Much as Canadian culture and economic development has been influenced by the United States, so too has the collecting of Canadian stamps. This is interesting too, because Canada is a part of the British Commonwealth and as such retains the philatelic influence of the Stanley Gibbons catalog. But over the years, the way Canadian stamps have been collected has come to be more and more determined by Scott and by the way that Americans collect US stamps.
Canada is a wonderful philatelic country. The stamps are well designed, and there are only two rarities. For under $10,000, the country can be completed missing only two major Scott numbers. The stamps are well designed and, even though very popular, are mostly readily available in all but the highest quality grades at significant discounts from Scott catalog price.
Canadian Revenue stamps are one of the areas that most shows the influence of US philately on the stamp collecting of Canada. US collectors have long grown up with the tradition of collecting Revenue stamps. Revenues are in our general catalog. We rarely reflect on the fact that the Scott catalog is the only general catalog to list revenue stamps and then only does so on the issues of the United States and for no other country. Revenues exist for other countries, but they are often unpopular. France has thousands of different types and varieties of Revenues, but the total number of serious France Revenue collectors is probably exceeded by the number of different revenue types. The same is true of Japan, Austria, Great Britain, Mexico, and Argentina, all countries with thousands of Revenue varieties. As it stands, Canadian Revenues are beautifully engraved stamps and are well listed by the Van Dam catalog. They are very popular and mostly not very expensive, making a very nice adjunct to regular Canadian philately. There has been speculation for years that the Scott Nineteenth Century Specialized catalog, which adds expanded sections each year to its listings, will someday list Canadian Revenues. When they do, the boost to these stamps will be tremendous, and it would be nice to have gotten in on the ground floor.
The popularity of Canada as a philatelic specialty rises and falls with the fortunes of US philately. There are more collectors of Canadian stamps in the United States than there are in Canada because the population of the United States is more than ten times that of Canada, and the growth that Canadian philately will see in the future will necessarily come from the United States. My feeling is that Canada offers all of the joys of philately at a much more modest price than US collecting and should be a serious specialty consideration for any collector.