Several nations have reprinted their earlier stamps for collectors. The United States did so in 1876, reprinting scores of out of print issues for the 1876 Centennial Exposition so that the Post Office could have for sale examples of all of the postage stamps that had ever been issued. Most were sold in quantities of less than 500 […]
Stamp collectors can always be a bit sanguine when the rest of the world gets upset if the Producer Price Index goes up a bit. German inflation during the early Weimar period defies belief until you actually see it. The scan here is of the front and back of a 1923 cover with over 30 billion marks
Billions of Marks Read More »
There was a time in our hobby where you couldn’t really call yourself a collector unless you belonged to a stamp club. Thousands of clubs existed in this country and, in Philadelphia alone, in 1970, a collector could go to a different stamp club meeting five days a week. There were over twenty clubs in the
Charles Dickens was born two hundred years ago this month. He has always been my favorite writer and several years ago I was fortunate enough to be able to acquire for my personal collection the greatest philatelic and literary autograph combination- an envelope addressed by Dickens franked by the world’s first postage stamp-the Penny Black, along
Valentine’s Day is a holiday for which no long historical tradition exists. There were several St Valentines as part of the pantheon of Catholic martyrs and saints but none of them had any association to romantic love. Scholars looking for antecedents to the holiday can trace it back to a poem of Geoffrey Chaucer in
News this week came that the Post Office lost $7 billion dollars last year and this is after an accounting change postpones a $5 billion loss due to how pension contributions are paid. Worse, the Post Office’s business model is failing and, despite what really seems to be significant efforts at increasing efficiency, loses will only compound
United States Postal Service Loss Read More »
Tom Wilson had been a customer of ours for years when he called us to come and see his collection that he was ready to sell.Tom and I spoke on the phone and set up an appointment for me to come to his home in Chula Vista, quite a ways from my Jenkintown office, but, for
When I started in the stamp business in the late 1960s there was still active a large group of professional philatelists who had been political refugees from the 1930s. These were people who had escaped Germany and Eastern Europe and had come to the United States, often by very circuitous routes. All had a story and most
Philatelic Immigration Read More »
Occupation stamps are war time issues that are printed by an occupying force for use in the territory of a conquered area. As such, they are usually quite popular in the country that did the occupying, as sort of a jingoistic memory, and quite unpopular in the country that was occupied, reminding them of their weakness
Occupation Stamps Read More »