One of the less remembered atrocities of the 20th Century was the Belgian rape of the Congo. King Leopold acquired control of the Congo in 1885 and soon set up a trading system that effectively enslaved the entire population of the country. The export of rubber and ivory was the only thing that mattered to […]
It appears that the United States post office will be issuing “forever” first class postage stamps exclusively beginning this spring. The forever concept is simple- buy a stamp now and it will always entitle you to one first class postage rate. Essentially it is a small scale savings certificate. With postage rates rising at roughly
One hundred and fifty years is only a tiny time frame in the history of mankind and yet it is only within the last 150 years that the ownership of human beings has been outlawed in the United States. And rather than repugnance over the moral outrage of slavery being the cause of its abolition,
Slavery and Philately Read More »
John Nicklin was one of the most prominent philatelists of his time. He edited the American Airmail catalog, was an editor of the Scott catalog and was president of the Society of Philatelic Americans a group that rivaled the American Philatelic Society in influence but was badly mismanaged in the 1970s and is now out
Philatelic Vacations 1930 Read More »
The weather forecast in Philadelphia is for over 6″ of snow beginning tonight and lasting through tomorrow morning. My first philatelic memory is suffused with snow. I was in the third grade and had just received my first stamp album from Santa for Christmas. It was a Harris Statesman Deluxe album and it came with
In the 1940’s and 1950’s the terror of the philatelic world was Elliot Perry. Perry was a knowledgeable philatelist but a personal horror. Every philatelic dispute was to him a holy crusade. A suggestion that his opinion wasn’t formed on Olympus enraged him to the point that he never forgave the miscreant who doubted him.
There are many types of guarantees in philately and there are many types of opinions. It is important that collectors distinguish between the two and understand what protections each provides. The major expertization services-the APS, the Philatelic Foundation, Professional Stamp Expertizing service, Sergio Sismondo-indeed all of them, offer an opinion, based on current knowledge, of
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The collecting impulse relates to retentiveness and the desire to hold onto things and order them rather than throw them away. Like a genetic disposition towards height, this shows up both as an individual predilection and as a general trait in homogeneous populations. I’d like to make a bold natural selection interpretation (remember I have
A Theory on Collecting Read More »
Postal subsidies usually take the form of governments paying off their postal service’s annual deficit. This was always seen as socially desirable as governments encouraged the commercial, social and academic interests of its country by underwriting postal service. It is rare for this to go the other way around and have the postal service underwrite
Post Office Subsidies of Government Read More »