Monthly Archives: May 2019

Certainly the stamps of India have increased in popularity in the last ten years. India is one of the more interesting countries to collect as it can be collected at any price point and with wide degrees of specialization. Most Indian stamps are inexpensive, often selling for less that a dollar a set. Even scarcer nineteenth century stamps sell for relatively small prices. The postal history of the country is fascinating. Collectors relish the early British commercial mail, the early military campaigns and how inexpensive and complex the independence period and the partition of Pakistan are. India, before 1948, was a complex federation of independent and quasi independent states. The Convention States (post offices operated by the British) and the Feuditory States (operated by the native rulers) each issued their own stamps and these are among the most interesting and (often) primitive in all of philately. What I like best about Indian philately are three things. First, the stamps are very

Russian stamps of the 1930's have always fascinated me. They are beautiful and well designed with friendly, internationalist themes and yet they were issued by a vicious regime that was systematically exploiting its citizens and was highly militaristic in orientation. Another aggressive state of this period, Germany, at least was more honest about its goals and had a highly nationalistic stamp issuing policy. In the exaltation of the Volk and the Fatherland its easy to see the factors that led to WWII. But as George Orwell explained so well in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the pathological hypocrisy of the Soviet communist system was without equal in history. Even as he was condemning millions of his own citizens to the Gulag or starvation, Stalin's stamps show kitschy representations of pacifism and coexistence. My favorite set is Russia #546-550. Here the horrors of war are illustrated in art deco style, almost a cartoonish depiction of the grimness of war. Russia certainly had enough experience

"Mauritius" is a play by Theresa Rebeck that played on Broadway in 2007. In the play, a young woman inherits a stamp collection that contains the two Post Office Mauritius stamps which together have a catalog value of nearly $2 million. She appears to have no idea what she has and takes the stamps to a dealer. The balance of the play revolves around the machinations of three dealers and collectors to part her from her stamps for less than they are worth. It is not a very flattering picture of our hobby and is characteristic of how stamp collecting, when it is portrayed at all, is depicted in popular media. The fact is that Mauritius Post Office stamps just don't walk in the door that often. The one time it happened to me was in 1976. We got a call from the US Customs Service office in Philadelphia that they had some stamps and could they bring them down for us to look at. What they had was a page from an exhibit collection under a piece of glass. On the page was the two Mauritius Post Office

In 1954 Roger Bannister accomplished a feat that many sports observers had never thought was possible. He ran a mile in under 4 minutes. Within six weeks Bannister's own record was broken. Running faster than a four minute mile became the norm among world class runners though previously the record had held for centuries (the record is now 3:43 - though the mile is not run as much in the metric era, it is actually the only non-metric record recognised by the IAAF). Does anyone think that Roger Maris would have broken Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961 if Micky Mantle hadn't been pounding homers right behind him. The point is that in most activities we are stirred on by what others are doing and this defines for us the possible. The philatelic point here is that with the decline of stamp shows and competitive exhibitions and with the decline of stamp clubs where collectors got together to show off their latest acquisitions, collecting has become a very isolated hobby. Many collectors don't

During the nineteenth century, several nations maintained post offices in China. This was was part of a general carving up of Chinese sovereignty which went on throughout the nineteenth century. To facilitate those post offices stamps were issued. Italy issued stamps for use in China in 1917, France beginning in 1901 (and ending in 1945, the latest foreign Chinese Office issue), Great Britain in 1917, Germany in 1898, Japan in 1900, Russia in 1899, and the United States in 1922. For the United Sates these issues were largely symbolic. Our merchants sometimes used our post office in China but the main impetus to issuing stamps and maintaining postal facilities was not to be outdone in the imperialist division of China. Our government issued 18 stamps up to the $1 and they were the common perf 11 Washington Franklins that were Overprinted Shanghai which was where our main post office was located. The use of these stamps was limited and they were available mint from the postal agency in Washington.

The perpetual question of which stamps should have major catalog number status 'A' and 'B' and which should be delegated to small "a" and "b"s as varieties occupied a great deal of catalog makers time in the early decades of the last century. The solutions that were adopted were really compromises that reflected the needs of the commercial community. All of the many types of the one cent 1851 were originally listed as one Scott number. Today they are listed as six major numbers (from #5-#9, including #8A), but originally they were all types of #42 (Scott had originally numbered the Postmaster Provisionals with #1 and it wasn't until abut 1940 that the catalog listing was changed to today's format). The types of the one cent 1851 were produced by transfer varieties created during the transfer of the die to the printing plate. Some of the positions are very rare. #5 exists on only one position on one plate of the 1851 printing so it comes out at the rate of about of one stamp for every thousand

St.Pierre & Miquelon is one of favorite philatelic countries? There is a philatelic tendency for remote areas of great charm to have a collecting importance far in excess of what any local population can create. The Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Pitcairns are examples, as is St Pierre. The Islands have a local population of only about 7000 people but the history of the islands have created philatelic demand. Originally part of the French Empire in America, all of which except for St Pierre was ceded after the French and Indian War in 1763, France fiercely maintained its hold on St Pierre as a residue of its pretensions to a world wide empire like Great Britain. Stamps were issued throughout the nineteenth century far in excess of any postal need. During WW II, St Pierre was one of the first overseas colonies to throw off Vichy administration and claim allegiance to DeGaulle's Free French fighters, an event probably of more philatelic than political significance. Its stamps

Philatelists today are apt to look askance at the new issue policies of many countries. Even our very own USPS issues roughly 1,000 new stamps within a decade in the 21st century. Do we really need that many? OK, maybe we do; 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 over 700 different stamp issues during the first decade of the 21^st century? 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.                       

The hobby of philately just like everything else chages and adapts along with time. Several years ago, I had a real treat. I had a chance to work on a collection in which the last stamp was put in the album in 1921. The Collector died in that year and his great grandchildren decided to sell the stamps some eighty years later. Collecting styles have changed over the years and working on this collection brought back memories of the old times. A collector in 1921 was never content with having one example of a stamp. This collection had no less than 20 5c 1847s were as well as a number of 10c. But the real interest began with the 1861 issue where collectors of that bye gone era collected numerous shades and better cancels. The 1861s contained Civil War Patriotics, the 1869s fancy cancels and used in Japan and the Banknotes had a plethora of interesting and specialized subsections that were a pleasure to behold.
This collection was especially interesting