The Coil issues of the Washington-Franklin period Flat Press printings represent one of the greatest problems in all of philately. Few other areas have so many difficult to detect forgeries. The problem is this: The Washington-Franklins were first issued three ways-as perf 12 singles, as imperforates and as Coils, perf 12. The imperfs and the fully perforated stamps […]
Recently I went to see a collection of a life long customer of my father and my grandfather. Harry had died in 2005 but before that there was rarely an auction of ours that he hadn’t attended buying many different countries, but concentrating mainly on United States, Canada and Israel. Our records, which go back
The stamps of Israel are among the most popular of any country in the world. Israel is a major economic player, with a high per capita income and large foreign currency earnings which gives its citizens money to spend on hobbies. Further, Israel has a very well educated population, another predictor of philatelic popularity. And
One of the major underpinnings of modern economic and political understanding is a broad paradigm of human behavior called rational choice theory. Different economists and social scientists apply it differently, but it essentially means that left to their own devices people will make decisions that maximize their spending power when they are buying and try
Rational Choice Theory Read More »
Philatelic colors often have a nomenclature that is unique to the philatelic field and often the term for shades varies from philatelic specialty to philatelic specialty depending on the whim (and translations from the early foreign catalogs) of the early Scott compilers. The color terms are usually consistent within each country-the dull red of the
Ezra Cole was already an old man when I first came on the philatelic scene in the late 1960’s. Mr Cole (and I would have no more called him Ezra than I would have spelled God with a small g) was a US dealer known for assembling the finest collections and dealing in the very
There are three aspects of any philatelic specialty to consider when you are looking around for a new area to collect-difficulty, cost and satisfaction. Specialties vary in difficulty and difficulty is not always relative to cost. Collecting the mint stamps of the United States is a moderately difficult undertaking if you plan to try to attain
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All hindsight is 20/20. But exceptionally keen seems to be historical hindsight. Japanese military postal cards and covers from the Russo-Japanese war and the period leading up to WW II seem exceptionally jingoistic and war admiring. The pervasiveness of militaristic themes was constant. The same was true of Third Reich philately. It always strikes me
Countries and Politicians Tell their Real Intentions Read More »
The Federal Reserve issues a triennial revue of the net worth of Americans and the results for 2001-2010 are what you would expect-down- overall about 30%. Stock market values were steady over the decade but what caused most American families to lose net worth in the period was a substantial decline in home values which,
American Wealth Declines Read More »