Help! Can You Identify These Stamps? Quiz

Answer: Hungary

It's a good thing you were here to help us out. We were surprised to learn that Hungarians call themselves Magyars, and that "Magyar Posta" means Hungarian postage! A little more research revealed that our stamp was one of a series released in 1963, showing native costumes.

The "40 f" was indeed the denomination; it stands for "40 fillér." The Hungarian currency is the forint, and 100 fillér = 1 forint. I'm amazed at how much we've learned from a single postage stamp!

Answer: United Kingdom

Can you believe this? Thanks to your help, we found out that that our stamp is from the United Kingdom, and the man on it is King George VI. Since the United Kingdom was the first country to issue postage stamps, they are not required to place their country's name on them! We also learned that this is a definitive stamp, that is the ordinary type of stamp that remains on sale for an indefinite period of time, as opposed to a commemorative stamp that is used to honor a famous person or event. In the United Kingdom, the reigning monarch's portrait usually appears on the definitive stamps. That "1d" in a circle? That stands for one penny. The British money in use at the time our stamp was issued consisted of pounds, shillings and pence; "d" was the abbreviation for penny. That sounded strange, so we did some more research, and found that the "d" came from the Roman denarius.

Guess what else we learned about our stamp? George VI became king in 1936, but the first one penny stamps with his portrait on them weren't issued until May 10, 1937. Great Britain got the dyes used to print its postage stamps from Germany, so when World War II broke out, they had to change the colors of the stamps and make them lighter to lower the amount of dye used in the ink. This happened on August 11, 1941. Our stamp is a bright scarlet color, so it must date from the period between May, 1937 to August 1941. In 1951, the color of the one penny stamp was changed from red to blue.

Answer: Switzerland

My nephew can be a handful at times, but I have to admit he's a smart little bugger. He had just done a report about Switzerland for school. He told me that the Helvetii were a Celtic tribe that lived in the area we now call Switzerland. They fought many battles against the Romans under Julius Caesar. Because there are numerous languages spoken in Switzerland, they use the Roman name "Helvetia" on their postage stamps; the official name of the country is the "Confoederatio Helvetica," or "Swiss Confederation," in English.

Our stamp came from a set called "Technologies and Landscapes" that first went on sale on August 1, 1949. It shows a hydroelectric power station on Lake Geneva at Verbois. The "30" stands for the denomination, 30 rappen. 100 rappen equal one Swiss franc.

Answer: Ireland

Thanks for your help; I don't think we would have ever figured this out ourselves, but both of these stamps are from Ireland. My nephew and I didn't know this, but even though most people in Ireland speak English, it turns out they have their own language as well, called Gaelic, and they use this language on their stamps. Éire means Ireland in Gaelic.

There's a lot of history behind these stamps. We learned that Ireland fought a war with the United Kingdom from 1919 to 1921 to win their independence. In 1922, a treaty was approved that made most of Ireland a semi-independent country called "The Irish Free State." Part of Northern Ireland remained in the U.K. The new Irish government took a while to produce new stamps, so existing stocks of British stamps were overprinted with the words "Saorstat Eireann" which means "Irish Free State" in Gaelic.

The guy on the other stamp? Well, it turns out he was one of the great heroes of the fight for Irish independence. He was very opposed to the treaty that gave Ireland limited independence and divided the country. After the treaty was ratified by a vote of 64-57 in the Irish Dáil, or parliament, those who opposed the treaty still refused to accept it; the treaty was popular in Dublin, but not in most other parts of the country. On June 28, 1922 Free State soldiers, using cannon borrowed from the British army, began firing on their former comrades who had occupied a building complex called the Four Courts in Dublin, starting a bloody civil war that would claim thousands of lives. Cathal Brugha, who had done all he could to prevent the outbreak of the war, took command of a group of anti-treaty fighters in nearby O'Connell Street. On July 5, 1922 he was gunned down by Free State troops, and died from loss of blood two days later. In 1949, Ireland severed all ties with the British Commonwealth and became a republic.

Answer: Croatia

Good golly, without your help we would never had gotten this one! It turns out that Croatia is one of many countries that came into being following the break up of the former Yugoslavia. It is located along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. The capital and largest city is Zagreb. Croatia is one of the few countries with negative population growth; its fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world. We found out that our stamp is one of a set of three issued on September 7, 2010 to commemorate some of the country's famous lighthouses. Veli rat is a village on the island of Dugi Otok; the lighthouse was built in 1849.

The "3.10" is the denomination of the stamp. The currency of Croatia is the Kuna, which is divided into 100 Lipa.

Answer: Germany

I could have kicked myself when you told me where this stamp is from! Of course, "Deutsches Reich" means "German Empire." But what's up with the 50 billion? Surely it couldn't cost 50 billion marks to mail a letter - could it? Well, as it turns out, it could!

