Question for topical stamp collectors
Last year I began to collect stamps that have cats on them (my first venture in philately). I decided to buy only those stamps that appeal to me, without getting caught up in finding entire sets, or all from one country, etc. I do restrict it to mint non hinged, preferably non-cancelled but if I see a stamp I love that has a cancel that doesn't intrude on the image of the cat, then I will buy it anyway.
I just learned the other day about 'fantasy'/'cinderella' stamps and what they really are (not 'real' postage stamps). Turns out I have unwittingly bought a number of them ... mostly on eBay... purporting to be from 'places' like Abkhazia, Batum, Buriatia, Dagestan, Karjala, etc. All so-called Russian Republics. What got me to investigating these was the puzzlement of why stamps from Russia would also have any words in English on them... DUH. Although one of these stamps is entirely in Cyrillic. Anyway, my question:
Do those of you who collect topical stamps also collect these not-really-stamp issues? How do you feel about them? I confess after discovering that some of mine are not 'real' stamps, but are more like labels, I don't look at them in quite the same way anymore. I can now see how the image quality is not up to the standard of 'real' stamps, but also can't deny that the cat images are still appealing. Even though they aren't real stamps, but only small photographs produced in a stamplike format, they are still, well, cute or attractive. ("When is a stamp not a stamp?") So in a way I can still appreciate them for what they are, although I can't help being disappointed that they are not what I originally thought they were.
I should mention that I'm not collecting them as any kind of investment, or to show or trade... only for my own visual pleasure. So I guess the legitimacy of a stamp shouldn't matter, and yet I'm also the kind of A.R. person who will not buy a piece of jewelry if the gemstone in it is treated or enhanced (dyed, irradiated, heat treated, whatever) in any way, no matter how 'pretty' it looks. Hence I'm curious about how those of you who collect topicals view the not-real-stamps stamps! I do know that there are people who collect ONLY these fantasy/cinderella/bogus stamps but I have a feeling that they probably don't do so on a topical basis.
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