1 The background – an opinionated view

A new heroin?

Imagine the perfect profitable post-modern product ... Ephemeral and completely useless – a mere representation of something real – but deeply addictive, leaving its consumers, who neither know nor care about its actual nature, avid for repeat acquisitions. Ridiculously cheap to produce, it commands huge profits, with a multi-million dollar turnover way beyond its material value or cultural significance. Though trivial and innocent in appearance to outsiders, its production is entirely illegal, but "legitimate" competitors, though damaged, seem willing to turn a blind eye, perhaps fearful lest the whole market be tainted. Apparently untouchable by legal action, this product's original sources are masked by a complex informal network of distributors and traders, each of whom can plausibly deny liability while each taking their cut. It is mushrooming in volume at an astonishing rate. And it is here to stay, at least until the bubble bursts and the whole legitimate market on which it parasitically feeds is finally discredited beyond repair. But by then, its sellers will have consolidated their fortunes. Meanwhile, almost everyone who should care seems to be firmly in denial.

So what is this new heroin? Absurdly, we're talking about fictitious postage stamps – tiny pieces of paper bearing gaudy pictures of things.

Topicals – a philatelic perversion

Since the beginnings of collector demand, a century and a half ago, sly creators have attempted to foist bogus stamps onto the market. (The earliest and scarcest of these have become cherished classics of the genre, and now command surprisingly good prices.) As such deceptions became difficult to sustain, bogus productions became more ironic, often "issued" for clearly non-existent territories, and the object became less to deceive than to entertain. But this playfulness turned nasty during the 'seventies as unscrupulous "agencies", planting the seeds of today's "illegals" boom, began to mass produce bogus issues for British offshore islands and miniscule Arab fiefdoms, in response to the insatiable and uncritical demands of "topical" collectors.

"Topical" (or "thematic") collecting – collecting by topic, theme or subject rather than by country – is not a new approach, but in recent years has become increasingly popular. Its adherents may hail it as a new lease of life for an aging pastime, but we see it as a real dumbing-down, which has destroyed the cultural coherence of stamp design, and undermines the integrity of philately itself. This is because it takes no account of context; to the average topical orchid collector, it matters nothing whether the orchid shown on a stamp of country X is native to that country and so an appropriate subject. The stamp's supposed origin is irrelevant – the orchid only is the thing.

In addition to popular topics such as animals, sport, transport etc, topical stamp producers now cater particularly for collectors of personalities, especially entertainers – Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, John Lennon etc.

Many smaller and poorer countries in particular, desperate for foreign exchange earnings from stamp sales, but ill equipped to run their own design, production and marketing programs, have long outsourced these to a number of powerful agencies. Since they contract with legal postal administrations recognized by the Universal Postal Union (UPU), these philatelic agencies count as "legitimate" producers, despite the questionable ethics of their operations – we're told that a typical small country contract might supply less than 2% of the total print run to the issuing country, with the remainder wholesaled to dealers. Contracts can be deliberately vague, with few specifics about dates of issue, number of stamps or values per issue, etc. Despite their "legitimacy", such producers deserve censure both for their cynical and ruthless over-production, and for their tasteless exploitation of the demand for inappropriate topical designs, to which they cater more or less exclusively. But now the birds have come home to roost; in both these regards the agencies have set the pattern for their imitators, the illegal producers, who are now creaming off their trade and threatening to discredit terminally the whole market.

The death of philately

The current illegals boom came with the collapse of the Soviet Union, where profiteers took advantage of the confusion to create a flood of fictitious stamps for supposedly independent ex-Soviet territories. As their productions became more sophisticated and grew in volume, and as their trading networks extended into the wider world, they took the next logical step of producing fictitious ("illegal") stamps for an increasing range of real nations in the developing world, astutely selecting those which, as we shall see, are in no position to contest this piracy.

It's easy, really. Choose a vulnerable developing country, preoccupied with its own internal problems, where communications and legal resources are impoverished. Better still if the rule of law has evaporated, leaving no dominant central authority to get onto your case – plenty of those since the collapse of the old Cold War order! Float a pilot issue, and if within a few months there's no comeback, you can proceed to milk the name for all it's worth. These days, anyone with a scanner and some serious image processing software can design stamps, and copyright on the imagery you steal is not a real consideration.

Print in small "sheetlets" – much more convenient and profitable than large sheets of single values – and leave some imperforated at twice the price or more. No problem that your unlikely Afghanistan sheetlet featured Marilyn Monroe, even if the Taliban would never have countenanced such a thing and the Afghan postal service has long been a dead duck. Before September 11, no one would have noticed.

In late 1998 Stampdile achieved passing notoriety for their distribution of a sheet in the name of the ex-Soviet territory of Abkhasia (part of independent Georgia) featuring a cartoon of Clinton with Monica Lewinsky. Georgia denounced this illegal but no-one took the country's protestations seriously. In April 2001 Stampdile and directors Clive and Jonathan Feigenbaum were fined £5,000 at Harrow, England, Magistrates' Court for breach of copyright in supplying unauthorized stamps featuring Star Wars and the Teletubbies. (We are told that this ruling was reversed on appeal.) Stampdile is also said to have distributed the tacky Angola "issue" portraying the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center – more on their Angola items later.

