Fashion is as prominent in philately as it is in clothing or movies. Over the 150 years of our hobby many items that were once popular have lost collector appeal and some areas that were once neglected are now more popular. In the 1930s and 1940s precancel collecting rivaled all of the mainstream US specialties […]
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Since 1846, the United States has never been at war with one of its neighbors (we had a few military excursions into Mexico over the years, but they were more to keep peace at the borders and weren’t wars). This peace among huge geographically contiguous countries (the border with Canada alone is over 5,500 miles)
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There are many reasons why philatelists pick the specialty that they do. Many collectors have an ethnic or nationalistic aspect to their collections. You see many Americans collect United States stamps and many Germans collecting Germany and this holds especially true for ex patriots who tend to collect their home country in greater proportion to
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The past thirty years have seen enormous technological changes in the computing and information processing field. In our hobby, the changes that have occurred as a result of this have been transformative. Stamp shows have withered, society membership has declined, philatelic publications became extinct, and nearly all stamps are now sold and listed and read
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Stamps of the earlier eras were color coded. The United States first class postage rate stamps of the Nineteenth century were red-brown (the overseas stamps were blue). So were the first class postage stamps of Great Britain, Canada, and Austria. The reason had nothing to do with design or aesthetics. Red dyes were cheaper. Here’s
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A century is a long time in history. In 1913, less than 2% of American homes were electrified. Virtually no one had a car; perhaps only a few dozen brave people had flown in planes. There was nearly no surgery; any infection was potentially life threatening. Life expectancy was thirty years lower than today. Smoking
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The relationship between privately produced stamps and those for public use is a complex one, and how these stamps are classified has a tremendous impact on their future philatelic popularity. Thule has existed, at least on maps and in cartographers imagination, for over 2,500 years. The name really refers to the far north, and whenever early map makers didn’t
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Recently a family brought us a collection that has been in their family for nearly 150 years. The collection had been started by their great-grandfather in 1860, carried on by their grandfather, and then their father who passed away last year at more than 90. Most collections that live through many generations in the same family become
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Philately is the study and collecting of postage stamps. But mail carriage existed for over a thousand years before the first postage stamp was issued and through the history of our hobby many collectors have ventured back to collect these postal artifacts. These earliest letters that were carried are lost to us and probably were