John Apfelbaum

Women and men probably collect things about equally.  Women, however, just don’t collect stamps. Philately has long been a man’s domain. After the passing of the “timbremania” phase  about 1860, the vast majority of stamp collectors, and certainly the vast majority of more serious philatelists, have been men. Of the hundreds of early philatelic books and articles that I’ve read […]

The value of most United States stamps have been falling over the last twenty years, and the CPI has been rising. Critics have claimed that the CPI overemphasizes increases in food, fuel, and housing (until the last few years, at least). We have not understood that price increases have been commodity driven and that many existing goods and non-commodity goods

There is one entire country under the United States collecting umbrella that has issued hundreds of stamps, which is popular on two continents, and which is completable by even collectors of modest means. The country is the Ryukyu Islands which were captured during WWII by the United States at an enormous loss of life and

Many collectors spend a great deal of money on their hobby and don’t have a great deal to show for it. Your money is yours to do with as you please (after all, this is America), but most people take some satisfaction in getting their money’s worth when they buy something and, if not always getting

Dave and Jenny were older when I first met them in the early 1970s. My first job at the company was working in the shop (we had one then), and Dave and Jenny were regulars. They had married late, and because of the economic distress of the Depression had put off children until that wasn’t

Russian stamps of the 1930s have always fascinated me. They are beautiful and well designed with friendly, internationalist themes, and yet they were issued by a vicious regime that was systematically exploiting its citizens and was highly militaristic in orientation. Another aggressive state of this period, Germany, at least was more honest about its goals

Almost from the very day that Philately began as a serious hobby, stamp collectors were plagued by forgeries. Forgeries exist in two types; those made for philatelic consumption and those produced to defraud the postal service of revenue (called postal forgeries). These postal forgeries are in nearly all cases not only very rare but highly

There are very few long term savings certificates that are tied to the rate of inflation, but several years ago the United States Post Office effectively issued an even better investment vehicle. With the “First Class Forever” stamps, the Post Office promised completely paid first class postage any time in the future. In 1960, the

When Rowland Hill invented the postage stamp, an integral part of his design was a “wash of mucilage applied to the back, which, when moistened would allow the stamp to adhere to paper.” In the very early years of stamp collecting, collectors primarily collected used stamps. After all, the reasoning went, why spend good money