For many years we have been searching for a world wide expert who can expertize the entire non US world. For the US area there is the Philatelic Foundation but they really don’t do much with Foreign stamps. We wanted an expert who expertized a large number of countries and areas, who didn’t indelibly mark […]
A Wonderful Expert for your Foreign Stamps Read More »
A question that Americans are going to have to answer in the next few years is whether we want to keep our post offices open and have them continue their daily trips serving us all with mail. We have reluctantly made this decision with Amtrak. Rail travel is not a money maker but we have decided that the
Subsidies for the Postal Service Read More »
If there is ever a date that goes into history books to mark the demise of printed books in the battle with electronic information on the Internet, it may well be March 14, 2012-the day that The Encyclopedia Britannica announced that it was ceasing publication of its 20 volume annual edition. For nearly 300 years
Remembering Encyclopedias Read More »
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
Prices Don’t Always Go Up Read More »
Postal stationary has always languished in popularity. In the earliest years of our hobby most albums had spaces for Cut Squares (the stamp portion of a mint entire envelope cut away from the envelope and collected on its own). But with the exception of US and German Area philately there are few postal stationery collectors
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A remarkable aspect of philately is that unpopularity breeds further unpopularity. It is truly unusual to see a good collection of nearly any South and Central American country. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Cuba are exceptions, but for the other twenty or so countries that make up the rest of the southern Americas, collections that are
Why Some Philatelic Areas Stay Unpopular Read More »
The Penny Black is not only the first stamp but one of the more fun stamps to specialize in. The stamp was printed in twelve plates, and each plate had 240 subjects. As a security measure, each stamp received check letters in the corners so that each of the 240 subjects of each plate are unique (the check
When you buy a house or a car there is a cost of production involved that provides a floor as to the price. If housing prices drop to below the cost of producing homes, people will stop building them, and supplies will contract, leading to price increases that will allow production to resume. At least
Supply and Demand Read More »
There are three main Foreign catalogs for the non English speaking European specialties-Michel for Germany and German Area, Yvert for France and French Colonies and Sassone for Italy and the Italian Area. Michel is the Mercedes of catalogs with hundreds of thousands of specialized listings in all phases of German philately with covers, blocks, paper types
Using Non Scott Catalogs Read More »