Recently President Obama made a gaffe and was widely criticized for his statement regarding the appearance the Attorney-General of California, Kamala Harris. Most philatelists are middle aged men (in fact over 90% of serious collectors are male) and most of us no doubt don’t see what the fuss is all about. The President described Harris as the most attractive Attorney-General […]
Women and Philately Read More »
Cover collecting did not begin at the same time as did stamp collecting. Philately had its start in earnest about 1860, and, really, until about 1910, cover collecting was something collectors did when they didn’t have the time to wash the stamps they needed for their collections off the envelopes on which they had bought
Stamps were a hot hobby in the 1930s, and how hot is best illustrated by the fate of two United States Souvenir sheets that were issued three years apart. When the APS sheet was issued in 1933, the hobby was just beginning its Great Depression ascent. The face value of the sheet was only 12
What a Difference Three Years Makes Read More »
When collectors rail about excess new issue stamps soaking up their collecting budget and leaving them with little to spend on older stamps, they are only part of a long tradition of collectors who have bought stamps for their collections that were issued for reasons other than postal need. Some of the most popular stamps
British Colony High Values Read More »
One of the constants in history is the malleability of political boundaries. In America, we have become a bit inured to this fact because our own geography has been so steady, adding only Hawaii and Alaska to our country in the last century. But Europe is used to change, and nowhere in Europe has there been more
Philatelic popularity began a long, measurable ascent about 1900. An historian can see the hobby taking off, and we know that the numbers of collectors increased because we see an increase in the number of philatelic magazines, in the quantity of different stamp albums, increased membership in collector societies and more stamp dealers. As these
Is Philately Losing Popularity Read More »
Prices for the set of the 2014 Scott catalog have been announced, and they are very high. A full set of eight volumes has a list price of $960, though even Scott themselves discounts them to $720. Still, for an annual catalog this is very high, and though Scott has an Apple iPad app, it
The Price of Scott Cataolgs Read More »
When I was an annoying teenager helping out at the Apfelbaum stamp store in the 1960s, every Saturday brought in the fascinating Ken Whittle. Ken was the kind of philatelist that you saw a lot of then. He was the archetype of the “solitudinous collector” (or SC). SC’s are people for whom philately is very important
The following article was published on December 19, 2011 after the death of Kim Jong-Il. With the aggressive statements of North Korea putting that country back in the news, these comments on the stamps of North Korea seem germane today. Kim Jong-Il has died. As leader of North Korea, he presided over his nation’s continued