Starting on June 14, 2001 I put here homepage news when they become obsolete.

Updates of year 2003-2004

30 December 2004	New URL, address, e-mail, tel/fax for Jordan Post. Updated Chile and Romania. Happy New Year to everyone!! See you again at this site on 2005!
11 December 2004	Added email address of Swaziland philatelic bureau. Added site of Chad Post and Telecommunications.
22 November 2004	Received phil. info from Uganda, so I've updated postal address, telephone number and fax number.
14 November 2004	Good news: found the new site of Sri Lanka post. Bad news: Dutch Post has removed the english version of www.collectclub.nl
28 October 2004	Added Zambia; New e-mail address of Kiribati and Great Britain.
16 September 2004	Romanian philatelic bureau has now its own website! New e-mail address for Aruba. New URL and e-mail for Nicaragua.
8 September 2004	Just started the country page with links to Great Britain philately. If you want your site featured on that page - or have a suggestion - please email me!
31 August 2004	New postal address of Pitcairn Islands Philatelic Bureau. Kazakhstan has now an online shop. New contact address for BIOT philatelic bureau! New email address of Kiribati philatelic bureau.
6 August 2004	New URL for Cyprus. Updated Papua New Guinea. Upgraded country page of Poland.
19 July 2004	Updated Local Posts Page!
13 July 2004	Updated Cyprus, Luxembourg, Senegal, Panama, Aland, new address for Poland. Updated country page of Indonesia and Malaysia. Added e-mail of Ecuador.
26 June 2004	Monaco is finally online with a great site!! Deleted Mongolia. Updated Kuwait - Mexico - Morocco and Malaysia.
29 May 2004	Croatian Post in Bosnia has a new URL and a new site. Also Slovakia has a new improved site, soon in english.
20 May 2004	Added site of Nepal and Timor Post; Kuwait is back again.
15 May 2004	Updated Croatia. New postal address + email of Slovakia.
7 May 2004	Added e-mail of Albanian Post. New site for Uzbekistan with a complete catalogue of all the stamps issued!
13 April 2004	New email and phone numbers for Greece; New URL for Brunei; Bahrain is now online.
5 April 2004	New site for Guatemala. Updated Venezuela. Added British Forces Post Office. A website of Jugomarka is under construction.
13 March 2004	Great! Received an e-mail from Bulgarian Post with contact details.
5 March 2004	Updated email of Belgium. Added email address of Rwanda.
30 January 2004	The single country stamp links area is being revised and updated after a long time. New countries have been added: Australia, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand ; and the older pages will be updated (South Africa has already been rewritten).
19 January 2004	Updated everything of Mauritania (new website, address, and e-mail). New site of Paraguay Correos (plus new email) Madagascar is now online. Ghana removed. Added email address for Seychelles. Please read the newsletter below.
5 January 2004	Added an e-mail address for Dominica and Zimbabwe. Updated Local Posts page. Updated Country Page of France.
21 December 2003	The site has now a new feature: The page with local posts ! Please help me to complete it.
7 December 2003	New URL and e-mail of stamp department of Thailand. New details for India; Updated Kazakhtan and Turkmenistan.
28 November 2003	New site of Burkina Faso, added Tajikistan and Madagascar; updated Comoro Islands;
23 November 2003	Added email of St. Kitts General Post Office.
1 November 2003	Added email of Guyana and Comores. Updated Uzbekistan.
28 October 2003	Updated Ukraine. Added working email for Mozambique.
22 October 2003	Added post of Cape Verde. Updated Barbados and Grenada.
8 October 2003	Added site of Belize. New URL for El Salvador. Added email address of Jugomarka.
6 October 2003	Added site of Saudi Arabia! Updated URLs of Vietnam, Thailand, Latvia.
3 October 2003	Information about Kosovo restored: now renamed UNMIK Kosova. New URLs for Bosnia. Added info on Iraq. Now Morocco has an online shop. New URLs for Ecuador and Thailand.
10 September 2003	Updated exhibition page.
August 2003	New postal address for Iceland. New URL for SMOM.
14 July 2003	New site of Qatar philatelic bureau and new contact details.
9 July 2003	Updated contact information and details of Argentina.
4 July 2003	Incredible news! Afghanistan has a postal website, a postal address, an email, a telephone number and a fax number!! Added postal site of Armenia. Updated Taiwan Post links.

