Monthly Archives: June 2020

Philately is an irrational pursuit. Serious collectors generally eschew philatelic items that are produced intentionally for their collecting. Thus, many serious collectors ignore First Day Covers, intentionally issued errors and imperfs, Souvenir cards and similar items. But one area that is an exception to this is Souvenir Sheets. Souvenir Sheets were originally issued mostly for philatelic exhibitions and the first souvenir sheet was issued by Luxembourg in 1923. By 1930, many Post Offices were issuing souvenir sheets to commemorate exhibitions and these became avidly collected by collectors. Perhaps this was because the earliest serious collectors were present at these exhibitions where the first souvenir sheets were issued and for sale and purchased them for their collections as souvenirs. Stamp collecting has its "in crowd" aspects just like other human activities. When each new generation of collectors comes into serious collecting they tend to imitate what the "cool guy" older collectors

United States collectors have long had a field day with revenue collecting. (Revenues are stamps issued to prove the payment of a tax or levy instead of for postal use). The US has issued thousands of different revenues and, ever since philately took hold in this country, revenue collecting had been incorporated into mainstream US collecting. This is not true of collectors in other countries. France has also issued thousands of revenue stamps and yet collectors of French revenues are few and even rarities in the field sell for comparatively little. Two countries, Mexico and Argentina, have issued tens of thousands of different revenues and these stamps are little saved and studied. The reasons that American collectors esteem their revenues while other country's collectors ignore theirs is that until twenty or thirty years ago, the US didn't issue enough stamps each year to satisfy the collecting desires of the average collector. After buying the new issues, most collectors still wanted

I look for several factors when I recommend a collecting specialty to a collector. First is the intrinsic beauty of the stamps themselves. Does the country have high production values and are the stamps artistically compelling? Do the design types change over time to reflect new technologies in printing and new tastes in the graphic arts? Are the stamps faithful to the history and culture of the nation producing them and not derivative or imitative of stamps issued by other nations or influenced by the prospect of selling stamps to other cultures? The stamps of this specialty must be scarce enough to present a challenge to obtain but not so difficult as to make the search more important than the stamps themselves. And lastly, the country must be completable (or nearly so) to a collector of the upper middle class which means that while most of the stamps should sell for under $2 each, there should be many at around $25-$100 and few over $100. This adds spice to the collecting and collectors

Cut Squares and Entires (the Scott "U" numbers in the catalog) have always seemed to be less popular than they should be. They have several important specialty features going for them. They are scarce and they are attractive. They are complex. There are hundreds of major numbers and about 95% of them sell for under a few dollars. All in all one would think that US Cut Squares would have far more collectors than they do. The reasons for their relative unpopularity relate to two main factors. First, collectors world wide don't collect Cut Squares and this impacts on the popularity of US Cut Squares around the globe. US stamps are among the most popular specialties worldwide. Indeed, after British Colonials, more collectors in countries other than the US collect United States stamps than any other specialty. This amounts to thousands of serious US collectors in Britain, Germany and in other countries who collect US stamps but who have no interest in US Cut Squares because they have no tradition

First Day Cover collecting in the United States began gradually. Until about 1920, no one made FDCs and the ones that we have were serendipitously prepared by ordinary postal users going to the post office and accidentally using a new issue on the day that it came out. Gimbel Brothers, the department store in Philadelphia, mailed their May 1901 monthly statements to customers with the newly issued 2c Pan American (#295) and for years you could find #295 FDCs with Gimbel corner cards (current catalog values $2500) in dealer 5c boxes in the Philadelphia area (I did). Beginning about 1920 Phillip Ward and Edward Worden began collecting, preparing and promoting First Day Covers and their activity extended interest back to older issues. Researchers established issue dates and where no FDCs were know, collectors began to collect EKUs (earliest known use). By 1960, a FDC collection was part of most serious US collections and most of the Baby Boomers grew up with FDCs.