Regions of Stamp Collecting: Part 2 Central Asia
This area has to be one of my favorite areas ever. As a history student, I love Central Asian history and I cannot get enough of it. The fact that I imagine nomadic hordes sweeping down and waging a war again civilized empires to be exciting. But enough of that, this blog is for stamps.
Central Asia, as outlined about consists of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Historical countries include just Tannu Touva. Since most of these countries were given independence in 1991, they have had a few stamps out. Mostly since they are new, other collectors tend to shy away from this area. None the less, collecting this area comes with its own risks. For One, there are not a lot of brick and mortar stores selling this area because of either the rarity involved or because of a more darker reason.
Since independence, these areas have been the target of forgeries. There are countless forgeries of various Central Asian stamps featuring a wide area of topics from Disney cartoons to Dinosaurs to famous people. For this reason, it has badly impacted this area and has made people shy away. Also in this mix is a number of CTO's produced by Mongolia on topics which it has no connection to it.
In any case, if you know what you're getting and can be smart about it, there is no reason why this area is going to be difficult. My wish is to have more and more of this area show up in kiloware deals and the like which is current not happening.
Since I don't have my excel sheet I can't give counts for this reason, but I know for sure the largest count for this region is Mongolia and Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan being the lowest. This is a great region and I invite anybody who can to collect it.
Next time, we're heading for the mysterious continent that is Africa!
Kyrgyzstan:
Turkmenistan:
Tajikistan:
Tajikistan:
Uzbekistan:
Kazakhstan:
