Welcome to Freestampcatalogue.com
What is Freestampcatalogue?
Freestampcatalogue (FSC) is a world stamp catalogue free for everyone to use. Almost all official stamps issued from about 1920 to the present day are shown in the catalogue. However, this includes only stamps and blocks - no special items, misprints, varieties etc. The stamps are displayed per set, resulting in more than 200,000 series and blocks. By using the filter function on the right side of this page, you can easily find stamps sorted by country, theme or date, or a combination thereof.
Catalogue numbers
FSC is built and maintained by PostBeeld, international stamp dealers located in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Items that are in stock are displayed with a PostBeeld selling price and an order button. PostBeeld uses the reference numbers of various catalogues (e.g. Michel, Yvert, Stanley Gibbons, Scott, NVPH). These numbers, if available, are shown next to the stamps in stock. Since those catalogue publishers only allow the right to use their numbers in connection with actual supply or demand, these numbers are not displayed for non-stock items. We therefore decided to start adding our own FSC numbers. These FSC numbers are absolutely free from any restriction and can be used by everyone, as long as it is indicated that the numbers come from Freestampcatalogue.com. As FSC numbers are freely available for everyone, they are increasingly used for (exchange) transactions.
Some stamps cannot be found at FSC, why?
There could be several reasons. The most common reason is that the required postage stamps are not official issues or, in other words, not really stamps. The Internet is full of unauthorized stamp issues (especially on sites like delcampe or ebay - and usually advertising attractive topics), with or without real country names. Freestampcatalogue includes only officially issued postage stamps, which are or were valid for postage. Another reason may be that the stamp was issued before 1920 (however, for some countries, FSC does show stamps issued before 1920). It may also be that the stamp is not yet listed in FSC. Currently about 99% of issued stamps are shown. For some countries (occupied) territories, we are still working on the inclusion process.
New, but not at FSC!
In principle, all new officially issued stamps worldwide are published in FSC. However, there are a few exceptions. Personal stamps are only listed by their common feature (usually a marginal variant). Although probably officially issued with co-operation of the postal authorities in the following countries, we do not list new issues from Burundi, Comores, Congo Rep., Guinea-Bissau, Rep. Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Saint Thomas, Solomon Islands, Togo and Uganda. The reason is that these countries have appointed an agency for their stamp issues which releases a massive flood of topical blocks with high denominations and themes which, in most cases, have no connection with the issuing countries. Although there are more countries with dubious policy issues, for the countries mentioned it is so extreme that we have decided not to publish new issues for the time being.
