Occupation stamps are war time issues that are printed by an occupying force for use in the territory of a conquered area. As such, they are usually quite popular in the country that did the occupying, as sort of a jingoistic memory, and quite unpopular in the country that was occupied, reminding them of their weakness […]
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There are two major European cities that share a history of constant political change. Danzig in the north is at the border of the German and Russian areas of influence and has changed political affiliation many times, with incarnations as Polish/Russian dominated, German dominanted and independent. In southern Europe, Fiume is a philatelic entity at
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Revenue from the sale of stamps fund many worthwhile projects. Early in the twentieth century, the first philatelic exposition souvenir sheets were issued to help pay for some of the world’s first stamp shows. Most European countries today issue semipostals, stamps with a charity surcharge, to fund the work of the Red Cross or to
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Luxembourg is a small and wealthy country located between France and Germany. In 1940, Luxembourg was on the invasion route that Nazi forces took to overrun France and the government of Luxembourg was quickly overthrown. As they did for most of the countries that they occupied, the Germans quickly issued Occupation stamps. The most remarkable thing
Luxembourg Taken! Read More »
The decade of the 1940’s was defined by WW II. The totality of the war experience is hard for Americans today to understand. Currently, we have been at war for over ten years with most of the impact for most Americans being the character of the nightly news. WW II required a total mobilization of America.
Economic theory extols the virtue of trade and many anthropologists credit trade with being among the human inventions that most advanced civilization and material wealth. Stamps facilitated trade as their invention and use made communications easier, and ease of communications is one of the conditions that improves trade. Throughout the Nineteenth Century it was agricultural products
Most special stamps relate to postal use and postal purposes. Stamps such as Airmails are higher denominated stamps and the extra revenue is used to defray the cost of the class of service that is being used. But War Tax stamps are a different animal entirely-they are a country using its postal service to generate revenue for another
Among the most interesting specializations in our hobby are the stamps of Canada and especially the issue of 1880-1890 that are called the “Large Queens”. The name that philatelists have given this set refers to their physical relationship to the set of stamps that came after them. These stamps are large-the next issues was much
British Honduras was the only Colony in Latin America, British, Spanish, Portuguese or French, that wasn’t set up to extract silver or gold or produce the eighteenth and nineteenth century agricultural equivalent, sugar. British Honduras was an extractive colony of a different kind-it was set up to harvest timber. Some of the finest trees in