Blackjacks

One of the most popular stamps of the Nineteenth Century is the black stamp honoring President Andrew Jackson that was issued first in 1863 and then again in several grilled forms over the next few years. The black Jackson, called the Blackjack by collectors has been popular for several reasons. First it has never been either rare nor common, occupying that middle ground that collectors like, making ownership a source of pride but not a hardship. Second, the stamp has always had many printing varieties and grills, including reissues and re-entries and because of this has always attracted specialists. Blackjack collecting as a specialty has fallen off quite a bit from when I was a young stamp dealer and some of this is probably because collectors often find specialties that operate for them as a kind of psychological code. In the early and middle of the last century, many American collectors took their specialties, whether consciously or not, as a way of re-fighting the Civil War. Southerners often collected Confederate States stamps or state postal histories and Northerners were big on Civil War Patriotics. These specialties still exist and are popular today but have lost the heat of the subliminal battle they represented in collectors only a generation or two removed from the Civil War. Andrew Jackson was a states rights (which was code for slave rights) president, a slave owner and brutal Indian slayer. In the years after the Civil War, collecting Blackjacks was a popular way to specialize in US general issues but still maintain allegiance to a world view that had largely been destroyed in 1865.

Stamp Albums

One of the things that many collectors pay too little attention to is the albums that they put their stamps in. Nice attractive well made stamp albums cost money and many collectors are loathe to part with hard earned coin of the realm for anything but actual stamps. That's fine if that's what you want or if that is all you can afford but nice albums really cost very little in the end and can add considerably to your enjoyment in collecting. Putting your stamp collection in nice albums is kind of like putting new bathrooms in your home. If all of our homes were destroyed when we were done with them then it might make little economic sense to invest in things that are just for our own enjoyment. But it the end we(or our heirs) all sell our homes and nice bathrooms make homes more salable and at higher prices. The estimates of the American Realtors Association are that people who put in new bathrooms and kitchens get back about 70% of the cost of their improvements, so they enjoy the improvements and get most of the cost back, a real win-win. I would say that about the same percentage is true in our hobby. When you move nice stamps from a junky set up to attractive appealing albums you often get most of the full cost of the albums back when you go to sell because the buyer, after he takes out your better stamps for individual sale, has a more attractive platform in which to sell your more common items. So if  "not wasting money" is your rationale for not having nice albums for your stamps you will need to find another reason.

Rob Redstone

During the late 1970's and the height of the inflation driven stamp market there was a crazy person who pretended to be a stamp dealer who came regularly to our auctions. Rob Redstone was about 30 and dressed dramatically, talked loudly and always was making phone calls which we felt were calls on which there was no one else on the other end of the line. The calls were about buying pork belly futures or thousands of shares of "stock x" and all the while he had trouble scrounging up $1500 to pay his stamp auction bill. When the bottom dropped out of stamp speculation in 1980, Rob disappeared and over the years I had wondered what happened to him. Last weekend I was in the center of Philadelphia with a few minutes to kill before meeting my wife. I went for a cup of coffee and seated in the coffee shop was Rob Redstone, now about 60 and dressed in a more modern dramatic style though considerably more threadbare than I had remembered him being. We said hello and he asked me to join him and without my asking told me how much money he had made over the years in dot coms and the housing market and lately in gold. He told me he planned to "take a big position in Facebook IPO shares this fall". Now I don't know if Rob has been successful or not but to me he is the perfect example of the man, always being at the cutting edge of everything has left himself cut off and with nothing-always chasing, never finding.

Space

They brought a black and white television set into our fourth grade class and we watched John Glenn's lift off in 1962. They told us it was a big deal- the first person to orbit the earth but nothing told us it was a big deal as much as the fact that there were televisions in the classroom. TV and school were always antithetical, we thought, and here we were watching current events as something we needed to learn. The United States varied its issuing policy for this event by issuing a stamp for John Glenn's flight though they never mentioned John Glenn's name and an entire thematic-space philately-was born that day. Space exploration was tied up with science and technology and American exceptionalism in a way that made us all so proud and also very scared. I remember only four televised events in the 1960's-John Kennedy's Cuba embargo speech when the Soviet Union was attempting to put nuclear missiles in Cuba (and I overheard my father saying to my mother that he thought this just might be the end of the world), Kennedy's assassination, John Glenn's trip into space and later in the decade the moon landing. Whenever I see the above stamp all the memories of those times come back to me. I have been around stamps all my life and they serve for me as a sort of emotional shorthand. I can remember events very vividly when I see the stamps that were issued to honor them.

