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There are fashions in philately as there are in most things. In cover collecting there has always been a trend for collectors to acquire postal history that displayed new communication technology. In the early twentieth century Rail Road post office covers became popular. To speed mail delivery in the late nineteenth century, the post office […]

About fifteen years ago, the Scott publishing company gave its greatest gift to the philatelic fraternity since the first introduction of the stamp catalog. It was the decision to issue what they called the “Classic Specialized Catalog of Stamps and Covers”. Initially the catalog consisted of little more than a reprinted version of the 1840-1940

Certainly the stamps of India have increased in popularity in the last ten years. India is one of the more interesting countries to collect as it can be collected at any price point and with wide degrees of specialization. Most Indian stamps are inexpensive, often selling for less that a dollar a set. Even scarcer

A sociologist would look at stamps much differently than a philatelist does. We look at perfs and gum and paper and quality and then, in passing, notice the design. But a sociologist would look only at the design. And he would ask what does the design tell us about the goals and aspirations of the

Russian stamps of the 1930’s have always fascinated me. They are beautiful and well designed with friendly, internationalist themes and yet they were issued by a vicious regime that was systematically exploiting its citizens and was highly militaristic in orientation. Another aggressive state of this period, Germany, at least was more honest about its goals

Stamp prices rise in the same fashion as most commodity prices. Stock prices, home prices, even gold show long term linear price rises that masks the fact that, for most short term periods, prices are quite quiescent and often even decline. For most of the 1990’s home prices were very stable after the run up

The greatest strength in the stamp market right now are the stamp markets in China and Russia. These are emerging economies and the demand for stamps there is fierce. And though the demand in each market is essentially for home market stamps (that is the Chinese want Chinese stamps), there is also collateral strength that

Today is election day and if you believe the news commentary, this is one of the most important elections in our history and one that will have more impact on our future than any election in years. I remember that being said about virtually every election since I was conscious of elections. And yet the

These shades are difficult to identify and many collectors get them wrong. This collector got them right. The Scott numbers from left to right are #27 (Brick Red), #28 (Red Brown), #28A ( Indian Red-this is the scarcest one), #29 (Brown), #30 (Orange Brown-type II) and #30A (Brown-typer II).