The engine of philatelic popularity and growth over the 170 or so years that philately has been a hobby has traditionally been the stamps of Central Europe-Germany and its numerous component areas, Switzerland, Austria and to a lesser extent Liechtenstein. In 1930 there were probably as many serious German collectors as there were in the rest of […]
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Foreign collectors believe that collecting United States stamps is the most difficult of all national collecting specialties. The reason is that we make too many major catalog numbers of stamps on which the differences are very hard to distinguish. It starts with the one cent 1851’s of which there are seven major catalog numbers of a single design
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Among the most interesting stamps that exist in our hobby are the stamps of the German States. What we call Germany today is a very recent political invention. The area of Germany was never part of the Roman Empire, and so the various Germanic tribes that occupied and conquered that area were never unified. As
The phone call goes like this. The guy collected as a kid for a number of years and hasn’t touched his collection in years and has some questions. And every time he gets one of the jargon words right you can hear a bit of pleasure in his voice. He collected plate blocks and First
Baby Boomers Childhood Collections Read More »
People began writing about stamps almost as soon as they began collecting them. The first stamp magazines, really little more than dealer price lists with articles, were issued before 1840 and by the 1890s the London Philatelist, the precursor journal of the Royal Society of London, was actively publishing monthly scholarly philatelic articles. By 1900,
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Most stamp collectors are married men. In fact, if you had to pick the person who was at the exact center of the philatelic demographic in this country you would have a married man in his sixties with grown children. He would be more or less happily married. He and his wife share nearly everything together. They have children,
One of the great profit centers for mail order companies has always been their postage and handling charges. The idea is a good one for the business involved but not so great for the customer. Why mail order companies should be able to get away with charging for postage and handling is kind of odd.
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The story of the 1893 Columbian Exposition issue is well known. World’s Fairs, which was what the Columbian Exposition was, were a big thing until the advent of television and theme parks (in fact the last great US World Fair, the 1964 World’s fair in New York, had the first version of the “It’s a Small
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Philately has been a pretty consistent hobby in terms of popularity since its earliest days. Stamp collecting is not for everyone. It appeals most to intelligent, reflective people and goes well with a splash of introversion. Philately began as a diversionary hobby, more of a game to see how many different stamps you could obtain, though by
Spikes in Stamp Popularity Read More »