Herman Herst Jr.’s book Nassau Street is probably the most readable and enjoyable of all the philatelic canon. It is a series of stories and reminisces about philately in the 1930s and 1940s loaded with good anecdotes about many of the giants of our hobby along with reflections on where the hobby was in the year that […]
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Classic French stamps are among the most interesting. The first issues of France are printed by a method of printing called typography. Unlike engraved plates, typography relies on plates that hold a design by having an ink-holding agent that is applied to the plate do the printing rather than having the metal plate itself hold
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As stamps become a viable investment, it is natural that a variety of specialized investment advisers have grown up. If you subscribe to some of the stamp newspapers and magazines listed in the bibliography, you will see the advertisements for these; other investment advisers are beginning to solicit clients on the business-pages of local newspapers
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There are billions of stamps, and only some of them should be part of a reasonable investment strategy. In general, investors should try to stay away from the new issues of any country, be it United States or foreign. Many people have made huge gains by buying up quantities of modern, newly issued stamps that
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When people read the Salamon Brothers report, which maintains that stamps were the third best investment over the decade of the 1970s, ranking behind oil and gold, they expect to see a high percentile increase in the price of stamps on a year-to-year basis. Such an impression is misleading. Most people who avidly watch stocks
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But there is another almost foolproof stamp investment strategy. It is not for everyone, as it requires patience and knowledge: the scheme requires an investor to immerse himself totally in the study of stamps and find a philatelic specialty that really excites him. The clever investor then obtains all the auction catalogues he can, visits
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Another investment strategy is a modification of the old cornering-the-market theme. This is for high rollers only, affords considerable risk, but also can be used to advantage by astute speculators. Essentially, the scheme entails buying all of a specific philatelic item that you can and through this means pushing up the price. For example, you
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Some investors used to look askance at creating a collection. After all, they would tell you again and again, they were not collectors. After a time, however it began to be apparent that making a collection was not only fun, it had some pretty smart investment strategy associated with it. First of all, simply buying
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For the last eighty years, the investment potential of fine collectable stamps has not been lost on the worldwide philatelic community. Numerous references to the elementals of supply and demand and their effect on the burgeoning stamp market are found in English journals in the 1890s, and in American journals not much later. For the
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