Stamp collecting in an e-mail age

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creation of galleries by individual collectors to help document and preserve the images and history of stamps. There are hundreds of exhibits broken down by themes, like stamps of birds, or by region or period.

Many philatelists say they would never see the collections were they not displayed on the Web. "Some of the stamps on my Web site are quite valuable," said Ross Taylor, a collector of Victorian stamps who lives on the outskirts of London and maintains a site at Imagesoftheworld.org. "The stamps are in the bank--and before, I could not even view them unless I took them out of the bank."

While traditional places for collectors, like conventions and stamp shops, still exist, stamp clubs on the Internet are proliferating.

"We've all suddenly discovered that there are more people like us out there to talk to."

--Lloyd A. de Vries, president, Virtual Stamp Club

"Basically, you were on your own," said Lloyd A. de Vries, president of a site for enthusiasts, the Virtual Stamp Club, and secretary of the American Philatelic Society, the nation's largest stamp collecting organization. "I think stamp collecting is growing because in effect we've all suddenly discovered that there are more people like us out there to talk to."

Also gone are the days of cataloging a collection in a tattered spiral notebook. Specialized database software like Stamp Keeper Deluxe, Stamp Collector's Data Base and StampCAT allows philatelists to track their inventory. Some collectors simply turn to commercial databases or spreadsheet applications.

One great challenge for collectors is to identify the lineage of a stamp. Which historical painting was it based on? When was it released, and in what quantity? What variations of the stamp exist, either in denomination or in size? The Web has transformed this arduous research task into one that is usually far more manageable.

"People post images of their stamps and ask others for help to identify the history of a particular stamp," said William F. Sharpe, the secretary of the Philatelic Computing Study Group, an association dedicated to improving the hobby through computer use. "Newsgroups are another way to gather this information."

Stamp dealers also digitize their collections and post the images online or provide catalogs on CDs. But collectors often have to search each dealer's Web site for a particular stamp, making it a time-consuming process.

Some entrepreneurs, however, are creating searchable databases that include the inventory of as many dealers as are willing to pay to be included. Such portals include Zillions of Stamps, PostBeeld and StampFinder. Online auctions are increasingly important for