Stamp collecting in an e-mail age

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record, comparing the digital images of the stamps he bought to the ones he is selling.

"The Internet, particularly eBay, has been a boon for collectors knowledgeable enough to spot these frauds," Kopecky said. "However, the average collector is not skilled enough to know when they're being taken."

Stamp fraud predates the Internet, of course. The main difference now is how quickly con artists can move a large volume of altered stamps over the Internet compared with earlier times.

Connoisseurs can also pull a fast one on neophytes who sell stamps without realizing their value. People troll for such bargains on the Internet. "There's a bit of greed involved in the buyer--like I can pull one over on the seller because he does not know what he has and I do," Kopecky said.

It is not the fear of being hoodwinked, however, that keeps a small group of old-timers from tapping the power of the Internet for stamp collecting. This group fundamentally believes that stamp collectors should use the postal system to communicate with one another and to buy and sell stamps.

"My feeling is that today people want instant gratification," said Estelle A. Buccino, a 71-year-old collector from Bethesda, Md. "When you have to wait to hear back from dealers or people you want to trade stamps with, that is delayed gratification."

People like Buccino acknowledge that the Internet has enhanced stamp collecting over all and that they are among the holdouts. "It doesn't bother me," she said. "I see stamp collecting as being part of a larger social pastime. There is a pleasure in seeking stamps the old way."

The new ways are evolving. One idea that recently percolated across the Internet called for people to collect, trade and sell not the physical stamps but their digital images. With many rare stamps costing thousands of dollars, collecting digital images presented a low-cost alternative.

That proposal got little response, but a variation is slowly catching on. Taylor says he posts some images of Victorian stamps taken by permission from dealers to fill in the blanks in his collection.

Other collectors keep a digital image to remind them of a stamp they badly want for their collection, a stamp they could perhaps never afford.

"I am never going to afford the $5 Columbian," a rare United States issue from 1893, said de Vries, noting that it can cost thousands of dollars. "But I can have a tie with the image of it, so why not have a digital image?"

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