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Most fans of philatelic history— that is, the history of collecting stamps rather than the stamps themselves— have learned what they know through hands-on work with stamps. There are very few books that retell the evolution of our hobby. Largely, it is learned by reading old journals, looking at old auction catalogs, and stamp dealer […]

The last comprehensive catalog of Revenue Stamps of the World was issued by the French dealer Forbin in the year 1915. After that date, the collecting of worldwide revenue stamps began to fall off in popularity. In a very few countries, the United States and France come to mind, the collecting of native revenue stamps

In stamp collecting, there are four “… and States” areas that are collected as cohesive collecting specialties and that have always had tremendous philatelic cachet. They are German States, Italian States, Indian States, and Australian States. Each area is enormously popular and avidly collected as part of classic philately. Each has its own collecting peculiarities,

The stamp dealers of the older generation had a fair number of odd characters, but none were more odd than Morton Paul Goldfarb. Mort, as everyone called him, went to every auction, every stamp show and no matter where you went, you were sure to see him too. Mort specialized in the stamps of the

Traditional philatelic understanding is that there are three things that are required for a country to be a popular stamp collecting country – large population, high educational levels, and wealth. If you have those three things, which countries such as the United States, Germany, Japan and China have, you have a strong stamp collecting market.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s the stamp business underwent a shift. The traditional stamp store began not to work very well as a philatelic sales model. At the time dealers thought this was because it didn’t make sense to have a store front for which the vast majority of people who passed by had no

In the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a philatelic organization called the Society of Philaticians. This society was the brain child of a wonderful older man named Gustav Detjen who lived in the HudsonValley and who for his day job had been in the real estate business. Detjen felt that there were organizations for stamp collectors,

One of the finest people I ever met was a stamp dealer named Stuart Printz. Stu ran a mail order stamp business from Allentown, Pa, and for many years would come to our auctions to buy stock for his sales catalogs. Stu died in 1992, 24 years ago. And yet, he was such a kind

The H.E. Harris company is one of the oldest stamp companies in the United States. Henry Harris started from packet selling and stamp approvals. By 1930, Harris realized that the biggest impediment to selling stamps was that his customers had no place to put them.   In 1930 Harris produced a philatelic radio show starring