Monthly Archives: October 2017

Philately has done pretty well maintaining its appeal and relevance even as the technology of how mail has been carried changed significantly over the last 150 years. When stamps were first invented, all mail was carried by foot or by horse. This method of transportation was unchanged since the dawn of civilization (the domestication of horses predates the history of civilization and is thought to have occurred about 5,500 years ago). By 1860, most intercity mail was being carried by trains. Mail that took days to deliver between close cities now took hours, and between further cities and countries mail that took weeks now took days. By 1920, the next great transportation leap was airplanes, and mail was carried by plane in the earliest period at a surcharge because of the added expense (an interesting point is that trains must not only have been faster but cheaper to use for mail delivery. This is evidenced by the fact that there never was a train surcharge on postage in the earliest period

James had been a fireman in New York and had retired to a small community in North Carolina with his wife when he left work with a disability  in his fifties. For the last ten years he had bought and sold stamps, usually buying low-end, defective remainder lots at auction, culling out the better stamps, selling some things at a few local shows, and building up a very considerable stock in terms of volume. James had meticulously cataloged every stamp in his stock—this after all was his life—and he included in his total every stamp, no matter how defective and whether or not it was a forgery. His total catalog value was well over $700,000. James had typically bought uncatalogued lots, the kind that can be found at the end of our auctions and at the end of every mainstream auction. These lots are collection balances, stocks, mixtures—usually thousands of stamps that collectors like to buy because when they work them out, putting in long hours,

Philatelists today are apt to look askance at the new issue policies of many countries. Between 2005 and 2015 the United States issued over 1,100 different stamps. Did we really need that many? OK, maybe we did; after all we are a diverse nation of over 300 million people (with plenty of special interests that need to be commemorated). And we are a robust commercial nation generating tens of billions of pieces of mail annually. But did Grenada also need 600 different stamp issues during the same period. Grenada in square miles is about the size of the city of Philadelphia and its population of 110,000 is only 3/100s of a percent of the US population. On a pro rated philatelic basis, if Grenada's issuing policies were to mirror the US, Grenada should be entitled to a new stamp every seven years. And Grenada is hardly the most egregious example.

But profligate stamp issuing policies

Every discipline has a set of arcana that must be learned by those coming into the field. But often, new disciples mistake how much needs to be known in order to be pretty competent. In literature, every generation, since they first wrote, has been in agreement that Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens have been among the best. Knowing the works of these writers would qualify you as a well-read reader. But each generation of every field of study has more trendy favorites, usually difficult to ascend to and requiring a mastery of the basics of the field to appreciate. These more esoteric subjects sometimes seem to serve as an initiation to prove that you belong to the highest echelon academic club. Thirty years ago in literature, James Joyce was the paradigm of esoteric literature for the erudite. Today, it would probably be Proust or David

 Most fans of philatelic history— that is, the history of collecting stamps rather than the stamps themselves— have learned what they know through hands on work with stamps. There are very few books that retell the evolution of our hobby. Largely, it is learned by reading old journals, looking at old auction catalogs, and stamp dealer price lists and general catalogs. By looking at subscription numbers and membership evaluations, by perusing older collections and seeing how collecting goals have changed over the years, by analyzing what was being offered and to whom,

German stamps have always been among the most popular of collecting specialties. The German Area is vast philatelically and has typically been broken down into sub-specialties. Few collectors, especially native Germans, attempt it all. The philatelic breakdown is as follows: pre-German Confederation-States collecting, 1870-1930 Empire, and Wiemar Republic, 1930-45 Third Reich, and post 1945 Bundes Republic (in English, Federal Republic). There are many additional subpecialties, such as Colonies or Occupations, but it is by these era divisions that the main country of Germany is usually collected.

The United States Post Office has had a close relationship to the hobby of stamp collecting throughout the history of the hobby. The first US postage stamp was issued in 1847, and by 1860 there was an active, if by later standards small, coterie of avid collectors. The USPO was the first worldwide postal service to recognize philatelists, which it did in 1876 with the Reissues and Special Printings for the 1876 Centennial Exposition. 1876 was a well promoted celebration of American Exceptionalism, and the Post Office contributed its part by reissuing stamps that had been made prior to 1876, so that an example of every American postage stamp could be on sale for collectors at the 1876 Exposition in Philadelphia. These reissues used the original plates and can be distinguished from the originals by shade and paper. They have always been difficult stamps to identify and have caused much confusion among collectors. But they are the first worldwide official postal acknowledgment of our hobby.

By 1900, the philatelic world was already too vast for anyone to complete. Their first specialty albums began to appear about 1920, and it was these albums that drove the push towards increasing specialization. Until about 1960, nearly everyone entering the hobby began a general collection. Packets and general albums which had spaces in them for the stamps that were in the packets were everyone's way of beginning collecting. But today, there are just too many stamps that have been issued for any but the hardy to try to collect all of them.

United States coils have always presented a problem to stamp collectors. The first problem was whether they should be collected at all, at least as major numbers with spaces in all the stamp albums. US coils were the first worldwide coils to be issued and were done so at the behest of large businesses that did a great deal of mailing. In the days before postage meters, it was much easier to get a coil roll and place the stamps on envelopes without having to tear them into strips or singles first. Within a few years, large machines were affixing coils for mailing houses, and the Postal Service was issuing coils in rolls of up to 5,000 for their machines. The real issue for stamp catologers at the time was how to list coils. They are stamps of a different format but not of a different design from the regular issues that they came from. Precedence should have dictated that the stamps not receive a separate catalog listing, at least not as major numbers. The issue had come up before with booklet