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The issuance of postage stamps was one of the great technological and commercial innovations of the nineteenth century. Postage stamps allowed easy prepayment of postage and reduced postal labor costs enormously as each letters no longer needed to be weighed and paid for separately as it came in. But bureaucracies are slow to change and […]

The world of philatelic writing is largely about extolling rarities and unusual stamps. But of the trillions of stamps that have been issued only a trivial fraction of one percent have any individual philatelic value and are ever sold individually. Most stamps are mixture stamps, stamps that have been soaked off envelopes and packages or

The country that is today called Germany is a recent political construction. Indeed, even in the last twenty or so years the borders have been in flux with the reunification of the GDR into the Bundesrepublic. Much of the history of Europe over the last 300 years has been concerned with the drawing of Germanic

There are areas of specialization that are unique to each country or areas of philately. United States collectors are avid about plate blocks and stamp collectors in the rest of the world think we are crazy. Israel collectors esteem tabs. British Commonwealth collectors collect gutter pairs and marginal markings. And German area collectors collect Zusammendrucke.

The great scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century found the major European powers dividing up the continent into colonies for economic development. The Germans got into the game a bit later than Britain and for the most part their ventures in Africa were more for the political heft that it gave them than

There is no more appropriate stamp design than the portrait of Hermes, the messenger god in his winged helmet, on the first stamps of Greece. Hermes, son of Zeus, was also the god of commerce so it is not only as a messenger that he is pictured on the first stamp but as the facilitator

The stamps of the British Commonwealth had a tradition of portraying only the ruling monarch. This tradition continued right up through the early Queen Elizabeth era and now most British Commonwealth stamps have the Queen’s portrait along with some commemorative design. In the 171 years of philatelic issues there have only been five monarchs on

The Kings Speech is the favorite to win the best picture award at the Oscars this week and Colin Firth is odds on to win best actor for his portrayal of King George VI. Among the most popular stamps in philately are the stamps of the nations that make up the British Commonwealth-former British Colonies.

The premier philatelic item of the People’s Republic of China is the Mei Lanfang sheet issued in 1962. Many PRC items sell for more but those are mostly stamps from the Cultural Revolution or stamps that were deemed political mistakes and were ordered off sale before being distributed to Post Offices and which somehow found