Stamps: Rallying area Belgium

Stamps: Rallying area Belgium

After the first stamp, the Penny Black, with an image of Queen Victoria was pasted on a letter in the United Kingdom in 1841, other countries with their own stamp issues followed suit. The senders paid for the processing of their mail with stamps. Of course very interesting for collectors, because: Stamps are fun to collect!

The first Belgian stamps

In Belgium, the very first stamp, with an image of King Leopold I., pasted on a letter in 1849. It was the start of a long series of stamps issued by the Belgian Post Office. The stamps turned out not only to be an excellent means of arranging payment for the postal service. The stamps also proved to have an enormous attraction for collectors, or philatelists. All stamps could be neatly and conveniently placed in special stock albums. Collectors do not only collect stamps, but all kinds of things related to postal and stamps.

Stamps Belgium: Winterhulp

Limit your collection area

There are so many countries in the world that collecting all the stamps in the world is organisationally impossible. You would need a lot of space for all the stamp books and you would run out of time to put all the stamps in the right place in the stamp collection. Then we have not yet talked about the enormous costs. Collectors like to collect stamps MNH, or unused. That means you have to buy them from the appropriate postal services. For all countries in the world? Priceless! In short, it is very practical for many reasons to limit your active collection area to one or a few countries. Some philatelists take a different approach, and choose a certain theme from which they want to collect everything, for example all stamps (in the world) with flowers, cars or flags.

Belgium

As your active staging area Belgium then you still have a very large collection area. below Collection area Belgium can you understand: all stamps issued in the Kingdom of Belgium. This also applies to countries that were part of the kingdom at one point in history, but are now independent. You take those countries with you in your collection up to and including the year of independence. Or areas that were or were not Belgian territory due to border changes during or after the World Wars. Or areas where Belgian stamps with a German overprint were used. A global list of collection areas can then be:

• Belgium
• Occupation stamps
• Railway stamps
• Independent State of Congo
• Belgian Congo
• Ruanda-Urundi

Of course you decide which sub-areas you want to collect. You can also focus on parts of these areas, for example you can focus on the Belgian railway stamps.

Occupation stamps

Service stamps

Railway stamps

Languages

Because Belgium is a country with several language areas, texts on stamps are also displayed in at least two languages: French and Dutch. However, there is also a German-speaking community, so on some stamps text can be read in three languages, including in the German.

Subdivision

The table below shows the years in which stamps were issued for a number of important collection areas in Belgium.

Postage stamps

It goes without saying that the franking stamp segment is the largest within each sub-area. More regular mail was sent than air mail, etc.