There are three things that every collector should do to maximize the return that they receive for their stamps when they go to sell, and I will address them in ascending order of importance. First, it is very important to have some figures on your stamp collection. Do you have records of how much you spent? […]
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Before 1859 Romania didn’t exist in its current form and one of its component nations, Moldavia, was one of the first issuers of stamps. The famous Moldavia Bulls have been a favorite of philatelists since the beginning of our hobby. They combine the three characteristics that collectors most esteem-they were issued for purely postal purposes
Cuba is one of the few philatelic areas that has quadruple specialist appeal. Before 1898 Cuba was a Spanish Colony, and there are over a hundred different stamps that were issued by Spain for use in their colony including the first issues which are interesting because they were issued for use in both the Philippines
The three great scourges of humanity have historically been war, famine, and pestilence. Modern technology though seems to have solved the problems of the devastation of two of these. In the last two centuries over 100 million people have died in famines. But fertilization, irrigation and genetic engineering have today made famine more of a byproduct of
Albert Gross lived in a small house in a neighborhood outside of Milwaukee. He had come to the United States from Germany in the early 1930’s as his very left wing views (he had been a Communist) left him prey to Hitler’s hatred. He worked at Schlitz which, for those of you who are too
A recent article on the BBC addresses an issue that has been of interest to philatelists for over a hundred years. I wrote several weeks ago about auctions versus direct sale. This new article adds to the discussion by referencing several psychological studies. The question that was being addressed was whether people got better deals
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The engine of philatelic popularity and growth over the 170 or so years that philately has been a hobby has traditionally been the stamps of Central Europe-Germany and its numerous component areas, Switzerland, Austria and to a lesser extent Liechtenstein. In 1930 there were probably as many serious German collectors as there were in the rest of
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Foreign collectors believe that collecting United States stamps is the most difficult of all national collecting specialties. The reason is that we make too many major catalog numbers of stamps on which the differences are very hard to distinguish. It starts with the one cent 1851’s of which there are seven major catalog numbers of a single design
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Among the most interesting stamps that exist in our hobby are the stamps of the German States. What we call Germany today is a very recent political invention. The area of Germany was never part of the Roman Empire, and so the various Germanic tribes that occupied and conquered that area were never unified. As