Blog

For most of the last century the greatest stamp auction company in the world was Corinphila. Housed in Zurich, Switzerland, Corinphila had one or two auctions a year. But what auctions they were! The philatelic auction model in Europe was different than it is in the United States. For reasons relating to tax laws, there […]

Life is an arc with childhood the beginning and old age the end. In our earliest years our potential seems boundless and time stretches on forever. As we age we must come to grips with the realities of life, our limitations, situation and our luck. Philately helps people with the psychological issues that they face as

One would think that all members of a team would want that team to succeed. Or that all politicians in a nation would want that country’s economy to thrive. Or that all philatelists would want to see our hobby and their subset of the hobby increase in popularity. But, unfortunately, this is not always the case

A major difference between European and American philately is how collectors in those areas view the signing of stamps. Signing stamps on the back, usually with a handstamp and usually in ink, began in the late Nineteenth Century in Germany as a dealer identification marking. Dealers would sign the stamps that they sold and such

The history of philatelists mounting stamps in their albums has four phases and does not really represent progress. The earliest stage, beginning about 1850 when people first began collecting stamps, to about 1880 was the period where stamps were simply gummed down in albums. If the stamp was mint, the gum on the back would

Ken Martin, the executive director of the American Philatelic Society, is a kind and capable man and a very good friend. So it is with good  humor that I point out his article in the June American Philatelist. Ken mentions that the APS “only lost 10%” of its members this year and is down to just over

Stamps represent a form of a bearer certificate, like currency. The holder or bearer of a stamp is entitled to a certain amount of a service. In the United States, unlike every other country, this promise has been without time limit going back over 150 years. Every other country in the world has demonetized their

Technological changes have produced greater changes in society and history than any other factor. Hard driving nomadic tribes existed across the Asian steppe for thousands of years, but when the technology of compound bows allowed the Hunnish cavalry to pierce Roman armor by arrow from a distance, the Western Roman Empire fell. And when gun