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What Can Be Done: Peru is one of the most interesting countries to collect. The stamps listed by Scott as the first issues were actually produced by the American Steam Ship Company and were only for use on mail leaving the country (Technically, as restricted issues, they shouldn’t be listed as #1-2, but Scott is […]

What Can Be Done: From a philatelic standpoint, Paraguay is as little regarded as it is as a nation. Landlocked, poor, and with a small population, Paraguay flies under the radar. When was the last time you saw a news story on the country? Until twenty years ago, Paraguay was really two countries—a wealthy, largely

What can Be Done: Suppose you really really want a country to cede or sell you a strip of land so you can build a canal. And suppose that country doesn’t want to do that. What do you do? Well, if you were the US in the early nineteenth century and the area was Central

What Can Be Done:  The history of the Indian sub-continent over the last 1200 years has been the geographic battle between peoples of the Hindu and Muslim faith. The Mughal Empire controlled most of India before ceding control to the British, and the simmering enmity between the Hindus and Moslems that British rule papered over

What Can Be Done: Philatelic interest is often inversely proportional to political and economic development. The reason is that poorer countries often cut corners in stamp production, reusing older issues by overprinting them. And it means that few native collectors put away any stocks of better stamps. There are few countries that have had worse

What Can Be Done: The six Australian States present stamp collectors with an entirely separate philatelic world in its own right. There is no British area in the hobby that is as specialized. Many collectors find New South Wales daunting and frankly, of all the Australian States, New South Wales presents the most challenges, many

What Can Be Done: There are five Provinces of Canada that issued their own postage stamps before confederation. All but Newfoundland had joined the Canadian Confederation by 1872. Newfoundland continued issuing its own postage stamps until 1949 when it also joined the confederation. The stamps of Newfoundland are very popular and deservedly so. They are

What Can Be Done: Mexico is one of the most complicated and difficult countries to collect. Some areas, like Germany, are difficult to collect at an advanced level but fairly easy to assemble a nice, comprehensive, specialized collection by Scott. Mexico is complex at every level.  First, there are an enormous number of very rare

What Can Be Done: The stamps of Mecklenburg-Schwerin are interesting, and, as a philatelic specialty, fairly easy to both collect and complete. There are fewer than a dozen stamps, a factor that always makes for easy collecting. There are a couple that sell for a hundred dollars or more and none which are cheap.