Some of the most popular US philatelic issues of the twentieth century are the Farley issues. They are Scott #753-771, and though avidly collected today, like many popular stamps, they had a checkered past. James A. Farley was a New York party politician who was instrumental in Franklin Roosevelt’s rise to the Democratic Party nomination […]
There is no country that is collected in a more specialized way than are the stamps of Austria. Most specialists of other countries seek cancels and covers and blocks and all kinds of specialty items. But Austrian specialists go way further. Austrian specialty catalogs list paper varieties along with varieties listed by thickness as measured by a micrometer.
Ulrich Ferchenbauer Read More »
About forty years ago (as one of the first stamp tasks I was involved in professionally), we consulted with the Philadelphia Library over their philatelic collection. Philadelphia had been the recipient of the Hiram Deats library which was donated to them in 1952. It still laid in cartons in the enormous main library basement when
In the 1960’s and 1970’s a fixture at stamp auctions in the United States was Claude Jaeger. Claude ran a small stamp business that dealt in Western Europe mint sets, and he was always at our auctions to bid on these stamps. Claude’s history was an interesting one. Claude was Haitian and had been born
We like to think of philately as a sophisticated and intellectual hobby. Little known, however, is the boost that stamp collecting got gratifying the interests and fantasies of adolescent boys. We live, today, in a world of pervasive nudity, but in the period of greatest philatelic interest (the 1930’s) there wasn’t even Playboy magazine. Â
What Can Be Done: Tasmania is one of the most interesting of the Australian States. The early engraved stamps are amongst the finest in all of philately. The first two issues of Tasmania are very different from most of the British Commonwealth issues, all of which share a common design feel. The later nineteenth century
Scott is the name that is synonymous with stamp collecting in the United States. J. Walter Scott was one of America’s first stamp dealers. When he started his stamp business around 1870, he was a full service dealer selling stamps via extensive price lists. The lists became more detailed and he began to list stamps
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In the 1950’s, the Dennis the Menace comic strip was a weekly feature in virtually every newspaper in America. The trop of the comic was a well meaning but mischievous boy, Dennis, who was always getting in some sort of trouble either unintentionally or because of some complicated set of circumstances that he created. His usual
Kasimir Bileski, or as he was known professionally K. Bileski, was already a philatelic mainstay when I came into the stamp business in the 1960’s. Born of Ukrainian immigrant parents in 1908, Bileski’s philatelic career is in many ways instructive of how philately changed during the Twentieth Century. His biography is fascinating. He was truly a