When Israel became a country in 1948, it became the perfect philatelic laboratory. For the vast majority of countries, stamp collecting grew up decades after the first stamps of those countries were issued. It was only about 1870 in Europe and the United States that philately began to grow beyond a few early fanatics, which meant that there was 25 or 30 years worth of previous issues that no one had put away. How those first issues were found and saved determined how stamps were collected in the early years. For instance, the great emphasis on blocks and multiples that has defined traditional philately grows out of the fact that for mainstream philatelic countries, by the time collectors began to want these earliest stamps, there was no new mint supply of them around. Because these stamps were used as soon as they were issued, blocks were rare, and there was no philatelic material around to make blocks from for collectors who would want them. With no supply, naturally these were amongst the most sought after items in traditional philately. The appeal of early covers has a similar origin. The first collectors only wanted stamps and so soaked everything off cover. Second generation collectors found covers rare and hence desired them. But suppose a new country could grow out of thin air. How would collectors who could have access to any type of philatelic material collect that country?
Israel wasn’t the first country to issue stamps in the era after the dawn of postage stamps. Countries such as the Baltic States—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—issued stamps for the first time after WWI, and their political history was a bit like Israel’s was to be—an ethnic group without political independence issuing stamps of their own country for the first time. But the population of the Baltic areas were small, as was the expatriate community. And the Baltic peoples had no philatelic tradition and, in this period, only moderate education and wealth. Baltic stamps were collected by Balts certainly, but the collecting patterns deviated little from the ways in which traditional European stamps were collected. There were also areas that entered the philatelic world that were political fragments of larger political units. Places like Danzig got their own stamps about the same time as the Baltics, but as a dues-paying member of the dismantled German Empire, Danzig stamps were collected mostly by Germans in the same manor that they collected their own.
What Israel provided to people who think about philately was the perfect Petri dish. From the first, Israel had a highly literate, highly educated population of people who had been sensitized to philately in their country of origin, even if they were not collectors themselves. Different ethnic groups collect stamps at differing rates, and Jews have been more philatelically inclined than most. Israel’s founding was an event of great geopolitical importance, created by the mandate of the new United Nations. And the new country was instantly at war which added more press coverage and philatelic charm. Add to this the fact that there were millions of people around the world who wished Israel well for cultural and religious reasons, and all of the traditional markers that predict philatelic success have been met. So what do the developments of the collecting of this new country in the second half of the twentieth century tell us about how our hobby might have been if it had be created fresh today?
From a technical collecting point of view, collecting of Israel stamps greatly resembles the collecting of American stamps mostly because so many Israel collectors are Americans and came to the hobby from the American philatelic tradition. Israel collectors esteem marginal markings, an offshoot of US plate block collecting that really has little following elsewhere. Post Office opening special event covers were pervasively serviced in Israel in the 1950s. Again, this is a progression from US Naval and Air and other special event covers that are popular in America that are not seen in European collecting. But the greatest lesson of Israel philately is that when you have a large number of collectors wealthy enough to put away large quantities of stamps as they are issued, prices will be very stagnant, even decades later unless some philatelic development occurs to restrict supply. Israel announced their first issues in the philatelic press and solicited orders from around the world, and the Israeli Post Office was willing to supply as many of every issue as collectors and speculators were willing to buy. Hundreds of thousands of the first sets were sold. The first set mint (non Tab) sells for about $150 (and the Tab price is over $2,500), so it has performed reasonably well compared to its face value, but for every other issue of Israel, supply has far exceeded demand, and prices have been stagnant in nominal terms which means that prices have declined relative to the purchasing power of money. The greatest inducement for new collectors to enter philately is the perception that this is a hobby where prices may rise. Few people collect stamps only for monetary gain, but without the hope that what you buy will be desired by the next generation of collectors, the bloom, for many, fades from the philatelic rose. I know many people who talk wistfully of their childhood collecting experiences and would back into this hobby in a minute if they could justify it to themselves from a financial point of view.
Who invented tab collecting is unknown, but it gave Israel philately its most popular and interesting feature, while created rarities as well. Originally, tabs were marginal markings relating to the history of what the stamps were issued for. The first five or six years, no one collected them, and the markings were torn off the sheets by collectors and dealers before sale or placement in albums. We know that they weren’t collected from the first by the fact that there were no dealers’ ads for them in the pre-1955 period and because the premiums for the first issues in tabs over regular singles is so much higher than it would be if collectors had saved tabs from the first and higher than it is on later issues. Today, most Israel collectors collect only tabs, and the modern stamps of Israel are often printed in mini sheets of ten, insuring that every stamp has a tab margin. The development of tab collecting was a decision collectors made that replicated the circumstances that the earliest philatelists had made for them. The first collectors found limited supply because no one had saved the earliest material. To create a popular collecting field, Israeli philatelists have had to arbitrarily limit material by duplicating the situation of the first philatelists where material was bought and thrown away. The fact that early Israel collectors bought and tossed the tabs at the bottom of their sheets because they thought no one would want them had the same result as people tossing hundreds of the world’s great philatelic rarities in the period before people wanted them. The lesson from Israel collecting is that unlimited supply makes for little interest, and if circumstances don’t create rarity then collectors will do so arbitrarily.