international rule

My father has a list of stamps he's trading... quick glance I found these (info about them from Wikipedia):

• Afars and the Issas (the name given to present-day Djibouti between 1967 and 1977)
• Åland (an autonomous and demilitarised region of Finland. Receiving its autonomy in 1920)
• Aitutaki (traditionally known as Araʻura and Utataki, is the second most-populated island in the Cook Islands, after Rarotonga - apparently Cook Islands is a bunch of autonomous islands that formed a nation and they are in free association with New Zealand)
• Alderney (self-governing island part of the "Bailiwick of Guernsey", as of March 2023, the island had a population of 2,167)
• Ascension (an isolated volcanic island about 1540 km from the coast of Africa and 2300 km from the coast of South America, part of the "Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha" administration)
• The Republic of Upper Volta (Alto Volta in my language, was a landlocked West African country established on 11 December 1958 as a self-governing state, in 1984 it changed its name to Burkina Faso)
• Bophuthatswana (colloquially referred to as the Bop and by outsiders as Jigsawland, was a Bantustan (homeland of an ethinicity) that was declared independent by the apartheid regime of South Africa in 1977. However, like the other Bantustans of Ciskei, Transkei and Venda, its independence was not recognized by any country other than South Africa. It existed from 1972 to 1994)

fellas, I just started the letter B... you wouldn't want to play those geography games with stamp collectors....

The methods of counting thenumber of countries in the world is contentious, and there are many different ways to count. 196 is the official 'UN' number, but that excludes places like Palestine and Somaliland. If you're going to include those nations, what about South Osetia and Abkhazia? Western Sahara? How about things that call themselves countries but are recognized by no one, like Sealand?

I believe that 204 is approximately the number of countries that are recognized by at least one UN member state, but at least 4 of those are recognized only by Russia and each other.

Yeah baby, and I only mix up the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands like half the time.

Off the top of my head, Vanuatu and Tuvalu

Niue, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, Tokelau, and American Samoa for starters.

PS: admittedly, some of those are dependent territorries