Reviewed by Nick Salter.
The Postage Stamps & Postal Stationery of Guatemala (2023). Edited by Michael Bloom. 3,500 images. Digital, from the International Society of Guatemala Collectors. Free.
Collectors of Latin American stamps have been spoiled on resources over the past 12 months as a new generation of country-specific catalogs have become available.
The Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue still remains an important resource for collectors up until 1940, not least because of its ubiquitous numbering system and its indicative valuations. But to explore the philately of a country in detail and discover the hidden treasures that mainstream catalogs can only hint at, specialized, dedicated catalogs are essential.
Recently published are specialized catalogs for Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The first two are traditional hard copy catalogs, but the latter three are digital only, a trend that looks very likely to continue.
Interestingly, the Nicaraguan and Venezuelan catalogs are not only digital, they are also free of charge and are produced by the societies that support the philately of those countries. The aim is not to seek a financial return but to rekindle or spark interest in new collectors who can now get a good understanding of what new collecting possibilities may lie ahead, without any financial commitment.
Guatemala’s first “stamp,” the bogus issue of 1867, which is not listed in Scott catalogs.
The latest Latin American publication to apply this format is The Postage Stamps and Postal Stationery of Guatemala. Once again, it is published by the host society – the International Society of Guatemala Collectors – is digital only, and again, completely free.
With more than 1,000 pages it is an essential resource for the existing Guatemala collector and the ideal reference for new devotees wanting to get into a new (and comparatively inexpensive) collecting area.
Old hands will be familiar with the Guatemala 1 and 2 handbooks upon which this new release is based. It is, in essence, a major update of Roland Goodman’s 50-year-old old work (a later Guatemala 3 covered the 1971-1990 period).
The narrative, listings and content remain true to the original but with some important updates, additions and reformatting.
Michael Bloom, the editor, has adapted it for the digital age by switching out many of the old black and white images for full color. Listings have been greatly improved by scanning in items not illustrated in the original book, aiding considerably in identification.
These are further enhanced by magnifications of varieties and by the scanning of images in 600 dpi. Using your pdf zoom function allows you get so much closer to the image than you could ever hope to achieve with the printed version.
The digital edition now includes a remarkable 3,500 new images.
Many of the stamp listings in the new Guatemala handbook have clear but detailed articles explaining how to detect forgeries. An invaluable resource for collectors of the earlier issues.
The original layout has been significantly improved, printing dates have been more logically organized and additional information has been added where new discoveries or corrections have come to light in the intervening years.
New images of varieties and a significant increase in the number of images of proof material and specimens greatly enhance the text and help illustrate the full scope of an issue, particularly in the early years.
Postal usages have also been immeasurably improved by the addition of a much wider variety of covers. For example, the Indian Woman issue of 1878 illustrates four black and white covers in the hard copy publication. The digital edition gives us no less than 33 with all but two in color.
Particularly welcome are the inclusion of detailed illustrations of fakes and forgeries for most of the key issues. David Reitsema provides easy-to-follow guidelines in helping collectors separate out the wheat from the chaff, originally published in the ISGC’s El Quetzal journal.
This is very much a handbook, rather than a straightforward catalog, with plenty of explanation describing the background to each issue.
Rather than providing moment-in-time valuations, the new edition retains the relative pricing model of the original whereby varieties are valued at a multiple of the regularly issued stamp, helping the reader to understand how common or scarce each item may be.
The inclusion of specimen and proof material listings in the new Guatemala handbook highlights some of the collecting possibilities that go beyond the mainstream catalogs.
For the completist, the handbook picks up where Guatemala 3 finished in 1990 and takes us up until September 2021.
What’s missing? There is still some very useful data that is yet to be carried over from the hard-copy volumes, notably the sections on cancellations, markings, postmarks, post offices, rates and ambulantes (railway). But this will all be added in due course.
The idea is that the handbook becomes something of a living document that can be updated and re-issued on a regular basis. Indeed, additional material, images and input is being actively sought and crowd sourced to continue to update and refine the content.
You can discover more about the background to creating this digital edition in Michael Bloom’s article in the January 2023 edition of The American Philatelist and the First Quarter 2023 issue of the Philatelic Literature Review.
The handbook can be downloaded for free from the International Society of Guatemala Collector’s website at www.guatemalastamps.com. More information on the other catalogs mentioned in this article can be found at www.classiclatinamerica.com.