Monthly Archives: November 2020

The French Sudan was a nation state that primarily existed on maps in the Foreign Office in Paris. It existed at two separate time periods, from 1890-1899 and 1920-1960. During the first period French Sudan met Voltaire's famous bon mot for the Holy Roman Empire (that it wasn't holy, wasn't Roman, and it wasn't an empire). French Sudan wasn't Sudan and was only nominally French as it was hundreds of miles geographically removed from British Sudan and at least during it's first incarnation it operated as little more than an administrative district. Sections were cleved off from time to time to create other French Colonies or to add to the territory of existing French African states. French Sudanese stamps are largely common mint but very rare postally used and on cover and most never seemed to be for sale anywhere in Africa but only at the postal agency in Paris. Years ago I was judging the Rompex stamp exhibition in Denver and there was a wonderful collection of French Colony postal history

A good couple of years ago I visited an antique car museum in Norwich New York. I am not an old time car fan particularly and I went there with a relative who was. There was not much text to the exhibit, just 130 restored cars that were produced between 1904 and 1935 . Most of the manufacturers and models I had never heard of. The point is that this exhibit gave a pretty good education about the history of automobile design, production and evolution through the classic era, and it did by showing examples of what cars had been made and not by telling visitors in text what they should know. I thought of most stamp museums and exhibits that I have seen. Most are quite episodic, strong in some parts, nonexistent in others parts of the story of postage stamps. Most exhibits lack coherence and lack an overriding sense of trying to tell the history of stamps in a meaningful way. Either the stamp exhibit lacks rarity, or has only rarity, or the skew is too predominantly US philately or no US at

Originally, all philatelic expertization was done by individuals who expertized stamps and covers in their own name usually as part of the professional service of selling them. The most famous three European experts of the nineteenth century- Gebruder Senf(the Senf brothers) and Kohler in Germany and Thier in France were all merchant experts who signed the stamps that they sold and guaranteed the genuineness of their sale material. The American expert dealer Warren H Colson (who signed stamps W.H.C.) and Eugene Klein of Philadelphia provided much the same services in this country in the 1890-1930 period (Klein was the American dealer who was one of the big buyers at the famous Ferrari auctions in Paris in the early 1920s). In those days a dealer guaranteeing the genuineness of the stamps he sold forever was considered the norm and most collectors were far happier having a Klein guarantee than an APS certificate. A Klein gu

Topical or Thematic collecting came of age about 1950 (The American Topical Association, a group of philatelists who collect thematically was founded in 1949). Traditional collectors save stamps and covers by country, though often specializing by era or issue or stamp type (such as plate blocks or tabs). Topicalists collect by theme such as Disney stamps, where they try to obtain all the Disney stamps that they can without regard to country. If you collect things such as Queen Elizabeth's coronation or The American Revolution Bicentennial then you have a topical collection-one that is multinational in scope with the defining characteristic that the stamps all pertain to the same theme.

 Traditionalists have denigrated thematic collecting as being simplistic-really just picture collecting. But this criticism is faulty in at least two ways. First, all philately is picture collecting. If we weren't unco