The Canal Zone was a tiny area and administrative district that was carved out of the Republic of Panama in the early years of the twentieth century for the purpose of building an canal across the isthmus of Panama. The political rationalization for the Canal Zone was that the United States was going to put […]
Every United States stamp issued after 1861 is valid for use as postage. No one would use a $5 Columbian on a package but you could. Most of the hundreds of millions of dollars of mint postage stamps sold to collectors over the last fifty years is still around waiting to be used on mail.
One of the most noticeable changes in philately in the last forty years has been the change in the importance of cover collecting. When I first started stamp dealing, First Day covers, Special Event covers, First Flights, Airmail covers, Space covers, and Zeppelin covers were all collected by far more people than they are today.
After forty years and millions of auction lots, I still get excited by many different kinds of stamps. What I would collect is stamps that I rarely see. For instance, yesterday I wrote up a Morocco collection complete mint 1956-2000. It cataloged about $800 and will sell for about $200. It contained over 800 mint
What I would Collect Read More »
The American Philatelic Society has begun to digitize their library. This involves scanning books a la Google and making the library’s vast collection of books and periodicals available online. It’s a smart move and one that unfortunately was not foreseen when the society changed main offices a few years ago largely to house the library’s
The Euro has declined against the dollar by nearly 20% in the last six months. This is good news for American collectors. Though everything we buy and sell is denominated in dollars, most of the demand for better European stamps come from their home markets. A set of Austrian Renner sheets sells for about 1000
Two old time stamp dealers died last week-Robert Lippert and Dale Hendricks. Bob Lippert was 82 and Dale was close to eighty. I hadn’t seen much of them the last ten years or so but in the 1970’s they both came regularly to our auctions and for many years Bob was our number one customer.
Robert Lippert and Dale Hendricks Read More »
I just got a call at the office from a man who is a new customer. He had a question about something to do with one of our online sales and we started talking about the snow in Boston where he lives. Out of the blue I told him I went to Tufts University in
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
Detecting Forgeries Read More »