Lots of success for Iraqi stamp auction

American, British collectors snap up stamps showing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

BAGHDAD - Reckoned to be Iraq's top expert on cement, Anis Amjad does the rounds of factories during the week but nothing can stop him conducting the stamp auction in old Baghdad every Saturday.

On that day the 56-year-old chemical engineer takes off his white coat and raises his auctioneer's gavel. The lots are knocked down in an old Ottoman building dating from 1908 which, nine years later, became the first British Post office and where a traditional red letter box still adorns the facade.

"I am head of the inspection department at the industry ministry and I supervise Iraq's cement works. But I have always declined foreign assignments so as not to miss this meeting," says the confirmed bachelor, who first ran the auction 12 years ago.

Interest is reviving fast at the Iraqi Philatelic and Numismatic Society, founded in 1951, which has only recently resumed meeting after three years of suspension.

Official membership stands at more than 2,000, though only around 80 are active buyers and sellers.

Stamp prices are rising sharply, in particular any ones showing Saddam Hussein.

"American and British collectors snap up stamps with Saddam on them," says Kamal Kamel, 46, who runs a stall in the Bab al-Muazzam district where the society meets.

"Unlike us, they couldn't get enough of him -- they could not buy the stamps, because of the embargo," he said, referring to UN sanctions on trade with Iraq introduced after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, but remained there even after the end of the invasion.

"A series showing Saddam Hussein which was worth 200 dinars sells today for 5,000 dinars (4.3 dollars). My monthly revenues have passed from 200 to 1,500 dollars. Prices really have risen," Kamel said.

"Only Iraqis come into my shop but I have an intermediary with access to the Green Zone who sells a lot to American soldiers and diplomats," he added.

Sitting round a long table, 30 or so dealers and collectors examine the stamps, bank notes and coins which comprise the lots on offer that day.

Anis livens up the sale with auctioneer's patter but all the bids are below prices given in foreign catalogs.

Festooning walls of the room are photocopies of letters from the British Philatelic Association dating from 1917, along with many stamps from Iraq and other Arab countries.

Since Iraq's first stamp in 1917, the postal service has issued 1,824 series of stamps, including 24 from after the fall of Saddam.

Garo Manaskan, a 51-year-old Iraqi of Armenian origin who is an accountant and runs a well-known Baghdad restaurant, is selling several items from his collection of three million stamps.

"I started at the age of six. It is my passion -- when some cease to please me I sell them to buy others," he says.

Next to him, Haqqi Abdel Karim, a 45-year-old coin enthusiast, is at the auction for the first time in three years since seeking exile in Syria after the US-led invasion.

"Today things are better and I am thinking of coming back but the association should move. This is not a safe district," Karim said.

"Two thirds of the people around this table made a lot of money by taking part in or even leading the looting of post offices which happened in the wake of the American invasion," confides Mohammed Dhia, an active member of the society.

"When you accuse them, some go silent and others promise to give them back without having any intention of doing so. Then there are those who try to convince you the stamps are better off in their hands than with philistines knowing nothing of philately," he added.

His point is illustrated by the society's location at al-Koshla ("clock" in Turkish) post office, in Seraglio Street in Bab al-Muazzam neighborhood, where the stamp museum stood before 2003. The museum's collections were all stolen and sold... to stamp collectors.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=35511.