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A remarkable aspect of philately is that unpopularity breeds further unpopularity. It is truly unusual to see a good collection of nearly any South and Central American country. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Cuba are exceptions, but for the other twenty or so countries that make up rest of the southern Americas, collections that are even […]

We want to thank the thousands of Apfelbaum clients who have made this year our most successful ever. Over ten thousand of you are registered to buy from us online and last year we sold over 25,000 lots. Going forward we continue to promise you a guarantee that is without equal in the philatelic world-complete

The USPS announced this year that they were going to begin to waive the” ten year deceased” rule for commemoration on US postage stamps. Looking at the list of notable deaths of 2011, I don’t think we need to worry that we are going to be inundated by a massive amount of  new issues. It seems

The United States Post Office has commemorated everything from baseball to rock stars, from Faulkner to Disney. We do really well at honoring our heroes and often at overvaluing the trivial. But as a nation we aren’t very comfortable with commemorating or honoring our painful experiences. Our philatelic commemoration of the most painful American experience, the Civil

When I began this blog a couple a years ago the purpose was to tell a few stories about our hobby, to talk about the way the hobby used to be and identify some of the the changes that have occurred in Philately. Little did I think that within two short years there would be

Especially scary about the death of North Korea dictator Kim Jong-Il is the effect it will have on South Korea. When the Koreas were partitioned in the early post WW II period, they were both equally devastated. But while North Korea has gone from poor to destitute, South Korea has been the poster child for capitalism, ending

Kim Jong-Il has died. As leader of North Korea, he presided over his nation’s continued slide into abject poverty and oppression. There are few laboratory tests in any environment that so clearly measure the differences in political systems as did North and South Korea. Divided after complete devastation during WW II, the North took a Maoist and Stalinist central

For many years in the property market is has been said that there are three things that influence prices and will insure investors a good return-location, location, location. Similarly, the unstated emphasis in stamp investment has been quality with the suggestion that only the finest examples of each stamp will be a good investment. This

Gum has had a long relationship with printing on postage stamps. In the pre 1930s days, flat press printing meant that sheets of paper were fed into the press one by one and then the printed sheets were hung up to dry, gummed and weighted at the corners so that as the gum contracted the