John Apfelbaum

The Great Recession continues to have serious impact on the nation’s employment picture, its housing market and, sorry to report, the market for US discount postage. For the last sixty years stamp collectors have bought and put away hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US postage stamps. This amount is far in excess of […]

Philately has done pretty well maintaining its appeal and relevance even as the technology of how mail has been carried changed significantly over the last 150 years. When stamps were first invented, all mail was carried by foot or by horse. This method of transportation was unchanged since the dawn of civilization (the domestication of

Many philatelic writers have commented on the poor rate of success of stamp dealers. Look at a Linn’s Stamp News from 1960. With the exception of one or two companies (including Earl P. L. Apfelbaum, Inc.), there are very few professional stamp firms still active that were in business then. Certainly the world changes and businesses change, but

James had been a fireman in New York and had retired to a small community in North Carolina with his wife when he left work with a disability  in his fifties. For the last ten years he had bought and sold stamps, usually buying low-end, defective remainder lots at auction, culling out the better stamps, selling some things at

Philatelists come in many shapes and shades. They have many interests outside the hobby and widely different educational backgrounds. They hold occupations as different at tobacco magnate (Maurice Burrus) to judge (William Rehnquist). Politically and economically diverse, stamp collectors can usually be relied on to agree on one thing—they hate innovation in stamp production. What

Philatelists today are apt to look askance at the new issue policies of many countries. Between 2005 and 2015 the United States issued over 1,100 different stamps. Did we really need that many? OK, maybe we did; after all we are a diverse nation of over 300 million people (with plenty of special interests that

Most collectors know the first philatelic story—Genesis of our hobby—the issuance of the Penny Black. Even more interesting is the story of Penny Black’s twin sister, the 1840 1 penny Official. Rowland Hill envisioned twin stamps, the Penny Black for public use and the Penny Black Official for Official use (then, as now, the government

Every discipline has a set of arcana that must be learned by those coming into the field. But often, new disciples mistake how much needs to be known in order to be pretty competent. In literature, every generation, since they first wrote, has been in agreement that Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens have been among the best. Knowing

Argentinian stamps should be among the most popular in the world. Philatelic popularity is predicated on three things— the education level of the nation, its wealth, and the natural collecting/object acquisitive nature of the ethnic group that makes up the bulk of the people. This can be most clearly seen by comparing the world’s most active philatelic