Suppose you were a fellow collector of my grandfather Earl Apfelbaum in the 1920s. The probability is that you would be a world wide collector with perhaps a single country concentration. You would have a hardbound Scott album or a McKeels album as Minkus and Harris were still years in the future. You mounted your […]
Collecting in The 1920s Read More »
Chile is one of the two wealthiest countries in Latin America with Uruguay. The country lies along a narrow strip of land along the west coast of the South American continent bordered by the Andes mountains on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Chile’s climate ranges from some of the driest hottest deserts to
The Arab spring which started out so peacefully with the change of the governments of Egypt and Tunisia took a turn for the more violent when NATO was involved in the overthrow of the Libyan government. Libyan stamps have begun their fourth phase. First, there were the issues of the Italian Colony of Libya which
Color and shades are one of the most overdone areas of our hobby. During the earliest years of collecting, before 1900, there were simply not enough new stamp issues for the amount of time that collectors had to devote to our hobby. Collectors then parsed and refined their specialties and one way to do this
Trouble With Colors… Read More »
Postage Dues are one of what are called special service stamps, that is stamps issued for special postal purposes. Such stamps include Parcel Posts, which are stamps intended to be used on packages, Officials which are stamps used on government mail and all of the array of Newspapers and postal tax stamps that grace the back
Middle Eastern stamps are very appealing for a few reasons. First they are politically fascinating. Nearly all of the Middle East was under Turkish control until after WW I. The breakup created a power vacuum which brought Britain and France into play both with and against local populations in setting up new governments. The philately reflects
Like most collectors, different stamps take me back to different times in my life. In the 1960’s my parents sent me to overnight camp and the stamp they sent me with to post my letters home was the 1963 Food For Peace stamp. Every time I see this stamp in a collection I have memories of
Collector’s Memories Read More »
Peter Holcombe has passed away nearly a decade ago. Peter was one of the dwindling few of world wide dealer/experts that used to be prominent in the hobby. Peter was born in England and lived the last thirty years of his life in Switzerland. For most of his life he was an active dealer but
Every country has peculiarities of its specialization. The Germans have coil numbers printed on the back of stamps and collect their coils in strips of eleven to prove that the stamps didn’t come from a sheet which was printed with rows no larger than ten. The French collect gutter pairs with plate numbers, called millisimes.