The slowdown could be the result of a number of reasons, one of them is eBay fees especially with such a low successful sale rate as mentioned above. The second reason would be that the items themselves are not of interest or good quality, there is a lot of rubbish being advertised, especially fake errors which are not worth the paper they are printed on. The third reason maybe the un-reasonable prices that sellers are charging for items.
But I believe the main reason is that there are less buyers at the moment because after all, stamps collecting is an expensive hobby and the cost of living is rising sharply and people would not be able to sustain their hobby demands any more.
I have had a couple of emails from people (who are either the ones I mentioned in previous articles or their friends) claiming that my attack on people that sell fake Iraqi stamps as either errors or supposed to be genuine is not fair and that I am not sure if these stamps are actually fake.
Well, I take pride in being an Iraqi stamps collector and I will not tolerate people taking advantage of others that may not realise they are buying fake items.
So if those I named in my articles or their friends or any body can prove to me that the stamps I have flagged up to be fake are actually REAL then I will post an apology. Until that time, I will keep making people aware of these items and who sells them.
If you want to sell fake Iraqi stamps, its not a problem as long as you label it as fake and not fool people into thinking they are buying this rare item which no one has seen before. There are people that make it their business to alter stamps and sell them on as rare errors.
There are a couple of more sellers on eBay who are have started selling those fake items and if I see them continuing then they will be next.
On eBay, a seller called 4wstamps is selling fake Iraq under occupation stamps. The stamps are famously known as fakes and it prompted the UPU to issue a statement at the time regarding these stamps.
I am naming the seller because this is cheating and this is not the first time, so try not to buy stuff from this seller.
I found this stamp on Ebay that I have not seen before. It looks like a revenue stamp, 10 Fils in value. The contribution goes to the Teachers Union for the purpose or towards the cause of guerrilla activities.
There is no date on the stamp but the value and labels suggest that if its a genuine revenue stamp, it was used in the 1980s under the Saddam dictatorship.
I am very excited by this stamp which I just found on eBay. It looks like a revenue stamp of sorts. It doesn’t look like an official stamp, looks more like a cinderella stamp, but the numbers and symbols on the stamp are interesting. The numbers/values are not in Arabic which makes me change my mind about it being a revenue stamp. Any how its an nice design.
I anyone know what this is, please use the contact form, you will find the link at the top of this page.
[update] Thanks to Frank who wrote in to explain the history of this stamp
This is a meter postage impression from a Universal “Multi-Value” machine, which would have been printed directly on to the envelope together with a circular datestamp. Hawkins and Stambaugh list one machine known, with code “U1″ which was used in Baghdad from 1941
Hawkins, J.A. and Stambaugh R.: The International Postage Meter Stamp Catalog; Hawkins and Stambaugh, Arizona; 1st Edition 2005; 1216 pages.
Some more armies artistamps you can purchase on eBay right now, they commemorate the participation of the Czech and Lithuanian army participation in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
These are not from this site so it is not sold here.
