207:" printed directly on the stamp and shipped to dealers, without ever being sold to the public for use on letters. The treatment of these has long been a vexing issue, and catalogs vary greatly on whether to list the stamps. A related issue is a small number of extremely rare stamps that may or may not be old forgeries; the assignment or removal of a number is a key step in the consensus as to their authenticity.
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to be issued one or a few at a time, as postal rates change. Logically, they are part of a single group, with a unified design theme and a sequence of values, even though ten years or more may have elapsed from the first to the last. The same reasoning could be applied to special-purpose stamps such
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Minkus
Catalogue) for copyright infringement. After Krause filed a defence the suit was settled out of court, and Krause continued to reference the Scott numbers. It has been speculated that Scott was not successful. Attempts by philatelists to establish an alternative have not yet been successful.
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Because of its commercial importance the publishers of the Scott
Catalogue claim copyright on their numbering systems, and grant only limited licences for their use by others. The inconsistency with which Scott enforced these licences resulted in a lawsuit by Krause Publications (publishers of the
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Philatelists typically identify more types of stamps than do the governments issuing them. Changes of perforation, watermark, often occur without any official notice, as do printing errors. In a few cases, even the date of first issue of a stamp has no surviving record.
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Although the definition of "country" may seem obvious, there are occupations of one country by another, stamp issued by areas in rebellion, reunifications, and regions that have issued their own stamps for one reason or another. A classic example is
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The definition of "postage stamp" can also be problematic for catalogers. For instance, some countries have issued adhesive labels purporting to be postage stamps, but which had the "
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all use different arrangements for numbering regular and special-purpose types, and attach different importance to variations in
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is a notable exception, having inscribed most of its stamps with a unique numbering system since 1949.
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runs into immediate difficulties, which have been solved in different ways by different
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Over time, stamp numbers may become a shorthand for collectors and dealers.
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What if stamps of a single series appear one at a time, interspersed with
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In general, governments have not tried to number their own stamps. The
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307:"Linn's Stamp News Puts Happy Face On Krause-Scott Lawsuit Settlement"
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In 2002, as part of efforts to control allegedly illegal stamps, the
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335:Alphabet soup: Scott catalog prefixes and suffixes
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162:What if several stamps are issued on the same day?
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309:. Stamps.net. 1999-01-26. Archived from
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121:' traditional method of identifying
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125:uniquely has long been
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