There are two broad types of collectors and they correspond to the two broad types of readers that there are. There are readers who, when they begin a book, must finish it before they can go onto reading anything else. It matters little how much they are enjoying the book they are reading. Once begun, […]
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The Postal Service has announced that it is closing down many mail processing centers, laying off tens of thousands of workers and slowing down the delivery of mail, all in an attempt to stem the losses that have occurred in hard copy mail delivery as a result of the revolution in electronic communication. This is
Let’s suppose most people had too much money and needed so badly to lose some of it that they offered courses in how to lose it. I can’t speak of what they would teach when the course concerned non philatelic areas, but when the subject came to stamp collecting there is no doubt that the
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One of the most popular stamps of the Nineteenth Century is the black stamp honoring President Andrew Jackson that was issued first in 1863 and then again in several grilled forms over the next few years. The black Jackson, called the Blackjack by collectors has been popular for several reasons. First it has never been
One of the things that many collectors pay too little attention to is the albums that they put their stamps in. Nice attractive well made stamp albums cost money and many collectors are loathe to part with hard earned coin of the realm for anything but actual stamps. That’s fine if that’s what you want
During the late 1970’s and the height of the inflation driven stamp market there was a crazy person who pretended to be a stamp dealer who came regularly to our auctions. Rob Redstone was about 30 and dressed dramatically, talked loudly and always was making phone calls which we felt were calls on which there
They brought a black and white television set into our fourth grade class and we watched John Glenn’s lift off in 1962. They told us it was a big deal- the first person to orbit the earth but nothing told us it was a big deal as much as the fact that there were televisions
The best inventions are often the simplest and, for simplicity and usefulness, philately’s greatest invention was the stamp hinge. The hinge wasn’t actually invented, rather it evolved. The earliest collectors just licked their mint stamps to put them in their albums and made a paste to gum down their used stamps. As the Nineteenth Century progressed, collectors started
The world wide press has given extensive coverage to the problems with the Greek economy and the effect this is having on the rest of the European Union. It increasingly appears that Greece will default on its loans and either leave or be forced out of the Euro zone. This is uncharted territory for both