Monthly Archives: July 2019

The problem of what quantities exist of different classic stamps has been one of the great difficulties of philatelic research. Before the days of the Internet nearly all classic stamps that were sold were not illustrated so it was impossible for any census taker to know if he had counted a given specimen before. Counts of stamps such as United States 5c and 10c 1847 tend to be little more than guesses. We know that approximately 3.8 million 5c and 900,000 10c stamps were sold over the postal counters (that is delivered to post offices and not returned as unsold). But how many have survived the ensuing 160 years and still exist in collectors hands? Such numbers are important for anyone pondering stamp prices-whether such prices are higher or lower relative to popularity than they should be. Are there large quantities of US #1s in dealer hands that would preclude prices rising very much were demand to increase? What would happen if these quantities were dumped? Such questions are important

One of the most exciting things in philately is when there is a new discovery of a major variety on a well known and avidly collected stamp. Such a find was reported in the January 10 edition of Linns on the ten cent Lindbergh stamp of 1927 (Scott #C10). This stamp sells for about $10 mint and about 20c used and is a mainstay of most US collections and collectors. It has always been a stamp that is just scarce enough for a newer collector to aspire to acquiring but not scarce enough to be difficult to afford. This discovery is a major variety- a true double impression which occurs when the plate is brought down twice on the paper. A single was discovered used and with a variety of this type a single means that the entire sheet of four panes of fifty were printed this way and thus at least 200 must have existed at one time. Errors of this type are easy to miss and the fact that this error is used means that the sheets may have been sold into non philatelic hands where they were used on regular

When you buy a Forever stamp, you buy a guarantee of a particular form of postal service at any period in the future . This proposal has received much criticism from people like Newt Gingrich who see it as a scheme to expand government and "is setting the stage for a future tax payer bailout of the Post Office"(Linns Jan 31 pg 16). I'm not so sure. Suppose Apfelbaum were to sell anytime Zeppelin certificates. Send us $1000 today and we'll send you a certificate that allows you to get a zeppelin set in a given quality grade at any time in the future. The advantages and disadvantages are numerous. From our point of view the situation sorts out as follows: We have the $1000 today- a decent chunk of money. It goes against current operating expenses and into current profit. Against that certainty, we have the risk that prices of zeppelins will go much higher even relative to inflation and we will have to redeem a certificate in ten years for a price that is in excess of the current value of

Seigniorage is the profit that governments make on securities that they issue, on which they don't pay interest, and that are retained unused by the public. Cash in mattresses represents a form of seigniorage and, more than anything else, old face value postage stamps held by collectors do as well. The money that collectors have tied up in mint stamps represents an interest free loan to our post office. And because most mint stamps held by collectors will never be used, the profit to the post office is the value of those stamps held by collectors (Private companies issue gift cards and they are required by accounting rules to bring the unused portion of these cards into income-this is a sort of private seigniorage).

 For many years philatelic commentators have speculated that seigniorage was the reason that our Post Office pushed philately so hard and the reason that so many new issues had esoteric

The pricing ratios between mint stamps and used stamps for most nineteenth century issues are out of kilter and should change in the years ahead. Take the case of Great Britain stamps. On average, the catalog value in Scott for any stamp between 1860-1900 is about six times higher mint than used. But mint stamps are far scarcer than that and when you add the additional quality factor of gum this ratio seems extremely low. Similar ratios exist for most other countries with the stamps of the United States being a notable exception. Ratios between the popularity of mint to used have changed over time and are likely to do so again in the future. Such ratios for most major European countries are at relatively low points for most nineteenth century stamps compared to historical averages. Add to this that the major philatelic growth area, Chinese collectors, have a profound mint skew and it's easy to predict that buying nice quality mint nineteenth century worldwide stamps is a good bet for the

There are only a few indispensable philatelic books and at the top of every one's short list is "Fundamentals of Philately" written by the stamp collecting brothers L.N (Leon Norman) Williams and M(Maurice) Williams. The book was first serialized and then was published twice by the American Philatelic Society (1971 & 1990). It is 880 pages and is really a graduate level course on all the things a stamp collector needs to know about stamp design, stamp paper and printing. Having little to say about any particular stamp, the book is about the canvas and the paint that makes our hobby rather than the artistic designs that we actually collect. The first eighty pages are about paper, how it is made and the many different types that have been used in stamp printing. Learning this, a collector has new insights into faults and how to determine them. The section on printing is several hundred pages of fascinating information, evaluating the different major printing methods and the impact each

One of the less remembered atrocities of the 20th Century was the Belgian rape of the Congo. King Leopold acquired control of the Congo in 1885 and soon set up a trading system that effectively enslaved the entire population of the country. The export of rubber and ivory was the only thing that mattered to the Belgians and their treatment of the native populations was so harsh as to be counterproductive to even their brutal goals. Villages and families were broken up in ever increasing demands for slave labor, and torture and murder were the rule when impossible quotas weren't met. In a bazaar perversion worthy of hell, when slaves were ordered killed by the thousands when their quota weren't met, the Belgian bean counters became concerned that the murderers were wasting or reselling gun shells. To prove that each shell caused one death, they demanded a severed right hand to prove that the cartridges were doing their task. Baskets of hands were shipped down river daily and if too many cartridges