Philately is the result of one of the great social innovations in the history of communications- cheap and rapid postal messaging. Before 1500, the only communication that was available for most people was direct conversation. You visited distant family and friends yourself or received word from them from the people who had seen them. Letters for anything […]
If you ask them, stamp collectors and dealers tell you that they never damage stamps when they handle them. They always use tongs correctly, hinge and mount their stamps carefully so that the stamps never stick or are thinned, and never crease a corner or damage a perforation. But the evidence presents a very different
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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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The issue of expensive stamp albums threatens the foundation of our hobby. Scott specialty albums retail for a couple hundred dollars each, as do White Ace specialty albums. Hingeless specialty albums and the classy European imports are even more expensive. There are no inexpensive general worldwide albums like the Harris line that so many of
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If you wish to collect stamps and get the maximum amount back for the money that you spend, there are a few tips you should know. First, buy only more expensive stamps-those costing above a hundred or more dollars per set and avoid buying the lower priced stamps that fill in the spaces around sets
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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
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
When EBay first began to gain in popularity some ten years ago, there were predictions that it would ultimately mean the demise of mainstream stamp dealers. Events have played out rather differently. On any given day, the philatelic part of the EBay empire has over two million stamp lots listed for sale in either the
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Bullying, the cruel treatment of someone who has caused you no harm, is not just limited to political candidates and school boys. It intrudes in our hobby as well. About twenty years ago there was a very prominent and wealthy United States collector-Jerry. Jerry came to our office once to view an auction and the