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There are three things that every collector should do to maximize the return that they receive for their stamps when they go to sell, and I will address them in ascending order of importance. First, it is very important to have some figures on your stamp collection. Do you have records of how much you […]

Postally speaking, the United Nations is an invention—an organization, not a nation or political entity. The fact that it issues its own postage stamps and maintains its own postal service is a concession to the trappings of sovereignty (real political entities control their own post) and a revenue grab (UN stamps can be sold to

Most collectors put their stamps in stamp albums, and preprinted albums have existed since the very earliest days of our hobby. Scott began producing stamp albums in the United States in the 1860s, copying the first stamp album producers in Europe. The most unusual thing about stamp album producers is how concentrated the business is

The high point of stamp journalism was in the 1930’s. Scores of weekly and monthly philatelic periodicals existed, many of them only a few pages and many of the journals existing for only a few issues. The Great Depression put many people out of work and printing companies had tremendous excess capacity, so there were

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

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 often an important player in the European theater. Turkey, through Byzantium, later named Constantinople, was at the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire, and though Rome itself was sacked

For over 75 years the United States has issued stamps for Duck Hunting. To go hunting, each year a hunter must purchase a (now $25) Federal Duck hunting stamp and usually a state duck hunting stamp as well. The proceeds from the sale of the stamps are a user tax, going back to wetlands and duck

Wars require the movement of troops and material, and this requires communication, which means mail. The hundreds of thousands of Americans who were sent to fight and die in France at the end of World War I were sent with two postal issues all of their own. Soldiers like booklet stamps as they can be

Now is the time to begin your specialized collection of Olympic stamps. The popularity of this thematic flows in quadrennial cycles, usually peaking a few months before the games themselves. Olympic philately is one of the most interesting and long established of the topical philatelic areas with the first set being issued by Greece for the first