Monthly Archives: October 2019

One of the areas in which the United States outspecializes any other philatelic country is the Washington Franklin series of 1910-1930. The series was in use as the main postage stamps of one of the most populous and commercial nations on earth for a period of years where postal communication was by far the most dominant form of communication. And yet for this entire period the definitive stamps were represented by only two design types with alternating portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin as first President and first postmaster general respectively. The designs are simple but the philately is anything but! There are two different watermarks that were issued during this period as well as an unwatermarked set. The perforations began as perf 12, changed to perf 10 when 12 was thought to separate too easily and was changed to perf 11 when ten proved too difficult to detach. There were coils and flat press and rotary press and coil waste reconfigured as sheet stamps. The Scott

Perhaps the greatest American philatelist was John N Luff. Born in 1860 and a collector from childhood, he was involved in US philately in its very earliest years. Luff became a professional philatelist in his twenties and was the President of the Scott Stamp and Coin company and an editor of the Scott catalog. He was a founder of the Collector's Club in New York and had one of the great collections of United States stamps. His main contributions to philately were two. He was a tireless researcher and in 1902 published the book "The Postage Stamps of the United States" a detailed history of the earliest stamps that our country produced.

 Luff understood the problems facing the first historian who looks at a new area. Before 1890, American stamps were produced by private contractors.

There are about two dozen stamps or sets that make everyone's short list of favorite stamps and for most US collectors this list is headed by the 1930 Graf Zeppelin set. Air travel technology has been static in our time. The commercial jet airliner first entered service in the 1950's and since then the technology has been tweaked but not changed. In the early days of airmail, though, it wasn't clear whether airplanes or dirigibles would win the competition to be the carrier of choice. Certainly airplanes were faster, often by 150 miles per hour or more. But before 1930, airplane travel was dodgy. Planes were small and unreliable and crashes were frequent. Dirigibles were slower but more reliable, could carry far more mail, and were considered safer. (This issue was finally settled in favor of planes after the Hindenburg crash in 1937.) The 1930 Zeppelin set was issued for a special series of flights from the United States to Europe on the airship Graf Zeppelin (Count Zepppelin was a German

Proofs are stamp impressions that the printers make usually before the stamps go to press to show to postal officials for final approval of the stamp design, color and printing quality. All printers produce proofs before they print stamps but not all countries release them to the stamp collecting public. The availability of proofs varies tremendously. At the most liberal end of the spectrum, France and the French Community are the most prolific sellers of their proofs. Die Proofs (proofs with one impression to the sheet which are made from the single die before the sheet is made up) and imperfs (which are really plate proofs) are readily available and are sold for many issues to subscribers to the new issue services. Proof collecting has always been part of mainstream France and Colonies collecting. Great Britain and Colonies are at the other end of the spectrum with Proofs not regularly issued, hard to find and often quite pricey. The United States, to my mind, is more or less the Goldilocks

For thousands of years before the introduction of the postage stamp in 1840, postal service existed on several levels. Originally, postal service was a private contractual affair-a merchant or a friend was traveling to another place and took your letters along. Later, private companies entered the market and provided service between locations that had a need for regular communication. The Roman Catholic church had an internal communication system-a post if you will- throughout its 2000 year history. This was needed to keep central control over the various dioceses.
            It is only in the last 400 years that governments have gotten into the letter carrying business. In the earliest phases, governments would provide carriage between set points. Getting the letters to and from those points was the responsibility of the sender and recipient. A favorite story is how whaling vessels in the late eight

The first animal on stamps thematic, the first allegorical representation of a national identity and one of the finest engraved stamps of the nineteenth century are all found in the first issue of Canada. Canada was a somewhat late player in the early stamp game with its first stamp issued in 1851. The first issue of Canada was on laid paper. Laid paper is a paper produced by a process where the screen that the paper fibers are placed on has a vertical or horizontal mesh rather than a woven mesh. It is the way the earliest papers were made and is more difficult and hence more expensive to produce. It is the paper that today is used pretty much only for fancy wedding invitations and the like and when the paper is held up to the light you can see the telltale vertical or horizontal lines in the paper pattern. Laid paper is expensive and was used on the early stamps of a few counties mainly as an anti-counterfeiting device. The problem with laid paper is that it is difficult to print on using

Throughout the late nineteenth century Germany was as involved as any European power in the fight to carve up China for political and commercial advantage. The United States, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, and France also issued stamps for their sovereign city states on the Chinese mainland. These city states were land ceded by the Chinese government on long term leases to European governments. These leases were negotiated by the Chinese from a position of political weakness and often were made literally at gun point. Hong Kong which reverted back to China when the lease expired in the late 1990s was an example of one of these European imperial ventures that continued to our time. The Peoples Republic of China has continued to administer Hong Kong as a separate unit because it has provided easy access to Western capital.
               The Germans contracted for land by the bay of Jiauzhou in northern C