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The great stamp speculation of the late 1970s, which saw worldwide stamps at least double in price in less than five years, had a precursor in the mid 1960s. The European stamp speculations that were then the driving force in worldwide price increases had a basis in reality. After World War II, Europe was devastated. […]

One of the great stories in cryptology over the last 200 years was working out the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This was the Egyptian writing of the old dynasties (the ones that had built the pyramids). The writing had fallen out of use and been replaced by different alphabets so that by the beginning of the common

Early cars had mechanical crank starters. They didn’t work very well, were hard to use, and required the strength of a good sized man to turn them. In cold weather they sometime “kicked”, breaking the hand of the person trying to start his car. Yet even after electric starters were invented, for many years cars were

Like Germany, Japan was devastated as a result of WWII. American bombing had destroyed industrial production, and the war had killed a high percentage of young adult males. Many homes were in ruins, and the electric and telecommunications grid was annihilated. Like Germans, the Japanese are an energetic and frugal people, and by the 1960s,

Get a group of sixty year old doctors together, and you are sure to hear complaints about managed care and capitation and MBAs that get between doctors and patients. Lawyers have similar issues. People in the printing and publishing business lament the Internet. And independent booksellers now all seem to work for Barnes and Noble for $8

There are three broad traits that philatelists share with each other. The first is inquisitiveness. Many very intelligent people are quite content with what they know. They do well in their professions and in their life, and their idle time is spent being entertained. Others, people who are receptive to our hobby, love to learn and

Many collectors who thoroughly enjoy their hobby imagine that their pleasure in their hobby would increase if only they had more stamps. The fantasy grows from one album to a dozen to a full shelf to a stamp room. Several years ago, we were called in on a case of philatelic gluttony gone wild. The

One of my first professional philatelic tasks, some forty years ago, was to assemble old correspondences for sale. You saw these more in those days than you do today, but what they were were large selections of letters that had been sent between correspondents over a period of years. Usually these were things like weekly

Raymond Weill, who died over ten years ago at the age of ninety, was a dealer in the very old time tradition. He and his brother Roger joined their father in their New Orleans stamp business in 1932. Although Weill began as a full range stamp dealer, his business very quickly moved into the higher