Monthly Archives: November 2018

Perhaps the greatest change in our hobby in the last 80 years has been in the quality of the product that we collect. Stamps have gone from miniature pieces of art that reflect the skill and technological prowess of the nation that issued them to being little more than a chit indicating payment of postage, usually with a theme to appeal to collectors. The change is not only cultural-taste and artistic standards are lower now than they used to be- but also reflect the diminished roll that letters, and consequently postage stamps, play in our society. Until about 1950 telecommunication was difficult and expensive and was only used for the most important communications. Costs of telephone use has lowered dramatically so that today the largest cost to the telecom companies is not the lines or the satellites but the actual costs of billing customers. Today, most people pay a flat monthly fee for all their telecommunications with no distinction between local and long distance. Email is essentially

Prices and the value of money are difficult to evaluate over time. Readers of Victorian novels know that in the late Nineteenth Century an income of about 150 Pounds a year was the minimum needed to live as a gentleman (Trollope says tartly "an embarrassed gentleman, yes, but a gentleman"). That was three Pounds a week and for that a person could rent an apartment, eat and have a part time servant. Before 1900, prices for food and clothing were proportionately much more expensive and labor was proportionately far cheaper. Sir Walter Scott writes that in his time one could engage a servant for little more than food clothing and shelter. Still, if a middle class person could live a decent life at three Pounds a week in Victorian England and the Post Office issued a stamp for five Pounds it would be the equivalent in spending power to a $1000 stamp today. This raises the question of what could such stamps possibly be used for. Mainly they was used by banks that sent quantities of cash and