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International barriers.

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.

Collectors of U-S stamps are pretty lucky: The U-S-P-S-dot-com website makes it easy to
order stamps. That's not true everywhere.

"Some countries, their websites don't work." :03

Marty Frankevicz, the new issues editor of the Scott stamp catalogues, ought to know:
Scott Publishing buys every new issue before listing it.

The Internet should have made ordering other countries' stamps easy.

"And it was that way for the first couple of years, but after that, well, they started
realizing keeping up these websites costs money, doing sales on this requires someone
who actually knows what they're doing on the Internet."  :11

Frankevicz says the stamp-selling websites of many postal agencies are ONLY in that
country's language.

"Philatelic bureaus really don't think too much beyond their borders." :03

--even major countries like Germany and Japan. Japan, in fact, doesn't take credit cards;
buyers with subscriptions have to send a big international money order.

"They're pretty good at telling us we're getting low so send us another wheelbarrow full
of cash." :04

Some countries are all but impossible to deal with.

"The longer I've been in this business of listing stamp, the more appreciative I am of
all the new issues dealers and all the nonsense they have to put up with trying to get
some of this stuff."  :13

So Frankevicz often buys the stamps from those dealers.

"Trying to do it yourself I've found is sometimes not all that much better than just
letting the dealers handle it." :07

The U-S website, by the way, is in English, Spanish and Chinese.

I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting,
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.

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