Stamp Hinges

The best inventions are often the simplest and for simplicity and usefulness philately's greatest invention was the stamp hinge. The hinge wasn't actually invented, rather it evolved. The earliest collectors just licked their mint stamps to put them in their albums or made a paste to gum down their used stamps. As the Nineteenth Century progressed, collectors started using the selvage of sheets to hinge in their stamps. It was only by the second and third generations of collectors that the need for an easy to remove hinge was felt. Stamps that were gummed down in albums or hinges with gummed selvages were impossible to remove for trading or resale without damaging the stamp or at least the gum. Small pieces of paper were gummed and sold as hinges but the first generations of hinges were gummed pieces of porous paper that stuck to the stamps they were hinging and were not much easier to remove than the gummed pieces of selvage they replaced. Later hinges used gummed pieces of glassine, a paper that is not porous, so that the gum of the hinge stuck lightly to the stamp, making it easy to remove. I don't believe that there are any stamp hinges commercially manufactured in the United States anymore. This is a shame as it makes general worldwide collecting difficult. Hinges were an inexpensive and easy way to mount stamps. Commercial plastic mounts are expensive and difficult to use. Certainly they are necessary with scarcer stamps but more trouble than they are worth with more common items. The demand for old fashioned hinges still exists and can be seen on eBay, where old unopened packs of Dennison hinges with the price preprinted on the package (1000 hinges for 25c) now sell for as much as $5 a pack

Greece

The world wide press has given extensive coverage to the problems with the Greek economy and the effect this is having on the rest of the European Union. It increasingly appears that Greece will default on its loans and either leave or be forced out of the Euro zone. This is uncharted territory for both the Greek economy and the European and world wide economy though market reactions seem calmer now than when the crisis first became critical some months ago. No one knows what the final economic outcome will be but the philatelic effects so far have been interesting and unexpected. Greek stamps, from the first Hermes Head issues though later Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century mint, and Occupations have been very hot since the Greek economic crisis began. This is counter intuitive. If the Greek economy falters or if Greece goes back to it's own devalued currency than logically Greek stamps should experience decreased prices due to lower demand and that demand coming in lower dollar prices from the indigenous Greek market. But perhaps the reason for the surge in demand for Greek stamps is because of all the publicity that Greece is getting. Greece is only a country of 11 million people so domestic demand for stamps not that great. There are many Greece collectors in America and western Europe so no doubt it is their interest that is pushing the Greek philatelic market. But this really an unusual occurrence-news of a country's faltering economy stirring demand for its stamps.

United States Dealers Stock

We have available a completely intact dealers stock in three cartons. Largely post 1940 it has things like errors (mostly coil imperfs) and even a recalled Legends of the West sheet in the original packaging. The postage has been carefully counted out by book and is over $ 14,000.  And the price is only $9795, postpaid. This is a one of a kind lot created by a fastidious dealer and all stamps are XF,og,NH. Our price is less than 70% of face value and if you have a way to use or dispose of the premium material at face or slightly above you would be into the postage part of the lot at well under 60% which would make it attractive to sell out of it what you can and use the rest for postage. Email me if you are interested.

Varieties On First Issues

What is striking about the first philatelic issues of most countries in the Nineteenth Century compared to the later issues is the small number of printing varieties that exist on first issues compared to the subsequent issues. Specifically, US #1 & 2 have a few minor shade varieties listed by the catalogs and several very minor reentries ( a variety created in making the plate that printed the stamp where the design was not fully erased before reentering a new version). But compared to the recognized varieties on the later 1851 issue, the printers of the first US stamps should be considered nearly perfect. The One Cent of the 1851 issue has scores of  major varieties and types alone and the 10c is nearly as complicated. The same holds true for Great Britain where the Penny Black and the Two Penny Blue have almost no varieties of note compared to the one penny of the 1841 issue which could be collected forever. This same pattern occurs in many other countries and is not a coincidence. It is caused by two factors. First, the new postage stamps were a big deal and the manufacturers put their best printers to work on them and exercised first rate quality control. By the time of later issues more lackadaisical standards created more varieties. And second, most first issue stamps were shorter lived issues than the second and later issues which often continued for many years through many printings. Thus more varieties were possible. First issue Austria is an exception to this pattern. There are many varieties probably because these stamps were issued over so many years. We have illustrated one of the more interesting varieties of the first issue Austria-a stamp that has been printed on both sides.

