There is a rule in determining philatelic popularity and it states that countries are collected in proportion to the popularity of stamp collecting in the home country. This accounts for the widespread philatelic popularity of say the United States or Great Britain or Germany. And it accounts for the relative philatelic unimportance of say Haiti […]
Some countries have small populations, stable domestic politics and little international impact but yet are philatelically very popular and important. Two countries that fit this model are Liechtenstein and Iceland. Both are part of a larger philatelic collecting group (in the case of Liechtenstein it is the Swiss-German area and for Iceland it is the
One of the most interesting of the “classic” countries to collect is New South Wales. Now part of the Australian federation, New South Wales (NSW) is Australia’s most populous state and was an independent country until 1901 when the seven component states of Australia joined to create one country. The stamps of NSW have always
The growth of Asian philately has undermined traditional thinking about where new collectors come from. The traditional model has been the evolutionary model- children (usually boys) introduced to the hobby and collecting in their youth become re enamored with stamps in middle to old age. This paradigm has described the traditional collecting arc in the
Making Collectors? Read More »
The relative popularity of mint and used United States stamps has been constantly changing during the history of our hobby. The first generation of collectors had little relish for mint stamps. Philately was hardly more than a diversion then and few collectors had the seriousness of purpose to seek quality let alone mint. These collectors
Cognitive dissonance is a concept in psychology which states among other things, that the disconnect between what we do and what we believe creates discomfort and to deal with that internal discomfort we alter our perceptions of what we do to be more in line with what we want to believe about ourselves (that is,
Imperfect Stamps? Read More »
One of the most interesting countries to collect is the Dominican Republic. The first issues are crudely printed from domestically produced plates and the major varieties of the first thirty or so stamps are not design types but paper varieties. Philatelist have traditionally treated major paper types as grounds for a major catalog number. The
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Another area of catalog inconsistency concerns shades. Generally speaking, Scott lists all shades of a stamp as minor (that is “a”) numbers. If a stamp is issued in rose, the major catalog listing is for rose and all of the shades of rose from dark rose to scarlet are listed as minor numbers. Only when
When it is found in family and friends, inconsistency can make make a person’s life miserable. But when found in our hobby, it adds spice and interest. Pictured above is one of my favorite stamps because of what it tells us about our hobby and the mercurialness of the editors of the Scott catalog. It