Many illegals bear names of ex-Soviet territories. In an interesting article for the February 1999 issue of Philatelic Exporter, journalist Les Winick described how "four or five major distributors" in Russia employed homeworkers to create covers bearing such labels that were then postmarked, illegally, by favor. These covers and stamps were retailed in Russia, Israel, the USA and the UK, but Mr Winick firmly located the originator of the stamps, who decided themes and designs and placed orders for printing, in England, though he declined to name him.

Elements of Stampdile's stock seem to be shared with that of the Belarusian International Stamp Co. (BiStamp) of Belarus [Rostislav Permiakov, Mikhas Karpovich; http://www.bistamp.com] which covers both legitimate and "unofficial" issues for ex-Soviet territories, including "Stamps of 42 territories [that] don't have official status", noting that "There are a lot of pretty sets of various topics" – a considerable understatement. BiStamp also admit, disingenuously, that "Recently we started selling new stamps, which don't belong to the New Independent States. It's quite a new area for us, and we are not sure with the origin of these issues." These worldwide illegals, disclaimed as "Stamps with not clarified status, Stamps for fun", also turn up in the Stampdile/Rosen lists, along with similar material for nations not listed by BiStamp. A business rival of Mr Feigenbaum has alleged that these last items are produced directly and exclusively for Stampdile in Belarus, though we cannot presently substantiate this. At any rate, the producer of much Stampdile material is obviously close to BiStamp.

One factor that confuses the picture is the remarkable similarity of style and format between some Stampdile material and many Conquest productions. There are perhaps three possible reasons for this: either Stampdile occasionally buy from Conquest, or the same designer happens to be responsible for items sold by each, or there is an element of deliberate imitation, perhaps to muddy the investigative trail or to pirate successful ideas. Our bet would be on the third.

Stampdile/Rosen lists include items for Angola and Somaliland. Both these territories are linked to International Philatelic Licences (IPL) of the United Kingdom [William J ("Tony") Mitchell; 2 Penvale Villa, St Gluvias, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9AL]. IPL's letter heading proclaims "est 1961", but it existed briefly as a limited company at an address in St Ives, Cornwall, incorporated in 1998 but was struck off and dissolved in late 2000, its business defined, interestingly, as "printing". IPL appears to have a history of producing stamps on the basis of contracts claimed with breakaway administrations, though we know of no evidence that its stamps have seen use in such territories, which would not be UPU members, and so not parties to an international exchange of mail.

Somaliland is the separatist administration, not internationally recognised, based in Hargeisa in north west Somalia, while Mr Mitchell's Angola arrangement is with the UNITA rebels, not with the central government. Mr Mitchell is quite open that he has "rented out" his Angola contract to Clive Feigenbaum of Stampdile, an old school friend of his, though he readily admits, given the torrent of Angola stamps flooding the market (including the offensive World Trade Center issue, mentioned above), that Feigenbaum may have "overdone it".

On the other hand, Algirdas Satas of Conquest is on record as alleging that:

"Mr Mitchell from IPPL[sic] is just a crook, using blackmail technics[sic] to get money from stupid stamp dealers. I believe he himself has no real contracts and represents nobody at all."

This follows a curious exchange in early October 2001 in which Mitchell accused Satas of producing illegals for Myanmar (ex-Burma) and threatened legal action over this, while simultaneously offering to sell on to Conquest his own contract with Myanmar for £GB 165,000, an offer dismissed by Satas as "blackmailing & phantasmagoric". To others, Mr Mitchell has denied ever having any contract to produce for Myanmar, though in August IPL did claim an arrangement to act as "Advisors to the Postal Administration of Myanmar". However, no evidence has been made available to substantiate this.

Sharing an address, fax and phone number with Mr Mitchell has been Mr D S L ("Lutz") Schaller, who has sometimes signed letters or made phone calls on IPL's behalf, but also appears as "Chairman" of Philatelic Numismatic Consultant [sic] (PNC), which claims to undertake "investigative work" in cooperation with IPL, while offering "consultative services" at the remarkable rate of £GB 310 per hour. For a number of good reasons – not least the sheer creativity of his inconsistently broken English spelling (e.g. "swich bord" for "switch board") – we are tempted to doubt Mr Schaller's independent existence.

Nevertheless, "PNC" has provided a useful vehicle for Mr Mitchell's "investigations" of the Conquest network. Claiming to be acting in cooperation with lawyers, the police (unlikely), governmental clients (really?) and the UPU (not true) in a crusade against all illegals, his efforts seem to have been particularly directed at those handling his rivals' goods. Mr Mitchell is quite open about his attitude to Conquest, whom he considers to have damaged his business, and readily declares that he "wants Satas's guts".

Part Two