Who Will Be First?

The United States Post Office announced last year that it was ending the previous policy that has guided postal emissions for the last century and that people no longer had to be ten years dead before they could be suitable for commemoration on US postage stamps (previously, the only exception to this policy was recently deceased Presidents). Our post office was the only one in the world that had maintained such a policy. It originated as a desire to depoliticized the stamp issuing process and ensure that postal commemoration was only for people who had stood the test of time. The system worked, perhaps too well. In our world where fame is so fleeting and attention spans so short the philatelic sales agency had trouble marketing stamps commemorating people that many people couldn't remember. Hence the change. The question that has interested philatelists is who will be first. Showing the age of most people who collect stamps, recent discussions in the philatelic press have centered around John Glenn and the Mercury Project or Neil Armstrong and the moon landing. But the reason for this change in postal policy is to allow stamps that would appeal to young people and less  world-aware people and this would mean issues concentrated in the field of entertainment and sports. I was surprised that Liz Taylor wasn't the first last year when she died and would put Whitney Houston on the short list if her life hadn't been so troubled by drugs. This should be the year where the first stamp under the new policy will be issued. It will be interesting to see who it is.

President's Day

Every country in the world grapples with the issue of what images should go on its stamps. And this was never as important as when the first stamps of each country were issued. The essays for the first stamps of Great Britain (which were the first stamps issued) show a variety of choices from elaborate numerals to scroll work to portraits of young Queen Victoria, the design that ultimately won out. Countries like Austria and Germany used Coats of Arms, though they had strong monarchs that they could have portrayed. France used an allegory of the French nation, the goddess Ceres, as their national symbol and Brazil took for its first stamps fancy numerals which philatelists today call Bulls Eyes because they vaguely resembled them (though this was not the Brazilian Post Offices intention). So when it came time for the United States to isuue stamps it is surprising that there was so little discussion of who or what was to be on the stamps. There was no serious discussion of the bald eagle or our flag. We chose the first postmaster and the first President and presidents dominated definitive issues for over a hundred years. We have an odd relationship with Presidents. They are roundly criticized when in office and then deified when dead.

Stamp Bullies

Years ago at one of the more popular Philadelphia stamp clubs there was a man named Bob. Bob had a pretty fair philatelic knowledge, though to be fair he wasn't nearly as capable a philatelist as he thought he was. He would come to the major club meetings and brag about what he owned and what he knew and over the course of time he got into fights with various members and the club's attendance would decline and Bob would have to move off to ruin another club. Once Bob confided in me that he didn't understand why the clubs in Philadelphia were declining so. He said he needed to go from club to club and as soon after he started regularly attending meetings the attendance at that club would decline and soon the meetings would stop entirely. Bob was poison and only a small amount of poison can make an entire room toxic.  People can get their fill of prickly personalities at work and dealing with health insurance claims. They don't need it in their hobby. And just what Bob did in the local stamp club circuit in our area often happens in the modern version of stamp clubs -stamp chat rooms. Bullies and obnoxious people need to be banned. A club today would never allow a cigar smoker to pollute the air of the club or a spitter to foul the floors so why do we allow flame throwing and incendiary insults on stamp chat rooms. Insulting chat doesn't just degrade the writers of these insults. It degrades the readers and our hobby. It's difficult to look away when two grown men are flagellating each other. The monitors need to have them take their fights outside.

Oakwood, OK

Oakwood, Oklahoma is a tiny spot of parched prairie 100 miles north west of Oklahoma City. It is over twenty miles from the next nearest town that gets a name on google maps. Oakwood is tiny. The 2000 census listed 70 inhabitants (more people work on my floor in this building) and a google camera shot of the main intersection looks less busy than my driveway. Oakwood doesn't have a gas station or a convenience store but it does have a United States Post Office. At least it does until the latest Post Office closings go into effect. And this then is the problem that the Post Office has had for years, which is that it has maintained a retail presence and route system in rural America that no sane profit making making business would ever have done. Now, with postal losses mounting, the Post Office is beginning to close tiny offices like Oakwood. This will have ramifications for our country and they need to be examined so that as citizens we can make an informed decisions a to whether we are willing to pay the price to keep post offices like Oakwood open or pay the price to close them. The price of maintaining them is clear-the cost of closing them less so. Rural America has been declining and daily postal service to all parts of this country at the same low price is one of the factors that has kept rural areas from declining even more. No one believes that if the postal services leaves the 90% of the territory of this country where only 5% of the population lives that private delivery companies will continue to serve those areas or do so without steep surcharges for "rural service". I think one of the things that has made America so great is the diversity of land and people who live throughout our country and any decision that would further population consolidation needs to be examined carefully.

