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What Can Be Done: If you wanted to collect one country that only issued stamps in the nineteenth century and which gives all the joy the philately has to offer, than Queensland would be a very good choice. There are imperfs, and numerous different perforation types on the first issues, all of which make for […]

What Can Be Done: South Australia presents the similar challenges to the other Australian States.  South Australia produced most of their stamps locally, for non-philatelic purposes. Printing methods in Australia were not as refined as the finest European printers and changing postal needs and printing orders made for many printings and many varieties. South Australia

The United States is in a Presidential election year. For political junkies, the day to day battle of who said what matters greatly. And in November, we will elect a new President and Congress. Though elections matter for the short term goals of liberals and conservatives, the question for us here is do politics matter

What can Be Done: Italy and the Italian Area is one of the most interesting of collecting specialty areas. It combines all the things that a philatelist likes to have in their specialty. There are the difficult classics in the Italian States—wonderful specialty areas in their own right like Sardinia or Two Sicilies.  Italian States

What can Be Done: Collecting the stamps of British Commonwealth is probably the most popular philatelic specialty worldwide. In nearly all major stamp collecting countries (such as the United States and Germany), specializing in British Commonwealth ranks second behind the stamps of the native country itself. In no country does collecting British Commonwealth rank first,

What Can Be Done: If you wanted to see two different models for how countries handle great natural resource wealth, look at Norway and Venezuela. The Norwegians have taken their great North Sea oil wealth and created a modern welfare state with high levels of employment, benefits, and citizen satisfaction. Venezuela has the same resources,

What Can Be Done: Uruguay is a wonderful country to collect. The classics are interesting and hard to find, but not particularly pricey. The Uruguayan first issues are called the “Suns,” and they have long had tremendous specialty interest by themselves.  The later nineteenth century has many better stamps (and in Uruguayan philately a “better”

Certainly, in the United States, US philately is the most popular. Probably 80% of American stamp collectors collect US and more than half the stamp dealers in this country are US dealers exclusively.   What Can Be Done: United States stamps offer a specialist tremendous opportunity. There are over 4,000 different mainstream stamps as listed

What Can Be Done: Turkey is one of the longest inhabited regions of the world and one of the first and oldest centers of sophisticated civilization (the eastern Roman Empire continued to exist, with its capital at Constantinople, until 1453- nearly a thousand years after the Rome itself fell). It is also one of the