Our hobby has had two great quality evolutions in the course of the 150 plus years that people have collected stamps. The very first collectors, who began saving stamps about 1860, just twenty years after the first stamp was issued, had no interest in quality. They often scraped stamps off envelopes for their collections, rather […]
Evolution of Stamp Quality Read More »
For many years we have been searching for a world wide expert who can expertize the entire non US world. For the US area there is the Philatelic Foundation but they really don’t do much with Foreign stamps. We wanted an expert who expertized a large number of countries and areas, who didn’t indelibly mark
Sergio Sismondo | Foreign Stamp Expert Sergio Sismondo Read More »
When Israel became a country in 1948, it became the perfect philatelic laboratory. For the vast majority of countries, stamp collecting grew up decades after the first stamps of those countries were issued. It was only about 1870 in Europe and the United States that philately began to grow beyond a few early fanatics, which
Israeli stamps | Israeli Stamps and What They Show Us About Philately Read More »
When Rowland Hill invented the postage stamp, an integral part of his design was a “wash of mucilage applied to the back, which, when moistened would allow the stamp to adhere to paper”. In the very early years of stamp collecting, collectors primarily collected used stamps. After all, the reasoning went, why spend good money
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What can Be Done: Brazil is one of the most interesting philatelic areas. Because Brazilian philately is so vast, with over 3,500 collectible major numbers by Scott alone, specialists of Brazil often collect by issue or subspecialty. The first issues of Brazil are called the Bull’s Eyes because the numeral in ovals were thought to
Brazilian Stamps |Learn About Collecting Brazilian Stamps Read More »
What Can Be Done: Located in southern Germany, Bavaria is one of the largest and most populous of the German States. Bavaria has issued far more stamps than any other German State, issuing stamps right up to the end of WWI (some fifty years after German confederation had caused most of the other states to
Bavarian Collectors Stamps | Learn About Collecting Bavarian Stamps Read More »
Individual hobbies attract relatively small percentages of the population and always have. Take chess—a cerebral game that attracts many of the same type of people as philately but with significantly more market penetration. The writers at the chess federation website bemoan the fact that though supposedly 600 million people worldwide know how to play chess,
How Many People Collect Stamps Read More »
United States Revenues, while a specialty in themselves, offer nearly fifty subspecialties, all of which have their fierce devotees. Stock Transfer stamps are a niche of revenue collecting that has become much more popular in the last decade. Stock Transfer stamps were issued to pay the tax on the sale or gift of shares of
Stock Transfer Stamps | Why Stock Transfer Stamps Became Popular Read More »
Many specialist collectors reach the end of their specialties fairly quickly. Two constraints cause this. First, most specialties, such as US stamps, have at most a few thousand varieties that are needed to complete the task. Most of these are quite inexpensive and easily acquired. Then, the few stamps that are left can
Scott Hardbound Brown Philatelic 1840-1940 Album Read More »