Philatelic Specialties

People are often looking around for philatelic specialties. Sometimes they have recently began serious collecting and want an area that will reward their keen interest. Or sometimes they have reached the end of the road in the specialty that they are pursuing and are at the point that the items that they need exceed their budget or where the items that are needed never seem to come up for sale at all. I look for several factors in a specialized philatelic area. First availability-Tannu Tuva town cancels are just too restrictive unless your goal is just to seek and never find. Second affordability- can most of the scarcer items be acquired at a price that most middle class collectors can afford. Third philatelic aesthetics- are the stamps well designed, well printed and intrinsically interesting. And fourth intellectual satisfaction-ours is after all a thinking person’s hobby and a good specialty will have a rich literature and study opportunities to enhance your collecting experience. An area that satisfies all of these specialty criteria is Mexico. The stamps of the nineteenth century offer an array of specialty interest from district overprints (an anti-theft measure) to smaller towns. Many of the stamps are rare and difficult (but not impossible) to find, and except for a few they are mostly affordable. The twentieth century has the Mexican civil war which is a postal historian’s dream. Mexican aerophilately is as interesting as that of any country and the more modern stamps are well designed and historically relevant. One can collect Mexico as seriously or as casually as one wishes and continue to branch off into different areas for many years. And a really great collection can be formed at a far more modest price than would be possible with most other major countries, but, at the same time, for the well heeled, Mexico has several world class rarities. There are few other countries that fit the specialty criteria as well as Mexico.