Wars require the movement of troops and material, and this requires communication, which means mail. The hundreds of thousands of Americans who were sent to fight and die in France at the end of World War I were sent with two postal issues all of their own. Soldiers like booklet stamps as they can be […]
The Two Cent AEF Pane Read More »
There are three major types of rarities in philately. There are errors-stamps like the Airmail Invert that were supposed to be one way but through printing mistakes came out another. Most are rare and, since most errors were known from the beginning of production, they are rarely found unidentified in collections. The second type of rarities
There is no country that is collected in a more specialized way than are the stamps of Austria. Most specialists of other countries seek cancels and covers and blocks and all kinds of specialty items. But Austrian specialists go far further. Austrian specialty catalogs list paper varieties along with varieties listed by thickness as measured by a micrometer.
Ulrich Ferchenbauer Read More »
One of my favorite stamps when I was young stamp stamp dealer was the 5 Franc Napoleon from France. I liked it because it was nicely printed but mostly because it cataloged a lot of money, and it was easy to recognize. And it had a story. Five francs in France in 1860 was a lot
France 5 Franc Napoleon Read More »
The carnage of WW I produced the kind of revulsion that should have prevented other wars. Hundreds of thousands were killed over battle lines that moved only yards, gas was used for the first time producing horrific deaths and maiming, and there were mortality rates that wiped out nearly 1/3 of the military age male population in France.
League Of Nations Read More »
A customer wrote to us asking for Proofs and Essays of the United States Bank Note period to spice up his specialized collection of this area and was surprised that, since so many of the items only catalog a few dollars each, he was having such difficulty finding them. This got me thinking about what
The Great Specialty Sort Read More »
Shades and their nomenclature are arbitrary. And people’s perception of color is as well. The average person can see about one million different shades. Some people with a genetic mutation can see up to one hundred million. My gut feeling is that Scott uses about 2500 different shades as names in their catalog, though such generic terms
Pink and Pigeon Blood Pink Read More »
Virtually every stamp was originally sold in perfect condition. And yet, when you look at dealer offerings of rarer stamps, by far the vast majority are damaged in some way, with small thins or creases or no gum leading the list of defects. And the rarer and older the stamp the more likely it is to be
The rare stamp market has not really moved much in the last thirty years. The British Guiana stamp sold in 1980 for $935,000 and the million dollar mark has only been broken a few times since then. Price realizations at the very top of the market are notoriously unreliable too, with many “sold” rarities really not
Rare Stamp Prices Read More »