Harry and Sally were an older stamp collecting couple that were already long established favorites at our shop when I started in the stamp business forty years ago. They had met in their youth at a local stamp club and though they each maintained their own collections (he was a GB collector, she saved Canada) […]
Philatelically, the postage stamps of the United States are probably the most interesting and complex to collect of any area. US Philately has the largest body (and most interesting and valuable) of Postmaster Provisionals, stamps issued before national postage stamps by local postal authorities (no doubt we lead in this area because our Federal system
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Virtually any topic or theme can be collected. But of the collectible topics and themes, the most interesting are ones that go beyond the pictures of the stamps and tell a story that is bigger. I just came across an eight volume collection of Penguin philately. It consists of thousands of stamps and covers from over
Postal stationary has always languished in popularity. In the earliest years of our hobby most albums had spaces for Cut Squares (the stamp portion of a mint entire envelope cut away from the envelope and collected on its own). But with the exception of US and German Area philately there are few postal stationery collectors
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The war that broke out in Europe in 1914 and involved the major countries of Europe became known as World War I largely because some combat occurred outside the main European battlefields. But this name is a bit of a misnomer. The main combatants stayed the same and to the extent that the war was fought
Based on American Stamp Dealer Association membership, APS dealer members and a survey of the larger EBay and Internet dealers, I would estimate that there are less than 2500 full time stamp dealers in the United States. Many collectors sell their duplicates, some build inventory towards eventually dealing full time, and there are many part
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It is unlikely that many philatelists have read the book The Hunger Games (or seen the movie). The story is ostensibly a post apocalyptic dystopia and the book has been billed as young adult literature. But stripped of its sadistic and salacious elements the book really is about a society that has rejected capitalism as
There are two major factors that influence philatelic popularity- first, the number of collectors who have a nationalistic interest in the particular stamps and, second, the intrinsic sex appeal of the stamps from their use, colorfulness of area of origin or design. Thus US stamps or German stamps are popular under the first guide line
In 1970 a stamp collector had to work hard to find stamps for his collection. If he collected with any degree of specialization, collecting was more about searching for than acquiring stamps. Most collectors had geographic access to at least a moderate stamp dealer’s shop (there were stamp shops in those days). But stamp dealer inventories at