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For thousands of years before the introduction of the postage stamp in 1840, postal service existed on several levels. Originally, postal service was a private contractual affair-a merchant or a friend was traveling to another place and took your letters along. Later, private companies entered the market and provided service between locations that had a […]

The first animal on stamps thematic, the first allegorical representation of a national identity and one of the finest engraved stamps of the nineteenth century are all found in the first issue of Canada. Canada was a somewhat late player in the early stamp game with its first stamp issued in 1851. The first issue

The New York Times reported in the March 13 issue on Col Ghadafi of Libya and how he has something like $12 billion in currency in his bank and how he keeps that much currency around just in case he needs to get away. Apparently, Ghadafi is smart enough to realize that as soon as

Throughout the late nineteenth century Germany was as involved as any European power in the fight to carve up China for political and commercial advantage. The United States, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, and France also issued stamps for their sovereign city states on the Chinese mainland. These city states were land ceded by the Chinese

Another area in which United States philately differs from nearly all the rest of the world is in our Official Stamps. As an agency of the federal government (one of the powers our Constitution expressly designated as a federal power was control of the national post office) the US post Office always carried official mail

Because of its familiarity to most American philatelists, we tend not to appreciate just how difficult collecting United States stamps is compared to collecting the stamps of most other countries. The reason of course is the Scott catalog and the vast number of varieties and special issues that Americans collect that the collectors of other

Thirty years ago I wrote a book with David Lidman who was the stamp columnist of the New York Times. The book was called The World of Stamps and Stamp Collecting and it was published by Charles Scribners, Sons. The book was well received and we have now posted it on our website so that

Turkey today is a country with only moderate influence in areas that most often make headlines in American newspapers. But until World War I, Turkey was an important, often the important player in the European theater. Turkey, through Byzantium, later named Constantinople, was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and though Rome itself was

The Scott Classic catalog lists over 2500 separate stamp issuing entities from Aden to Italian Offices in China-Peking. And this is only for stamps issued to 1940. Add in the different listings since 1940 and you probably have 4000 or so different counties/political subdivisions that have issued stamps. Some, like Russia are approaching 10,000 stamp