One of the most popular stamps of the Nineteenth Century is the black stamp honoring President Andrew Jackson that was issued first in 1863 and then again in several grilled forms over the next few years. The black Jackson, called the Blackjack by collectors has been popular for several reasons. First it has never been […]
On President’s Day, try President Jackson Read More »
Valentine’s Day is a holiday for which no long historical tradition exists. There were several St Valentines as part of the pantheon of Catholic martyrs and saints but none of them had any association to romantic love. Scholars looking for antecedents to the holiday can trace it back to a poem of Geoffrey Chaucer in
Valentine Collecting Has Always Been a Part of Our Hobby Read More »
Let’s start with a postulate: The American Philatelic Society is worth saving, and membership in the APS is worth having and worth the $45 or so that it costs. The question then is how to save the society, because certainly the membership losses, the demographic makeup of the society, and the declining revenues don’t bode
The Lone Wolf was a detective series in the 1920s about a high end burglar named Michael Lanyard who helped the police solve crimes. The series was written by Louis Joseph Vance and was made into about twenty movies in the 1930s. I happened to see one recently on TCM entitled The Lone Wolf Keeps a Date.
Stamp Collecting Used to be Portrayed Positively in the Media Read More »
One of the most interesting philatelic areas is Danzig, now called Gedansk. Danzig is a city, or rather City State, on the shores of the Baltic Sea between Germany and Poland (which was long ruled by Russia), and part of its philatelic charm is in the many issues that were created as political control bounced
A Fascinating and Affordable Specialty Read More »
A few years ago, I read an article about how smaller town diamond merchants send their stock to each other by ordinary First Class mail. The article said that outside New York, the incidence of First Class mail going astray is nearly nonexistent. Apfelbaum’s sends out thousands of packages per year, mostly through the postal
Our Postal Service Deserves Praise Read More »
I came across an interesting item last night in Sloane’s Column, which I was rereading recently. In a 1930s entry, Sloane discusses a current proposal before the board of the American Philatelic Society that would authorize the spending of $10,000 to promote philately to the general public. Sloane reports that this proposal was supported by
Promoting Philately Read More »
One of the most remarkable economic trends of the last several years has been the beginnings of economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. In the last few years, seven of the twenty countries worldwide with the highest GDP growth rates were in sub-Saharan Africa, and only Nigeria could claim that the reason that they were in this
An Investment Opportunity Read More »
Hard as this is to believe, throughout the 1950s, the United States Post Office issued an average of ten stamps per year with a total face value of 30