Until about 1950, philatelists were quite content hinging their stamps. The first stamp mounts in the United Stateswere Crystal Mounts, marketed by the H E Harris Company. They were not created because collectors wanted (or could be convinced they wanted, which is they same thing) a better way to mount their stamps. Rather Crystal Mounts […]
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One of the most popular stamp albums in the United States has been the White Ace specialty album series for United States stamps. The albums, produced by the Washington Press, have had lasting popularity for over fifty years. The albums are printed on high quality paper and use attractive page layout and design. The paper
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Philately in the 1930s was defined by two major events- one of major historical import-the Great Depression which virtually destroyed the world wide economy and the other with only philatelic importance- the rise of the stamp dealing firm of H E Harris. Our current economic malaise is serious so imagine how our unemployment rate would feel if it
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What Can Be Done: For most of the last thousand years, Latvia was a culture, an ethnicity, and a language that bound together the Latvian people. But Latvia was not, until 1918, a political entity, that is a country. We lose sight of the fact that for most of the last five hundred years, Russia
Latvian Stamps | Collecting Stamps from Latvia Read More »
What Can Be Done: French Colonies are one of the world’s most popular philatelic specialties and for good reason. There are over 100 issuing entities and tens of thousands of stamps. Many of the earliest issues are very hard to find, and many of the later issues are among the best designed and printed stamps
Stamps of French Colonies Read More »
Our hobby has had two great quality evolutions in the course of the 150 plus years that people have collected stamps. The very first collectors, who began saving stamps about 1860, just twenty years after the first stamp was issued, had no interest in quality. They often scraped stamps off envelopes for their collections, rather
Evolution of Stamp Quality Read More »
For many years we have been searching for a world wide expert who can expertize the entire non US world. For the US area there is the Philatelic Foundation but they really don’t do much with Foreign stamps. We wanted an expert who expertized a large number of countries and areas, who didn’t indelibly mark
Sergio Sismondo | Foreign Stamp Expert Sergio Sismondo Read More »
When Israel became a country in 1948, it became the perfect philatelic laboratory. For the vast majority of countries, stamp collecting grew up decades after the first stamps of those countries were issued. It was only about 1870 in Europe and the United States that philately began to grow beyond a few early fanatics, which
Israeli stamps | Israeli Stamps and What They Show Us About Philately Read More »
When Rowland Hill invented the postage stamp, an integral part of his design was a “wash of mucilage applied to the back, which, when moistened would allow the stamp to adhere to paper”. In the very early years of stamp collecting, collectors primarily collected used stamps. After all, the reasoning went, why spend good money
How To Tell If Your Stamp Has The Original Gum Read More »