The French Sudan was a nation state that primarily existed on maps in the Foreign Office in Paris. It existed at two separate time periods, from 1890-1899 and 1920-1960. During the first period French Sudan met Voltaire’s famous bon mot for the Holy Roman Empire (that it wasn’t holy, wasn’t Roman, and it wasn’t an […]
One of the difficulties that philately has at the top levels is a lack of material. For most collectors this presents no problem. US collectors, for instance, mostly buy the same stamps to a several hundred dollars (or sometimes several thousand dollars) price point per stamp. When it gets more costly than that they begin to
Governmental promises have a value that can be sometimes be measured. The United States Postal Service has had an implied promise to the American citizenry-that it would be there day after day, year after year delivering mail and packages to every address in the country. It was this implied promise of government, never questioned until very
A good couple of years ago I visited an antique car museum in Norwich New York. I am not an old time car fan particularly and I went there with a relative who was. There was not much text to the exhibit, just 130 restored cars that were produced between 1904 and 1935 . Most
Originally, all philatelic expertization was done by individuals who expertized stamps and covers in their own name usually as part of the professional service of selling them. The most famous three European experts of the nineteenth century- Gebruder Senf(the Senf brothers) and Kohler in Germany and Thier in France were all merchant experts who signed
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American stamp collectors have been the beneficiaries of one of the longest running non contractual government promises in history and one that few governments world wide have extended to their own citizens. With one exception, the United States has never demonetized our postage stamps, meaning that every United States postage stamp issued since 1861 is still valid
As news of the fiscal shortfall of the United Sates Post Office makes it way through the general circulation press, collectors have become nervous over what the financial problems mean for them. If the Post Office were a private company, the solution to its problems would be fairly simple. Its pension liabilities alone would force it into
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In the nineteenth century Malaysia was like India, an amalgam of independent states nominally aligned under a central government. One of the most interesting of these states was Sarawak. This was a country carved out of Borneo for Sir James Brooke, a British adventurer who helped the Sultan of Brunei against an insurrection. This was
Sarawak and the White Rajah Read More »
To paraphrase Churchill (who said this in relation to democracy), capitalism is the worse economic system, except all others. But despite its flaws, capitalism motivates workers better than any other system and allows for a far greater amount of economic freedom for a greater number of people than any system. It channels aggressive drives into socially productive endeavors (entrepreneurship) rather than into the