John Apfelbaum

        $100 or $1,000,000   The reuse of postage stamps was an obsession of postal officials in the mid-nineteenth century. It was the reason that cancellations were used on letters. Still, postal officials in most countries thought this was not enough. They imagined a world of people soaking used postage stamps off […]

  Stamp collectors in the early 1900’s had a very different set of concerns than do collectors today. A hundred years ago, new stamp issues were few and far between. Post Offices hadn’t yet learned that they could subsidize postal operations by issuing stamps that collectors would buy and put in their collections. Every stamp

Philately has gone through three main phases as far as non-auction acquisition of stamps is concerned. Beginning about 1880, stamp shops began to crop up in major cities. By 1935, the height of philatelic retailing was reached with Manhattan alone having over a hundred retail stamp shops.  Cities like Philadelphia boasted over twenty, and in larger cities

Iran is not just a political pariah; it is a philatelic one as well. From an interest point of view, the stamps of Iran should be popular. The first issues, called the Lions (after the Shah’s royal seal) are interesting with many rarer shades and varieties and types. And the post-1930 issues are well designed

Some countries are so vast philatelically that collectors break them down into more bite sized units. Some philatelists try to collect all of the German area, but with over a million collectible varieties by the Michel catalog, the latest Lighthouse specialty albums for this country runs to over 25 volumes and has a retail value

  The 1898 Trans Mississippi appeared to be a commemorative set issued to honor America’s expansion into the west. But its issuance served another purpose. It was hard to see at first why the 1898 Trans Mississippi set was made. The 1893 Columbian Exposition issue was widely criticized as being redundant in design and appearance

France came a bit late to stamps, perhaps because issuing stamps for the prepayment of postage was not a Gallic idea, and so the French were resistant. Still, it was nearly ten years after the success of the Penny Black and the benefits that prepayment of postage conferred before France issued her first stamps in 1849. She was the

Much as Canadian culture and economic development has been influenced by the United States, so too has the collecting of Canadian stamps. This is interesting too, because Canada is a part of the British Commonwealth and as such retains the philatelic influence of the Stanley Gibbons catalog. But over the years, the way Canadian stamps

          Communication has gone from being first bound by the voice, that is oral communication, to being completely electronic. Before four or five thousand years ago, communication was all oral, with histories and stories passed down from generation to generation. Writing changed human development and made communication possible with people you