Central, South American country stamps offer change of pace to collectors

While these countries are the most popular among collectors, they can be fun to collect

Who is John Apfelbaum? John is the owner of stamp dealer and auction house Apfelbaum, Inc. An insightful take on the vastness of stamp collecting, John's blog provides hours of enjoyment. Read over 1,000 articles about stamp collecting and stamp history.

By Earl Apfelbaum

Nicaragua, Bolivia and Paraguay are not the most popular countries, philatelically. They take place far to the rear of France,Germany and Great Britain. This comes about naturally because few collectors have an either ancestral tie to these lands or are concerned with, or have an economic interest in these countries.

However, when it comes to getting fun from collecting, the Nicaragua, Bolivia and Paraguay boys have it all over the followers of the popular cults. They collect in a realm where varieties, both listed and unlisted, abound; where for a few dollars one can get really rare stamps, and where the catalog can be thrown out of the window to let personal fancy determine degree, direction and diversity of philatelic accomplishment. It is practically impossible for a collector to be original or to make a find in one of the popular countries.

It is equally difficult for a collector to miss these thrill givers when assembling a Nicaragua collection, or, to a lesser degree, miss turning up interesting items in an assemblage of Paraguay or Bolivia.

Many minor varieties of these countries came about for the simple reason that the printers couldn’t read or couldn’t find sufficient type of the same font to arrange a complete setting. These are good practical reasons for errors and varieties.

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