Shady Stamps: Why Would Kyrgyzstan Pay Homage To A Fetish Illustrator?
... the blogosphere was set alight late last month amid reports that the predominantly Muslim country of Kyrgyzstan had decided to pay tribute to Stanton's oeuvre with a set of postage stamps in his honor.
Naturally, there was some intense speculation about what would motivate the conservative Central Asian republic to take such a move.
Or, as one blogger put it:
"Why the heck would a country issue postage stamps with the bizarre fetish illustrations of Eric Stanton on them? Especially a country called Krygyzstan??? (sic) I know there are some tough women over there, but really."
The most obvious answer, however, is that the stamps are total fakes.
The Kyrgyz markasy, a subdivision of the Transport and Communications Ministry that is responsible for issuing the country's postage stamps, has confirmed that the Stanton series is not authentic and is not included in any of its official philatelic catalogues.
According to the director of the Kyrgyz markasy, Abdykadyr Abdyllaev, it is actually very easy to check the validity of such items.
"Since 2008, each published Kyrgyz stamp is certified by the Universal Postal Union (UPU)," he told RFE/RL. "Therefore, every self-respecting collector can check the UPU database to see whether the stamp in question is genuine. With each [fake stamp] case we informed the UPU and all other relevant authorities."
Like most countries, Kyrgyzstan usually only publishes stamps commemorating prominent historical figures like athlete Kaba uulu Kojomkul or the country's sites of natural beauty, such as Sary-Chelek Lake.
However, the Central Asian republic is one of several countries to fall foul of a boom in fake stamps, which began to proliferate on the philately market with the collapse of the U.S.S.R., where profiteers took advantage of those confusing times to create a flood of fictitious stamps for supposedly independent ex-Soviet territories.
Since then, naive stamp collectors have been duped by unscrupulous vendors selling various counterfeit Kyrgyz stamps celebrating such unlikely figures as Harry Potter and Pope John Paul II. ...
