Traditional philatelic understanding is that there are three things that are required for a country to be a popular stamp collecting country – large population, high educational levels, and wealth. If you have those three things, which countries such as the United States, Germany, Japan and China have, you have a strong stamp collecting market. When you are missing one or two – like Brazil,which has a large population but only adequate education (and for philatelic purposes education means college level education) and moderate wealth, philatelic popularity is problematic. Then again if you have none of the three factors, say a country like Haiti which is poor, small, and poorly educated, the odds are that the stamps of that country are rarely collected.
Â
But there are a few countries, called the Seven Beauties which defy this traditional logic. These countries- Greenland, St Pierre and Miquelon, British Antarctic Territories, Falkland Islands, French Southern and Antarctic Territories, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia – are all extremely popular philatelic countries despite very small populations, limited wealth and average educational levels. What the Seven Beauties have is that they are exotic and remote, places people want to visit but most never can. In this regard the modern philatelist who collects one or more of the Seven Beauties is a throwback to the more traditional philatelist of yesteryear, when stamp collecting was a window on the world which allowed collectors to visit all sorts of wonderful places from the comfort of his stamp room.