Geographical Philatelists Are Vicious

My original post on some stamps I found, from the Republic of South Moluccas, has received some negative press! (If one snotty know-it-all and one offensive L2 learner over the course of three years is "negative press.")

You can read about the drama here, on my other blog, Sweven Volant. Why'd I update this story there and not here? Well, I wrote the original post in 2009 so updating that entry would guarantee no one would ever see it. This way, I can share the love between that blog and this one (and I haven't had anything really startling to post in that other blog).

It's not necessary to read either of these posts to fully enjoy one's life experience. This is just a funny thing that happened. Not uproariously funny, but... funny enough.

Republik Maluku Selatan

Here are two stamps that should not appear in any reputable collection, apparently. They are known as bogus stamps, are not official postage, and were printed by a private interest on behalf of the South Moluccas.

The South Moluccas are a group of 150 islands between Indonesia and Australia, south of Malaysia. They are not a major world power, they are certainly not a sovereign nation; they do not have an indomitable army, navy, or air force. They are not a predominant world economy. And they have never printed official, legal postage stamps for themselves.

Henry Stolow, a certain stamp dealer operating in Berlin and New York, ordered 150 sets of these stamps from Austria in 1955 and apparently sold and distributed these. Being that there is no Republic of South Moluccas, inclusion of these stamps into any responsible philatelic collection spelled disaster for the collector. Why would he do such a thing? Vengeance? Power-mongering? Simple whim? The world may never know.

And yet somehow I have come into possession of two of these stamps. How? From where? I have no idea. I was just cleaning out my stationery supplies and I found a small, yellowing paper packet with several stamps in it. One's from Romania, one's a Bulgarian stamp celebrating with 100-year mark of the April Uprising, one's from Poland and it features a thistle. But here are also two bogus stamps from a fake nation, which I actually think (given their history) makes them especially cool.