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George Sloane, whose book I have been rereading this week, makes a point in a 1956 article that I have long wondered about. Why is it, he asks, that such a high percentage of Airmail invert stamps (#C3a) are damaged? Look in any auction catalog. Chances are two out of three that the Invert listed […]

George Sloane began the first of his weekly columns for Stamps Magazine nearly eighty years ago and his last over fifty years ago. People started collecting stamps in earnest about 1860 which means our hobby is about 150 years old . This places Sloane firmly in the middle period to early modern period of our

George Sloane was born in 1898 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Benedict_Sloane. By the time he was 23 he had a stamp shop on New York’s philatelic Mecca Nassau Street and by 1932 he was writing a weekly column for Stamps Magazine, a stamp weekly that occupied the position at the top of the philatelic literature heap in the 1930-1950

George Sloane was one of the preeminent stamp writers of the previous century. He was a prominent dealer and had a weekly column in Stamps magazine (which was the largest circulation stamp weekly of its time) from about 1930-1960. His columns were published in book form in the 1960’s and make fascinating reading today

Stamp collectors tend to concentrate on minutia. The difference between one variety and another is often a design difference of a fraction of a millimeter, or a single date in a cancel, or a mere cent in a rate. But often, as

1910 Maurice Apfelbaum, Earl

There has been

Not many people today remember Herbert Bloch who died in 1987. To the generation of stamp collectors who grew up after World War II, though, Herbert was a god. He had learned his trade (stamp expertizing ) at the feet of Otto Friedl who was one of the most knowledgeable stamp dealers who ever lived.