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Colonial issues are among the most popular in philately. Five main countries

In many ways, Swiss philately tells the story of Central European stamp collecting since 1970. Switzerland was one of the first stamp issuers, and, like the Postmaster Provisionals of the United states, the first stamps of Switzerland were issued by cities and states, rather than by the Federal Swiss government. Collectors esteemed Swiss stamps from the beginning,

Iran is not just a political pariah; it is a philatelic one as well. From an interest point of view, the stamps of Iran should be popular. The first issues, called the Lions (after the Shah’s royal seal) are interesting with many rarer shades and varieties and types. And the post-1930 issues are well designed

Now it doesn’t matter much because high technology printing can pretty much do anything in a jiffy, but in the nineteenth century, it would have been much cheaper if all stamps had been printed in one color. The reason that they weren’t was because different letters to different places in differing weights required different postage.

Great thematic stamp collections help the viewer understand history in new ways. Recently, a collection came our way that underscores this. The collector, a historian, had a thesis that modern history is viewed through too narrow a lens. He took a long view of European history. The Hundred Years’ War, for instance, was never called

$100 or $1,000,000? The reuse of postage stamps was an obsession of postal officials in the mid-nineteenth century. It was the reason that cancellations were used on letters. Still, postal officials in most countries thought this was not enough. They imagined a world of people soaking used postage stamps off envelopes, washing the cancellations either