Blog

Sales Tax & Stamps

Mail and Internet sales have long had an advantage relative to ordinary retail sales in that there was no sales tax charged for interstate sales. Buy a set of zeppelins from your local retailer for a thousand dollars, and it will cost you $60-$80 more than if you you buy them online. This is one […]

Sales Tax & Stamps Read More »

Collecting With Vision

  Fashion is as prominent in philately as it is in clothing or movies. Over the 150 years of our hobby many items that were once popular have lost collector appeal and some areas that were once neglected are now more popular. In the 1930s and 1940s precancel collecting rivaled  all of the mainstream US specialties

Collecting With Vision Read More »

Philatelists See Red

Stamps of the earlier eras were color coded. The United States first class postage rate stamps of the Nineteenth century were red-brown (the overseas stamps were blue). So were the first class postage stamps of Great Britain, Canada, and Austria. The reason had nothing to do with design or aesthetics. Red dyes were cheaper. Here’s

Philatelists See Red Read More »

One Hundred Years

A century is a long time in history. In 1913, less than 2% of American homes were electrified. Virtually no one had a car; perhaps only a few dozen brave people had flown in planes. There was nearly no surgery; any infection was potentially life threatening. Life expectancy was thirty years lower than today. Smoking was pervasive,

One Hundred Years Read More »

How Many People Collect Stamps?

Individual hobbies attract relatively small percentages of the population and always have. Take chess—a cerebral game that attracts many of the same type of people as philately but with significantly more market penetration. The writers at the chess federation website bemoan the fact that though supposedly 600 million people worldwide know how to play chess,

How Many People Collect Stamps? Read More »

Stampless Covers

Philately is the study and collecting of postage stamps. But mail carriage existed for over a thousand years before the first postage stamp was issued and through the history of our hobby many collectors have ventured back to collect these postal artifacts. These earliest letters that were carried are lost to us and probably were

Stampless Covers Read More »

Shopping Cart
Scroll to Top