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One of the things you can count on, like snow in Chicago, is that the stamps of a country take a momentary rise in price when that country is in the news. And no country has been more in the news recently than Egypt. But,even before this, the stamps of Egypt had been increasing in […]

Virtually every historical event has a philatelic component and revolutions and changes in government are no different. Illustrated above are some Iranian items that we found recently in a collection. These were portrait obliterations on Iranian stamps issued in 1925. Ahmad Shah was officially deposed as Shah of Persia in October of 1925 and the

Every philatelist, member or not, wishes the American Philatelic Society well. For over one hundred years the APS has been the cornerstone of organized philately, offering insurance, an excellent magazine, stamp shows and competitions, and the country’s finest library among numerous other benefits of membership. But obtaining and retaining members has been a problem. Forays

One of the most exciting things in philately is when there is a new discovery of a major variety on a well known and avidly collected stamp. Such a find was reported in the January 10 edition of Linns on the ten cent Lindbergh stamp of 1927 (Scott #C10). This stamp sells for about $10

The largest determinant in rising stamp prices is not the number of collectors in the hobby but the number of stamp dealers. After all, very few collectors ever acquire more than one of an item whereas dealers typically stock as many stamps as they can afford. My unscientific estimate is that the average dealer customer

The stamp business used to have what economists call high barriers to entry. It took a lot of knowledge, a lot of capital and years of advertising and satisfying customers to build a good mailing list and a good stamp business. When the Internet became the preferred method of buying and selling in philately, there

When you buy a Forever stamp, you buy a guarantee of a particular form of postal service at any period in the future . This proposal has received much criticism from people like Newt Gingrich who see it as a scheme to expand government and “is setting the stage for a future tax payer bailout

Seigniorage is the profit that governments make on securities that they issue, on which they don’t pay interest, and that are retained unused by the public. Cash in mattresses represents a form of seigniorage and, more than anything else, old face value postage stamps held by collectors do as well. The money that collectors have

The pricing ratios between mint stamps and used stamps for most nineteenth century issues are out of kilter and should change in the years ahead. Take the case of Great Britain stamps. On average, the catalog value in Scott for any stamp between 1860-1900 is about six times higher mint than used. But mint stamps