One of the most interesting of the "classic" countries to collect is New South Wales. Now part of the Australian federation, New South Wales (NSW) is Australia's most populous state and was an independent country until 1901 when the seven component states of Australia joined to create one country. The stamps of NSW have always enjoyed great popularity among collectors primarily because the stamps are so interesting and can be collected at so many levels of specialty interest. The stamps themselves are not hard to find and can be obtained without robbing a bank. Specialists have long divided NSW issues into many different catalog numbers mainly by plate type and with paper types and design varieties there are scores of different stamps to collect for what to most people would seem to be each identical stamp. In the perforated period, after 1860, the number of plate, shade, watermark and type varieties are enormous. There are about thirty major design varieties and on these different designs
Monthly Archives: August 2011
- Posted August 04, 2011Read more »
One of the most interesting of the "classic" countries to collect is New South Wales. Now part of the Australian federation, New South Wales (NSW) is Australia's most populous state and was an independent country until 1901 when the seven component states of Australia joined to create one country. The stamps of NSW have always enjoyed great popularity among collectors primarily because the stamps are so interesting and can be collected at so many levels of specialty interest. The stamps themselves are not hard to find and can be obtained without robbing a bank. Specialists have long divided NSW issues into many different catalog numbers mainly by plate type and with paper types and design varieties there are scores of different stamps to collect for what to most people would seem to be each identical stamp. In the perforated period, after 1860, the number of plate, shade, watermark and type varieties are enormous. There are about thirty major design varieties and on these different designs - Posted August 03, 2011Read more »
The growth of Asian philately has undermined traditional thinking about where new collectors come from. The traditional model has been the evolutionary model- children (usually boys) introduced to the hobby and collecting in their youth become re enamored with stamps in middle to old age. This paradigm has described the traditional collecting arc in the United States and Europe and has caused considerable chagrin among philatelists about the future of our hobby when we see so few young collectors. The Asian model is quite different-few Chinese collected as children. Rather, as young adults and middle aged men they have come into the hobby in droves. The reasons for this might provide us with a way to promote philately to more mature people today.
The major reason for the popularity of Chinese collecting has been the increase of popularity of stamps among the scientific and managerial class of young Chinese. This in turn has produced price rises in Chinese stamps which has - Posted August 02, 2011
The relative popularity of mint and used United States stamps has been constantly changing during the history of our hobby. The first generation of collectors had little relish for mint stamps. Philately was hardly more than a diversion then and few collectors had the seriousness of purpose to seek quality let alone mint. These collectors were usually satisfied with the cheapest specimen they could find. The increasing value of mint US relative to used has been a long term phenomena. The two stamps illustrated above are mint examples of #27 and #67 respectively (both with fresh William Weiss certificates). The changes in the relative popularity of mint over used can be seen by comparing the catalog value of these stamps at different times during philatelic history. The Brick Red #27 cataloged in the 1900 Scott catalog $75 mint and $11 used for a ratio of 7-1. In the 1929 Scott the ratio of mint to used hadn't changed ($200 vs $32.50) but by 2011 the ratio had swung dramatically to a 12-1 - Posted August 01, 2011Read more »
The United States Post Office announced last month that they were planning to close 3700 post offices nationwide. For many years the post office has floated large lists of post office closings only to back off at the last moment and close considerably fewer than were on the original list. Still, given the decline in postal volume (and the anticipation of continuing declines) most of these post offices will eventually be closed. In 1900, the USPS operated 75000 post offices. Today, with a population of over three times what it was a hundred years ago, the post office operates 34000, and is planning to close about 10% of these. For stamp collectors, the closing of post offices and the decline of the philatelic role that post offices played has been another difficulty that our hobby has had attracting young collectors. There are certain paradigms in our hobby that are believed by all, which have strong anecdotal evidence, and yet which have never been studied or proven or even carefully evaluated.