There is an unfortunate hobby arc that goes like this. A wealthy person decides that he wishes to be an enthusiast, buys an enormous amount of gear, and loses interest before he has gotten any of the real enjoyment out of his new whim. This is the fly fisher who has all the latest Orvis gear or […]
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One of the greatest difficulties in our hobby is passing specialized information from one generation to the next. Philatelic books are often indexed and catalogs exist of book titles, but the vast majority of philatelic writing is (and was) for periodicals, and no adequate philatelic periodical index exists. During the later years of the Nineteenth Century,
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Historians mark two types of dates in history. There are dates like 1066, the Norman Conquest of Britain, which are known at the time to the players involved to be significant dates in which vast changes have occurred. And there are dates such as 1054, which marks the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern church
Philately is the result of one of the great social innovations in the history of communications- cheap and rapid postal messaging. Before 1500, the only communication that was available for most people was direct conversation. You visited distant family and friends yourself or received word from them from the people who had seen them. Letters for anything
If you ask them, stamp collectors and dealers tell you that they never damage stamps when they handle them. They always use tongs correctly, hinge and mount their stamps carefully so that the stamps never stick or are thinned, and never crease a corner or damage a perforation. But the evidence presents a very different
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Numismatics presents a problem so profound that it is ignored by most coin collectors: what to collect. Coins have been issued for well over 3000 years by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of political entities. This has presented a problem for coin collectors that we stamp people have not yet had to face. There are
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The issue of expensive stamp albums threatens the foundation of our hobby. Scott specialty albums retail for a couple hundred dollars each, as do White Ace specialty albums. Hingeless specialty albums and the classy European imports are even more expensive. There are no inexpensive general worldwide albums like the Harris line that so many of
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If you wish to collect stamps and get the maximum amount back for the money that you spend, there are a few tips you should know. First, buy only more expensive stamps-those costing above a hundred or more dollars per set and avoid buying the lower priced stamps that fill in the spaces around sets
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Before the advent of the Giori Press, which allowed easy multicolor printing, the United States Post Office issued primarily single colored stamps. This was because bi color stamps, under the traditional engraving process, required different runs through the press for each color. This was time consuming and created “registration” problems, that is problems of the