Non - United States stamps

Dentuck

Outside of U.S. stamps, which country's stamps enjoy the greatest amount of collector interest?

StampAlarm

You mean U.S. collector's interest in world stamps? Or people in other countries collecting their own country's stamps? I personaly like the old African country's colonial stamps.

Dentuck

Both.

Specifically, what areas are in need of a guide book, a standard reference?

covers

Dentuck - There are excellent "standard" reference books available on the stamps of virtually all of the countries that issued stamps before 1900. I wrote the book on the stamps of Siam back in 1978 and am currently working on one for Costa Rica which is one of the handful of exceptions.

In general, postal history is more popular than stamp collecting among advanced collectors because so much of the stamp research has already been done and many seek new challenges. The current "new" scholarship is mostly geared to the study of postal routes that the mail was carried on, and postal conventions and postal rates.