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EuropeanStamps.net

28 Apr 2003

Visiting Belgian Post website I found this link: http://www.europeanstamps.net/
This is a great starting point for collectors of whole Europe. It was a nice surprise for me to discover this great resource. If you are looking for stamps of an european country you will find there a list of dealers, clubs, links, auctions, exhibitions and more. And it's available in 7 languages!

Swapping dutch stamps for birdsets

17 Mar 2003

The Dutch PTT has stopped supplying single sets to foreign collectors. People looking for recent single set(s) may contact Mr Gerard Kolman, a collector from the Netherlands. He will be happy to send in exchange for mint birdsets all over the world. He's not a dealer and don't want to sell large quantities.

Happy New Year 2003 and new e-mail address..

7 Jan 2003

Dear friends and regular contributors, thanks again for your help & support with the site.
Recently I didn't have the time the update it regularly, so please be patient if your link request is not yet satisfied. I will consider every message I receive. Thank you! Have a nice 2003!
Please note that, with the end of January my current e-mail account will be DISABLED.
So start immediately to use my new e-mail address. As I don't want anymore spam into my mailbox, I have to put my email address modified here then you will have to remove a part of the text to write to me.

new email address to use: STOPSPAMfabio.alarici@alice.it

Just remove the word STOPSPAM and you have the right address.
(click the link, then open your address book and correct my address).
If you don't remove STOPSPAM I will not receive the message.

It's simply my name, surname plus @libero.it. I'm sorry I have to do this, but this guarantees me that spammers will not be able to fill up my mail box with bad messages everyday. In fact, their programs watch every site on the web and catch up every e-mail address on a webpage. But STOPSPAMfabio.alarici@alice.it is a BAD address so ... I will be free of spam.

Countries refusing to sell their precious stamps to collectors...

7 Aug 2002

After many years of some business and many contacts with philatelic services worldwide, I found that only a very small number refuse to deal with collectors. Here is the list; do you know more of them?

1. Russia
They will reply you they don't serve single collectors. So if a dealer ask 5 sets is ok, while they will not do business with a collector asking for more. Great!

2. China
They will reply their company was setup to sell on the international market, wholesale only. But they were unable to give me at least a name of an agent selling their stamps here in Italy. This is ridiculous!

3. Bulgaria
They are much better than Russia & China; simply they won't reply to you, no matter if write by letter or e-mail.

I collect Russia and I'm very disappointed with them. Even North Korea is selling directly to collectors by their stamp company based in China!
I think that behind this behavior it is the idea (as in the past soviet era) that foreign collectors cannot pay face value but have to pay their precious stamps much more. Fortunately today there are free stamp dealers in these countries selling their stamps at decent prices even on Ebay.

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Timor independent stamps

25 May 2002

You can buy newly independent Timor stamps and FDC's from Australia Post website.

Site moved and going ...

25 May 2002

I recently moved the site to a new server, but you shouldn't notice any difference, (except the missing counters). The "true" address is always masked by http://fly.to/philatelic.

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IMPORTANT: UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS!

http://fly.to/philatelic

is the new address of this site. It is a redirection service.
Why this move? Because Yahoo Geocities is becoming a service for paying members only and I want to host this site on a free server. They disabled the email service (since 29 April), so please don't send me messages to fabioala@yahoo.com because I will not read it anymore. They disabled the FTP service which I used to upload very fast the pages to their servers . This means that now I have to upload one page at once with their web based "File Manager", too slow for me.

Anwway these pages on geocities will never be deleted by me, but they won't be updated anymore after the move.Of course there is the possibility that one day the guys at yahoo.com will delete my site, so please update your bookmark as soon as possible.

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Address of TIMOR post office ? YES!

20 jan 2002

I have updates with Timor. Here is a message I received by Richard Lam from Singapore (thanks Richard!):

"I managed to buy some stamps and FDCs of the first series by contacting the following:

Sancho Saldanha
Correios Timor Lorosae
Dili
Timor Leste

Stamps cost US$0.60 per set, but FDC is at an expensive US$5.00 each. I think the FDCs are printed in Portugal as they have the same format of Portuguese and Macanese FDCs when the later was still a Portuguese colony. Postage was at US$2.50 and you get 5 international rate stamp on the envelope (which they charge US$0.50 for) sent to you by registered post. This guy seems to have some problems with his English, so if you can, try writting in Indonesian. And oh, I send cash with my order."

