Address: Bélyegmúzeum, Hársfa ú. 47, 1074 Budapest (7th district)

Access: by underground - yellow line, Oktogon station

Open : every day except Monday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm (April - October) or from 10:00 am

to 4:00 pm (Nov. - March)

The Stamp Museum is located close to the Postal Museum discussed in the previous issue of the Czechout in the center of Budapest town. You can go there by underground to Oktogon station and than through Erzsébet körut and Dob u., but more interesting way is to start your trip at Deák tér (all three Budapest underground lines match here) and to continue via Károly körut, Wesselény u. and Dob u. - by this route you can visit 3 most important Jewish synagogues of Pest, especially the one situated in Wesselény u. is very beautiful.

The museum is located in a functionalist building from the 30s, which is now used as seat for three ministries and postal office. On its lateral side you find entrance to the museum - see fig. 1 . Next to the entrance you will find ticket box and souvenir shop - but the museum is too unambitious, so the only souvenir are probably two books in Hungarian with English, French and German summaries sold for about HUF 700,-. What a pity, the books are not in English. One of them attracted my attention describing history of Hungarian stamps from pre-stamp period (by 1850) through Austrian time (1850-1867) and finishing with Hungarian own stamp production in 19th century (1867-1900). The book was illustrated (all pictures in colors!) with some items coming from Slovak towns like Košice (Kassa). Unfortunately the summary informs you about no details relating to Hungarian stamps, but about “suppressing” information like stamp inventor was R. Hill.

I feel the museum should publish more souvenirs for its visitors - it exhibits many rare items, but it doesn’t try to “sell” them to the visitors, however it can create good source of money from it. Just advice to you: ask at the ticket box an English leaflet showing the rarest material exhibited in the museum - you will get good guide for your tour in exhibition frames !

Entrance fee to the museum is the same like in Postal Museum : with Budapest Card for free, without it for HUF 100,- = GBP 0,30 . Fig. 2 shows “ticket” for paying visitors, which is common for both of the museums.

Let’s start the tour. The museum seems to be small one - it is just located in one room, but all its walls are used for cabinets with 3200 pull out metal frames showing about 300 000 stamps and entires! Some cabinets are used to show certificates won by the museum at various philatelic shows. Of course, you will find there items from PRAGA exhibitions, too. Good idea is four-language description of content of individual cabinets in Hungarian, French, German and English, so orientation is easy, you should only remembers, that all the countries are ordered as per their Hungarian names, which sometimes start with different letter than in English.

The exhibition starts with Hungarian material from pre-stamp period to current days. You will see many pre-stamp letters in exceptional quality , the show goes on with Austrian stamp used at Hungarian territory (not ordered as per issue, but as per face value - so you can see 1 Kreuzer stamps of 1850 and 1858 issues on covers continuing with 2 Kreuzer stamps etc.). Special section has been reserved for common Austro-Hungarian 1867 issue. Than you can see drawings and printing trial of first Hungarian stamps of 1871. . The next parts of exhibition show all Hungarian issues up to now. You will see many stamps, blocks and entires, some of which are really collector’s dream. Such complete exhibition of Hungarian material you can never see at any philatelic show. It is nice, that we can state, that many of exhibited items come from Slovakia - you can see old letters from Bratislava, Košice, Poprad .... . However you are not collector of Hungarian stamps, you will find material interesting for you !

This has been confirmed by other parts of exhibition showing foreign stamps from both Europe and Overseas. We can start from England. The museum shows nice collection of classical issues from 1840 to 1980 including many “high” values up to GBP 5,-, many stamps as specimens. The permanent exhibition shows good collection of North America’s stamps - from Canada, New Foundland and USA (incl. Postmaster Issues and mint Columbus set from 1 cent up to USD 5). South America can be represented by British Guyana showing early stamps used, mint and on entires or by classical stamps of Brazil. You can see nice collections of Southern Africa (incl. Scout stamps), Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius (the first two stamps are missing, but from no. 3 almost complete collection), Australia ... .

Nice exhibits you will find also among European countries: Austrian collection includes Mercury newspaper stamp “Red Mercury” from 1856 (!!!), great experience is to see collections of old Swiss, Italian and German states, France or Romania and Moldavia. Bu the rarest stamp is still waiting for us - it is Hawaiian “Missionary stamp” with face value of 13 cents, which exist only 3 pieces !

The non-Hungarian stamps are ordered strictly as per years (without any respect to kind of the stamps - the airmail or postage due stamps are incorporated into definative ones) and they are numbered as per French Yvert Catalogue (very pleasant to see a collection, which is numbered as per a traditional catalogue and not as per ambitious Michel one).

But because we are collectors of Czechoslovak stamps, we will finish our tour with the stamps. If you expect similar philatelic festival, you will be disappointed. The Czechoslovak collection is unbalanced - it shows great rarities like “Posta Ceskoslovenska 1919” stamps 6 Hellers and 1 Crown with different overprints colors or 10 Crowns stamps of the set, but on other side there are cheap stamps, which are missing in the collection (e.g. Blue Stefanik of 1939) or which quality is very low (Posta Ceskoslovenska 5 and 60 Hellers or one of the Agriculture and Science stamps). Probably thanks to luck of space you will find no “Kde domov muj” souv. sheet. Among the Protectorate stamps you will miss the Heydrich souv. sheet. The Czechoslovak exhibition starts with 1918-1939, continues with Protectorate, again with Czechoslovakia 1945-1992 and finishes with Czech Republic’s stamps after 1993. Unfortunately, I have not found any Slovak stamps (1939-1945 or after 1993). Under Czechoslovakia they were not shown and I have not found name of the state among European countries. I hope you will be more successful in searching for it!

To conclude the article, I can highly recommend you to visit the Budapest Stamp Museum. You will spend there good time with nice stamps from around the world and see material, which is exceptional. If you a collectors of Hungarian stamps (and who of us collecting Czechoslovak forerunner stamps and Posta Ceskoslovenska 1919 overprints is it ?), it is a need to visit the museum, for other collectors it can be chance to discover new stamps .

And if you plan a trip out of Budapest, you can visit other Postal Museums located e.g. in Debrecín (Debrecen), Balatonszemes or other towns . As you can see, Hungary is philatelic paradise!