10 Jan 2020: Happy New Year 2020

The basic count of stamp types stands at over 650,000. Much of the past year's work has been behind the scenes, using the existing tools to detect and repair errors in the data. In addition, many design descriptions are changing to more closely adhere to what is actually on the stamp. For instance, the German stamps inscribed as Frauenschuh have that as the design, which is in turn a synonym of Cypripedium calceolus , in English lady's slipper orchid. In some cases the stamp inscriptions are ambiguous or misleading, so for those accuracy of description takes precedence.

2 Jan 2019: Happy New Year 2019

At nearly 625,000 stamp types, there are only a few gaps left to fill, mainly in BOB and very recent issues. Thing pages now include more ways to see connections, such as the list of works by an artist. For instance, this link displays a gallery of paintings by Raphael on stamps.

8 Jan 2018: Happy New Year 2018

At over 605,000 stamp types, and over 113,000 things, StampData continues to close in on completeness. Design disambiguation continues apace, with design types also being separated out. This means that thing pages display all the different designs associated with them. The process turns up hundreds of errors, include some that are apparently previously unknown, such as in the 1967 butterfly stamps of Nicaragua.

4 Jan 2017: Happy New Year 2017

StampData is nearing completion, with over 586,000 stamp types recorded, and nearly 100,000 things. Stamp designs are getting a long-overdue cleanup, where generic design names like 'arms' or 'Queen Victoria' are being divided by actual difference in appearance, with the usual disambiguator in a parenthetical suffix, as in 'Queen Victoria (1898 Uganda)'.

3 Jan 2016: Happy New Year 2016

There are now over 470,000 stamps recorded, with over 69,000 things as issue occasions and design elements. The website is now hosted on the Google Cloud Platform, which adds reliability, and flexibility in the management of what is now nearly 1.2 million images.

25 Apr 2015: Pivot

The membership part of the site is being phased out, since it's very little used. Existing free and paid memberships will continue to work for the time being, and interested persons may still join by sending email to [email protected].

1 Jan 2015: Milestones and New Year

Happy New Year! There are now over 400,000 stamp types, and over 16,000 sheet types recorded. Adding sheets on a large scale has revealed some interesting cases, such as joint-issue sheets that include stamps from more than one country.

Many countries are now complete or nearly so, and for them the effort shifts to hunting down omissions and mistakes.

22 Aug 2014: Milestones and New Logo

The database now includes over 360,000 stamp types, and over 46,000 things in designs and issues. In addition we have a new logo (done entirely in CSS, for you web design fans).

29 Jun 2014: Sheets

It is now possible to record sheets of stamps, including souvenir sheets, minisheets, and booklet panes. Issuer pages include a link to the list of sheets, plus the general Lists tab now connects to a list of all sheets.

24 Jun 2014: Milestones

There are now over 340,000 stamp types recorded. Nearly 43,000 things are now recorded, with references in over 40% of the 87,000+ stamp designs and over 36% of the 67,000+ named issues.

2 Jan 2014: Milestones

There are now over 255,000 stamp types recorded, of which nearly 80% have illustrations drawn from the accumulation of nearly one million images. There are over 26,000 things connected to stamp issues and designs, although as of yet there are no statistics on percent coverage.

10 Sep 2013: Synonyms for things

Things can now have synonyms, which are simply different ways to refer to the thing. This is useful for instance, for animals and plants, which have both common and scientific names, or for abbreviations, as in UPU for Universal Postal Union.

23 Jun 2013: World Stamp Album added

With the approval of the owner, StampData has begun adding pages from World Stamp Album, which improves coverage of many countries.

4 Jun 2013: Things added

Things are the real-life events, objects, and people commemorated and depicted on stamps. These connect all the stamps related to a particular subject. As a practical matter, names and dates end up recorded on only one place, and fixes can then be reflected in all the relevant issues and designs.

25 Mar 2013: Site moved

StampData has migrated from a shared web host at HostGator to a virtual private server at Big Brain Global.

This both increases file capacity (there are now over 200K images totalling 30GB), and enables heavier CPU usage, such as for image processing experiments.

11 Nov 2012: Working with WNS

StampData now has a system of xlinks for the WNS pages at the UPU, and been importing its images and data.

4 Oct 2012: Working with Colnect

StampData is working with Colnect, adding image links and a mechanism to compare the data of the respective sites.

The mechanism for this is the newly introduced "external link", or "xlink" for short, which tracks stamp information on other websites, sort of like a specialized Google cache.

31 Oct 2011: Antonius Ra Collection added

StampData has added pages from the Antonius Ra Collection, by agreement with the owner.

4 Sep 2011: Albums added

Albums are like real-life stamp albums, with pages.

1 May 2011: StampData is live

StampData is now up and running!