John Apfelbaum

Cover collecting is the generic term for collecting stamps on envelopes. It includes two broad categories: Postal historical covers, that is, stamps on envelopes collected to show the stamps as they were used for postal purposes, and Philatelic covers, that is, covers made for collectors, usually to commemorate some special event. Philatelic covers come in […]

The stamps of Soviet Russia have special fascinations. In the period after WWII, Russia was still under the rule of Josef Stalin. There is quite a historical debate over who was history’s greatest monster. Stalin may not rank number one in murders, but when it came to vindictiveness and pathological paranoid homicides, he would have

Figure 1   Figure 2 Until about 1930, stamp designs were very conventional. Playing off a stamp’s role as a form of money, the first designs were largely coin type centers framed in a vignette. The pictures in the centers were largely people of some importance (either real or mythical) to the country [examples are

Like most issues that really don’t matter in our hobby, there is somewhat of a dispute over when and where the first philatelic exhibition took place. The first stamp shows that called themselves “philatelic exhibitions” began about 1920 in Europe. But there is considerable logic for allowing that the Centennial Exhibition of the United States (which

When Israel became a country in 1948, it became the perfect philatelic laboratory. For the vast majority of countries, stamp collecting grew up decades after the first stamps of those countries were issued. It was only about 1870 in Europe and the United States that philately began to grow beyond a few early fanatics, which

At the turn of the twentieth Century, the Post Office of the United States was under constant criticism from philatelists because of our stamp issuing policy. The Post Office had decided to commemorate the 1893 Columbian Exposition with a long commemorative set, and the set they produced (Scott #230-245) had a face value of over $16

A collector once challenged me in an email. Find the first stamp object on your desk, and write an article on it, the only rule being that the item have no obvious philatelic value. Straight away my eyes alighted on the item found above.   The Dutch stamp on this cover is one of the

The nineteenth century was a wonderful time for progress. Rapid scientific advances and technological innovations created a mindset that change was possible, even preferable, and that change could be a positive force. The current attitude is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In the nineteenth century, people looked for better ways to do things.

Great thematic stamp collections help the viewer understand history in new ways. Recently, a collection came our way that underscores this. The collector, a historian, had a thesis that modern history is viewed through too narrow a lens. He took a long view of European history. The Hundred Years’ War, for instance, was never called