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Attempts to help balance postal budgets produced many advertising ideas over the years since the first postage stamps were issued. The Great Britain Mulready envelope which was issued coincidentally with the Penny Black in 1840 was the first to bear advertising. In this case it was privately done but the advertisers sold the envelopes to […]

The first basic question that new stamp collectors face is whether they should collect mint stamps or used stamps. Generally, this decision is made in the very first phases of collecting. It is usually a decision that is made more on impulse than on careful evaluation of the pros and cons of each type of

Alessandro Manzoni was a great Italian writer whose writing contributed to Italian cultural nationalism in the Nineteenth Century and led to the unification of Italy. When he died in 1873 Giuseppe Verdi wrote his famous requiem in his honor. Manzoni’s most famous novel is The Betrothed, a long and involved story that is to Italy

The late Nineteenth Century saw the major European powers in an enormous scramble for colonial influence. And one the hardest scramblers was Italy which was a latecomer to the nationalism game and had a lot of ground to cover in a small amount of time. Until 1861, Italy was a collection of some half a

Most American collectors who wish to venture past the home country predilection for collecting only United States stamps learn about the stamps of the British Commonwealth. Some go to Germany and Area and some few more to France and Colonies. But one of the major collecting areas is the Italian area. Italian philately has it

Perhaps the most famous dream in history was Pharaoh’s dream in Genesis about the thin and fat cattle that Joseph interpreted as predicting seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Neurologists today believe that dreams are part of our inner psychology and don’t have any predictive power on events over which we

The unions of the United States Postal Service have signed a new contract and it appears that there is no danger of a postal strike. Labor peace is a part of today’s economic climate in a way that one, growing up in the 1960s, never would have thought. Strikes were common in many industries then

The greatest impediment to a smaller country’s philatelic popularity is rarities. Collectors, when they move outside the philately of their home country, want attractive stamps and they want a collection that is completable for a reasonable expenditure of time and money. British Guiana has always had this philatelic cross to bear. The stamps are interesting,

Antigua was one of the first islands discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493. For over 150 years after that native Caribs resisted colonization from the Spanish and as the island was small and had little to offer in the way of gold and silver, the Spanish left it alone. By the mid seventeenth century, the