You see, following WWI, Germany was forced to pay "reparations" to the victorious Allied countries. This completely drained Germany's gold reserves, and the government began printing more and more paper money, with nothing to back it up, resulting in one of the worst periods of inflation that the world has ever seen.

How bad was it? Well, at the beginning of WWI, the exchange rate was 4.2 German marks to one U.S. dollar. By the end of the war, it was 8.91 marks to the dollar. The mark fell to 90 marks to the dollar by the middle of 1921, and that's when things really took off. By December, 1922, it took 800 marks to equal a dollar; and by August, 1923 the mark was virtually worthless. Prices doubled or tripled every day, sometimes every hour! Businesses began paying their workers twice a day so their inflated currency could be spent while it still retained some little value. The money was so worthless that piles of it littered the streets, and nobody bothered picking it up. People used it as wallpaper, or burned it in their stoves in place of wood or coal. By November, the U.S. dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks.

Naturally, the German Post Office could not print new stamps fast enough to keep up with inflation. The cost of mailing a domestic letter increased from 20 marks on January 15, 1923 to 50,000,000,000 marks on December 12, 1923. Our stamp dates from this latter period. These stamps printed in 1923 lost their value so quickly that most are much rarer in used than in mint condition; by the time they reached the post office, they were already obsolete.

Answer: Greece

Thanks, again. So that's what the Greek alphabet looks like! Even though there's an ancient temple on it. our stamp isn't that old; it's part of a set issued in 1987 to commemorate the different types of architectural capitals. Our 40 drachma stamp shows an Ionic capital. The drachma was the Greek currency before they adopted the euro.

While my nephew and I were researching our stamp, we learned that the earliest Greek stamps featured a portrait of Hermes, the messenger of the ancient Greek gods. That sounds appropriate. If ours was an older stamp, it would have been even harder to identify. The first stamps used the Greek alphabet exclusively; in 1966 Greece began adding "Hellas," in Roman letters. Hellas is the name for Greece in the Greek language.

Answer: Soviet Union

If you hadn't told us where this stamp was from, we might still be looking for the answer! We learned a lot from this stamp, though. The Soviet Union was a country that existed from 1922 to 1991. It is what stamp collectors call a "dead country," because it's not around any longer. What made this stamp so hard to identify is that the Soviet Union, like some of the other countries we've looked at, used a different alphabet than we do, in this case one called Cyrillic. And what makes Cyrillic extra tricky is that some of the letters look like ours, but stand for different sounds. "NOYTA" is actually pronounced "potcha," and means mail or post. And "CCCP" were the initials for "Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik," or "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." The Soviet Union was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991. The largest of the former republics is now known as the Russian Federation.

We also learned that our stamp was issued to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite. The Soviet Union was a great rival to the United States in the exploration of space, and many of its stamps show space ships, satellites, etc. The "6K" is the denomination of the stamp, 6 kopecks. The Soviet Union used the ruble as its currency and 100 kopecks = 1 ruble.

Answer: Estonia

You saved the day again! My nephew had never even heard of Estonia. It is a very small country in northern Europe, and, along with Latvia and Lithuania, is one the three Baltic Republics. In its own language, Estonia is called "Eesti Vabariik," or Estonian Republic. In 2015, there were less than 1.5 million people in Estonia.

Because it is such a small country and surrounded by powerful neighbors, Estonia has had a troubled history. It declared its independence in 1918, but had to fight a war against neighboring Russia to keep it. When WWII broke out, Estonia was invaded and occupied many times, first by the Soviet Union in 1939, then by Germany in 1941, and again by the Soviet Union in 1944. Estonia was forced to give up its independence and become part of the Soviet Union, but declared independence again in 1991. Our stamp was issued during the brief period when Estonia was independent from 1918 to 1939. The three leopards come from the country's coat-of-arms, and the "10s" stands for "10 senti." Today Estonia uses the euro, but during the time our stamp was issued, it had its own currency called the "kroon." 100 senti = 1 kroon.

Answer: Japan

Thanks for helping us identify our last stamp. We knew it was from the Far East by the oriental writing, but we had no clue that "NIPPON" meant Japan. Some research showed us that our stamp was issued on October 1, 1980. Many Japanese stamps show plants and animals native to Japan. The 50 means that the stamp is valued at 50 yen. The yen is the Japanese currency.

While we were researching this stamp, we learned that Japan has only been adding "NIPPON" to its stamps since 1966. But there's an easy way to tell many older Japanese stamps from those of other eastern countries. Almost all older Japanese stamps have a chrysanthemum, a symbol of the emperor, on them.