There are four broad categories of bearer labels that have been issued to indicate prepayment for a service or tax. They are postage stamps, revenue stamps, telegraph stamps and telephone stamps. Worldwide issues of these stamps vary but overall the number of postage stamps greatly exceeds the number of revenues, telephone and telegraph stamps. Indeed […]
Telephone and Telegraph Stamps Read More »
Years ago I taught an evening class in philately at Temple University. The class was made up mainly of well educated people who were either getting back into collecting or who were, never having been stamp collectors, thinking of trying our hobby on for size. At one point after a few weeks the topic of plating
We live in a time different in many ways from all the times of the past. Perhaps the most significant difference is the ability for so many people today to have nearly instant gratification of most of their wants. Bored ? Turn on the TV or pop in a video game or check out the
The French Sudan was a nation state that primarily existed on maps in the Foreign Office in Paris. It existed at two separate time periods, from 1890-1899 and 1920-1960. During the first period French Sudan met Voltaire’s famous bon mot for the Holy Roman Empire (that it wasn’t holy, wasn’t Roman, and it wasn’t an
One of the difficulties that philately has at the top levels is a lack of material. For most collectors this presents no problem. US collectors, for instance, mostly buy the same stamps to a several hundred dollars (or sometimes several thousand dollars) price point per stamp. When it gets more costly than that they begin to
Governmental promises have a value that can be sometimes be measured. The United States Postal Service has had an implied promise to the American citizenry-that it would be there day after day, year after year delivering mail and packages to every address in the country. It was this implied promise of government, never questioned until very
Originally, all philatelic expertization was done by individuals who expertized stamps and covers in their own name usually as part of the professional service of selling them. The most famous three European experts of the nineteenth century- Gebruder Senf(the Senf brothers) and Kohler in Germany and Thier in France were all merchant experts who signed
Expertizing by Committee Read More »
American stamp collectors have been the beneficiaries of one of the longest running non contractual government promises in history and one that few governments world wide have extended to their own citizens. With one exception, the United States has never demonetized our postage stamps, meaning that every United States postage stamp issued since 1861 is still valid
As news of the fiscal shortfall of the United Sates Post Office makes it way through the general circulation press, collectors have become nervous over what the financial problems mean for them. If the Post Office were a private company, the solution to its problems would be fairly simple. Its pension liabilities alone would force it into
Post Office Paranoia Read More »