Harry Potter Stamps
Our new stamps have some people up in arms and has given us some publicity in the non philatelic media.
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Stamp Auctions
Forty years ago, when I started in the stamp business, there were twenty stamp auction houses in the United States holding several hundred auctions per year. Today there are only ten holding not many more than fifty auctions. Even before the Internet and the sales platform of Ebay (where everyone can participate in auctions all
Grills
The following is a link to an article published in the January 2014 edition of the British magazine Stamp & Coin Mart.
A Very Interesting Area To Collect
It’s a bit of a toss up over which ex-empire, the British or the Austro-Hungarian, has produced the most number of stamps. Certainly up to WWII the British Empire and its derivatives would be the winner. But in the years since WWII, the countries that made up the former Austro-Hungarian Empire have laid a strong
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1000 Blog Posts
This week this stamp blog reached its 1000th post yesterday. Most of these articles are about philatelic history and the vastness of our hobby. And because they are not timely (after all little changes in philately, which is probably the reason so many people enjoy stamps) most of the earlier articles are just as useful
Be Honest With Your Family About Your Stamps
Most collectors are honest with their families about their philatelic holdings. They inform them of how much they really spent and how much they really feel their stamps are worth. When misunderstandings arise
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Japanese Philately
Among the most interesting issues in philately are the classic first issues of Japan called the Dragons. Japan was a closed society for about three hundred years before 1854. Japanese leaders had made the decision that they wanted no contact with outsiders (as they saw what foreigners were doing to China), and the penalty for
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Why The USPS Pushes 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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Cut Sqaures
Cut Squares and Entires (the Scott “U” numbers in the catalog) have always seemed to be less popular than they should be. They have several important specialty features going for them. They are scarce, attractive, and complex. There are hundreds of major numbers, and about 95% of them sell for under a few dollars. All