It seems likely that sometime in the next few years that the Federal government is going to step into the state sales tax morass and impose some kind of national sales tax on interstate sales. As it is now, the vast majority of philatelic items are sold sales tax free as they are purchased by […]
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Many collectors have always found the classified ads in Linns and in the American Philatelist to be among the most interesting parts of those magazines. The classifieds gave you access to everything from stamps on paper mixture, to buy lists for US commemoratives by hundreds, to the buying and selling prices of foreign postage. Linns
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H E Harris was in a conundrum after it’s sale to General Mills. Wesley Mann the new President of Harris soon realized that the tremendous profit margins that had made Harris such an attractive take over candidate could never be maintained. There are two ways to maintain or increase short term profits in a business
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Wesley Mann was the President of H E Harris in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. His background was in finance and he was made the head of what was then the world’s largest stamp company because of his successful corporate career at General Mills, the cereal conglomerate. General Mills had just bought Harris and
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The number and variety of Revenue Stamps continue to amaze. Here is check from Iceland with revenues from 1942. We’ll be selling this as part of a lot in our March Public Auction. This lot of Iceland revenues may have the greatest rarity for the lowest price of anything we’ve ever sold. We’ve never sold any of
There are many types of special service stamps-stamps that indicate a different kind of postal service than traditional, straight forward first class postage. Differing countries have differing attitudes towards special services and their stamps. Most countries issue stamps to distinguish Official postage or Newspapers or Postage Dues, but not all countries issue stamps for say, Marine Insurance, as
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Philatelists have always referred to items they don’t want or need, or which are in specialty areas that they don’t respect as “garbage”. But there is one rare philatelic item that has a trashy past and is called the “Garbage Card” or “full face McKinley”. After President McKinley was assassinated in 1901, the Postal Service
The story of philately over the last twenty years is the story of the Internet and of EBay. Its hard to quantify EBay’s philatelic success (as they keep their numbers for each of their divisions to themselves) but its clear they offer millions of lots per year to hundreds of thousands of buyers on behalf of tens of thousands of sellers. EBay
As children, girls collect somewhat less often than boys. But as adults, women collect stamps far less frequently than do men. And when they do collect, they tend to do so less avidly and more idiosyncratically. In the lists of competitive stamp exhibitors, women make up a very small percentage of Gold Medal winners, a
Why Don’t Women Collect Stamps? Read More »