What can Be Done: Italy and the Italian Area is one of the most interesting of collecting specialty areas. It combines all the things that a philatelist likes to have in their specialty. There are the difficult classics in the Italian States—wonderful specialty areas in their own right like Sardinia or Two Sicilies. Italian States […]
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What can Be Done: Collecting the stamps of British Commonwealth is probably the most popular philatelic specialty worldwide. In nearly all major stamp collecting countries (such as the United States and Germany), specializing in British Commonwealth ranks second behind the stamps of the native country itself. In no country does collecting British Commonwealth rank first,
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What Can Be Done: If you wanted to see two different models for how countries handle great natural resource wealth, look at Norway and Venezuela. The Norwegians have taken their great North Sea oil wealth and created a modern welfare state with high levels of employment, benefits, and citizen satisfaction. Venezuela has the same resources,
What Can Be Done: Uruguay is a wonderful country to collect. The classics are interesting and hard to find, but not particularly pricey. The Uruguayan first issues are called the “Suns,” and they have long had tremendous specialty interest by themselves. The later nineteenth century has many better stamps (and in Uruguayan philately a “better”
Certainly, in the United States, US philately is the most popular. Probably 80% of American stamp collectors collect US and more than half the stamp dealers in this country are US dealers exclusively. What Can Be Done: United States stamps offer a specialist tremendous opportunity. There are over 4,000 different mainstream stamps as listed
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What Can Be Done: Turkey is one of the longest inhabited regions of the world and one of the first and oldest centers of sophisticated civilization (the eastern Roman Empire continued to exist, with its capital at Constantinople, until 1453- nearly a thousand years after the Rome itself fell). It is also one of the
What can Be Done: Switzerland is one of the most specialized countries to collect. As part of the Central Europe German speaking band of Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, Switzerland is highly specialized in all of its phases. Before issuing stamps as a country, Switzerland issued stamps by various Swiss states (called Cantons). These Cantonal issues
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What Can Be Done: Saxony is one of the four or five major German States and one of the most collected. There are many varieties of stamps. The first stamp, referred to usually quite simply as Saxony # 1 is a rarity and catalogs over $5000. There are many forgeries of this stamp, and even
What Can Be Done: Prussia was the main component state of the German federation that united in 1871. It was Prussian pressure on the rest of the German states that caused Germany to become one country. The reason for Germany uniting was to have the geopolitical heft to compete with the rest of Europe. But