Stamp Swap (Saturday Review)

Rejoice, my friends! It’s time for our annual convention, where collectors from around the world gather to trade their tiny postal treasures. We must prepare our most beautiful and best-arranged collection and show it to the expert crowd. If we do well, we may walk away with the top prize at this year’s Stamp Swap by Paul Salomon from Stonemaier Games.

My stamp collection, which I still have, consists of hundreds of German stamps. However, it’s not just any German stamps. The pages in my two big stamp books are filled with Deutsche Bundespost Berlin stamps, which were issued specifically for West Berlin. The collection covers stamps from 1948 up to Germany’s reunification in 1990, after which there were no more Berlin-specific stamps. I know a lot about gum, margins, perforation, cancellations, overprinting, first-day issues and such.

So when I was offered a review copy of Stamp Swap, I immediately said yes. I was keen to find out what the game was like. If Stamp Swap could do for the world of philately what Wingspan did for birders, that would be amazing.

Cutting Technology

Collecting and trading stamps is a very key part of being a philatelist. You’re always looking for stamps you haven’t got. Eventually, you end up with a surplus of stamps that don’t fit into your themed collection, especially when you buy a bag of stamps. So you have to trade those for stamps you do need to complete your collection. Not that you will ever actually complete your collection, of course. The joy of being a philatelist is in discovering new stamps and finding out about their place in history.

Stamp Swap emulates the stamp collector’s work through drafting and I-cut-you-choose. Every round new stamps are revealed, some face-up, visible for all to see, while others are face-down, which represents the lucky dip of a bag of stamps you can buy for cheap. Players take turns taking one stamp each until their day’s collection is full.

Then comes the I-cut-you-choose step, which represents stamp trading. Every player divides their day’s collection into two groups. One of the groups will be taken by another player, while you keep the other. Like a clever stamp collector, you need to divide your stamps in such a way, that you will be left with the stamps you really need, without giving someone else exactly what they need. It’s not easy to find the right balance here and hate drafting is likely to play a part.

After all, if I can see that you need certain stamps to get a lot of points, I’m inclined to take them off you, as long as that doesn’t mean I lose out too much myself, of course – and that’s the thing. While hate drafting may seem tempting, if you divide your collection cleverly, other players will do themselves a disfavour if they want to be cut-throat towards you.

Stamp Collecting

Once everyone has chosen their stamps, it’s time to paste them into your stamp book. How you do that will depend on the randomly chosen contest cards, as well as so-called exhibitor cards that you can collect during the game, alongside the stamps that you choose. Of course, the way the contest and exhibitor cards score points will most likely contradict itself. So you have to decide what you focus on each round. You may start collecting yellow stamps, but then pivot and shift your attention to animal stamps. Sometimes you also have to try and group certain types of stamps together to gain points. The game doesn’t make it easy. There is a real point salad that you have to negotiate.

As someone who loves what I call pattern-matching, tile-laying games, Stamp Swap is the perfect game for me. Not only do you have to keep an eye on the different ways in which your stamp collection will be scored, but you also need to see what other players are up to. You need to take those stamps you desperately need before anyone else can draft them, but then you have to hope nobody will steal them from you during the I-cut-you-choose phase. Sometimes you might just take the risk and choose a face-down stamp, just because it’s the right shape and maybe you’re lucky that it is the perfect fit for your collection.

Like in so many Stonemaier Games games, there is a good amount of luck that levels the playing field. While you might be great at spotting patterns, if the stamps you need don’t come out, there is nothing you can do. At the same time, the luck element isn’t so overwhelming that the game becomes completely random. You always make meaningful and interesting decisions.

Swap Your Stamps

The game may seem a bit tricky to learn, but believe me, as you start to play, your natural instinct about how something should work will be correct. Also, there is a great rules explanation video that will make learning Stamp Swap pretty easy.

As with all of Stonemaier‘s games, the component quality is excellent again. The game comes with a small plastic insert that holds the various stamps. That insert functions as a sort of stamp dispenser during the game. All the other components need to go into baggies though or they’ll fly around inside the box.

The illustrations are really beautiful and fitting. Attention has also been paid to colour accessibility. All colours are double-coded, in that each stamp’s outline design is different for each of the colours. Similarly, the different themes are differentiated not only through the art style, but also with a different background design. That wasn’t immediately clear to me from the start, but once we realised that, it was really easy to work out which stamp was supposed to be which colour and theme.

Stamp Swap is a really chill game. It gives you a sense of what it is like to be a competitive stamp collector. You have to try and make sure you get the right stamps and leave room for them in your stamp book. While you can’t swap away stamps you don’t need, the game still conveys a sense of stamp swapping.

So, finally, there is now a board game for philatelists. If you’re one yourself or if you want to know what the hobby is all about, then I strongly recommend you give Stamp Swap a go.

Useful Links

• Stamp Swap: https://stonemaiergames.com/games/stamp-swap/
• Rulebook: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ulyfze69rb24tsgip7mn7/h/Stamp%20Swap/SS_Rulebook_r13.pdf?rlkey=ha4lz6kvkwmjaglah0lwtzjto&dl=0
• Stonemaier Games: https://stonemaiergames.com/
• BGG listing: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/426796/stamp-swap
• Wingspan review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2019/03/16/wingspan/
• Pattern Matching Pleasure article: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2024/10/08/pattern-matching-pleasure-from-carcassonne-to-looot-topic-discussion/

Videos

Transparency Facts

I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way.

• I was sent a free review copy of this game by the publisher.
• At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind.

Audio Version

Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)

Sound Effects: bbc.co.uk – © copyright 2024 BBC

Music: Contrarian by Blue Dot Sessions

Playlist

These are the songs I listened to while I was writing this review: