Who Collects Stamps
Most stamp collectors are married men. In fact, if you had to pick the person who was at the exact center of the philatelic demographic in this country you would
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Visiting Europe?
For philatelic Americans traveling in Europe, one of the great pleasures of their trip was a visit to the great Sunday stamp bourses in the major European cities. Collectors would spend their days visiting the retail stamp shops and then on weekends visit the outdoor stamp bourses. These bourses have been written about since Pat
Margin Initials
Most collectors feel that specializing in a single country qualifies them to state that they are a “specialist” when it comes to their philately. But many collectors go even further than just one country and collect a single issue such as the Washington Franklin issue of the United States. Some go even further than that
Bi Colors
Before the advent of the Giori Press, which allowed easy multicolor printing, the United States Post Office issued primarily single colored stamps. This was because bi color stamps, under the traditional engraving process, required different runs through the press for each color. This was time consuming and created “registration” problems, that is problems of the
Match and Medicine Stamps
There are many aspects of United States Philately that simply don’t exist with the stamps and the collecting of other countries. Certainly, the emphasis that American collectors have placed on Revenue collecting is unparalleled in the philatelic world. Revenues are stamps that are issued by governments for tax paying rather than postal purposes. United States
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Why Stamp Collecting is Easier Than Numismatics
Numismatics presents a problem so profound that it is ignored by most coin collectors: what to collect. Coins have been issued for well over 3000 years by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of political entities. This has presented a problem for coin collectors that we stamp people have not yet had to face. There are
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Stamp Dealing and Immigration
For stamp dealers coming of age in the 1960s the stamp world was replete with Europeans who had escaped from Hitler and Stalin. Most were Jews, though looking back through the less opaque lens of our time, I know several were political escapees and at least one was fortunate enough to get out or he would have
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There Will Always Be New Stamps
Seigniorage is the profit that governments make on securities that they issue, on which they don’t pay interest, and that are retained unused by the public. Cash in mattresses represents a form of seigniorage and, more than anything else, old face value postage stamps held by collectors do as well. The money that collectors have
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