Season's Greetings to all the visitors!!

21 dec 2001

Thank you to those offering continuous support to keep the site updated (especially you, Francesco)! Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year 2002 !!

Address of KOSOVO philatelic bureau !!!

23 nov 2001

Kosovo stamps are issued by United Nations because Kosovo is not an independent state, but a province of Yugoslavia administered by UN. Stamps of UNMIK are obtainable by:

Daut Hoxha
Filatelic manager PTK
Dardania p. nr.,
Prishtine
Kosove
(via Zurich, Switzerland)

I also added it on list of postal authorities under Yugoslavia / Kosovo.

Guestbook Added !

5 oct 2001

Add your suggestions, opionions about the site, your exchange proposal with other collectors, and everything you want on my guestbook and every visitor will be able to see your posting!
Anyway, please continue to send me private emails when you have updated info for me to be added to the site. Thank You!

Sign Guestbook | View Guestbook

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Geocities GAME OVER?
I've recently received this kind message from Yahoo! GeoCities, the provider of this free webspace:

Congratulations, http://www.geocities.com/fabioala is very popular and has been receiving a large amount of traffic. Your site has become so popular, in fact, that our records indicate that you're using more than the allotted amount of data transfer we provide for a free web site, which is 3GB/month (measured on an hourly basis).
In the past we have not enforced that limit, so your site has been uneffected thus far. However, shortly, all free member sites transferring more than the allowable data limit will be disabled for portions of the day until usage falls to within the prescribed limits.
If you'd like to prevent this from happening to your site, you may join one of our new premium services, GeoCities Pro or GeoCities Webmaster. These packages allow for 10 GB and 20 GB of data transfer respectively, and also give you the option of purchasing unlimited data transfer so your site will never be disabled. These packages also enable you to run an ad-free site at your own domain name (for example,www.your-dot-com.com) AND get matching email accounts at that domain (like you@your-dot-com.com).
For more information about our new packages, please visit http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info?.refer=bwe. Upgrading your current GeoCities site to one of our new premium packages is easy - just a few clicks away - and you don't have to move any of your files. If you'd prefer not to receive notification when your site is shut
down for going over the transfer limit, you may visit http://geocities.yahoo.com/opt/bwemail?.refer=bwe to take your name off of our list. Of course, we will continue to monitor your site's data usage and turn it off if it exceeds the limits.
Thank you,Yahoo! GeoCities
http://geocities.yahoo.com/

I have some comments about this:
1) I'm not going to pay $ 9 a month, for this webspace - the site is free of ads and I earn 0 $ with it,
so I don't want to spend even money into it!
2) Please advise me if the site become not accessible. If the site will be really disabled, let me know and I will build a mirror with another free space provider (suggest me other free webspaces).

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About this site... and your support
Regular visitors and contributors of these pages, have seen recently that the site is not as regularly updated as before. Don't worry, the site is still alive and will continue to be updated. Main reason is that the site was intended to list all postal authorities on the web; now the job is almost complete, so there's no need for weekly updates -yes, there are other sections like country pages which have been not updated for long time. But considering the poor number of visitors (try to see the counters) and inexistent help, I'm forced to stop expanding this section further. In particular I would like to underline that today 99% of my mail about this site is reduced only to a link request (and sometimes people are requesting links without offering a reciprocal one!). I'd like to see much more people submitting info to improve the various pages including catalogues,country links, exhibitions.
Fortunately there are exceptions, and people whose help is widely appreciated, even when I have no time to email them my "thank you". I would like to apologize to Mr Thomas Lippert from Germany who sent me months ago a proposal for starting a Germany country page, which I never realized.
Thank you for recent messages of support received by some of you :-)

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A new collection - 1st postage stamp from Montenegro?
It seems that the first postage stamp of quasi-independent Montenegro, (still part of Yugoslavia), has been officially issued. There are still some doubts about the legitimacy of this stamp - we'll see what happens in the future.

The face value of 0.10 DM (german marks) seems to be inconguent. But you should consider that since November 2000, the DM is the only valid currency in Montenegro. The stamp was issued in a sheetlet of 8 stamps + a label. The stamp should be valid only for inland use.