Austria Reprints

Several nations have reprinted their earlier stamps for collectors. The United States did so in 1876, reprinting scores of out of print issues for the 1876 Centennial Exposition so that the Post Office could have for sale examples of all of the postage stamps that had ever been issued. Most were sold in quantities of less than 500 which shows you how few serious collectors were around in 1876. Portugal had a large number of official reprints. But the winner in terms of scarcity and availability for the price is Austria. Most Austrian stamps of the Nineteenth Century were officially reprinted and often more than once with specialized catalogs distinguishing between different printings. Overall there are more than a hundred different reprints made by the government printing office, using the original plates in the original colors and on paper that is very similar to the paper on which the original stamps were issued. In most cases the Michel Austria specialized catalog lists these stamps at prices in the 50 Euro range. They are very scarce and are not often seen or offered in this country and can sometimes be purchased for as little as $20 per stamp. If you are a collector of Austria you should consider these stamps to complete your Nineteenth Century section of you album as most people are hardly able to afford the originals. And another nice things about government issued reprints is, that because they were usually issued directly to collectors, they have been saved and handled with great care so that even today they can often be found in Very Fine condition.

Billions of Marks

Stamp collectors can always be a bit sanguine when the rest of the world gets upset if the Producer Price Index goes up a bit. German inflation during the early Weimar period defies belief until you actually see it. The scan here is of the front and back of a 1923 cover with over 30 billion marks of postage on it. Inflation was do high that postal patrons had to add stamps to envelopes as they were waiting in line for service, as rates changed that fast. Collectors enjoy covers like this as a sort of hathos- a newish web word that means an attraction to seeing something that is really horrible. Imagine the suffering inflation like this caused.

Stamp Clubs

There was a time in our hobby where you couldn't really call yourself a collector unless you belonged to a stamp club. Thousands of clubs existed in this country and in Philadelphia alone in 1970 a collector could go to a different stamp club meeting five days a week. There were over twenty clubs in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, meeting once a week or twice monthly, or, for a few of the more high brow clubs, monthly alone. And Philadelphia paled in comparison to Chicago which had nearly forty clubs in its prime. Stamp clubs served as social networks and a place to see stamp friends and talk about stamp issues. Each club had it's own character, generally driven by force of personality of a few long time members. A club could be gossipy or scholarly. Some tried to have regular guest speakers or exhibits to facilitate serious philatelic conversation. Others were coffee klatches given over to gossip and reminiscing. And most clubs had trading desks where collectors could bring their duplicates and small dealer tables or bid boards or small club auctions. Clubs, scores of them in most major cities, served the purpose (and rather inefficiently at that) that the Internet serves today, except today's collectors can get all that the club system had to offer without leaving their home. And they can connect to this philatelic world any time of the day, any day of the week. But progress isn't always linear. The Internet system of contact in philately is easier but far more impersonal and many of us miss the connection of the earlier era.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born two hundred years ago this month. He has always been my favorite writer and several years ago I was fortunate enough to be able to acquire for my personal collection the greatest philatelic and literary autograph combination- an envelope addressed by Dickens franked by the world's first postage stamp-the Penny Black, along with a letter signed by Dickens

Valentines

Valentine's Day is a holiday for which no long historical tradition exists. There were several St Valentines as part of the pantheon of Catholic martyrs and saints but none of them had any association to romantic love. Scholars looking for antecedents to the holiday can trace it back to a poem of Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 1300's but really the celebration of Valentine's Day seems to have begun in earnest about the same time as the early post made the sending of Valentine's cards easy. In this sense the holiday was a technologically driven occasion where friends and distant lovers could keep in touch on this day by exchanging cards. And throughout the Nineteenth century Valentine cards became more and more ornate and flowery, imitating a rococo style that eventually made them so heavy and fragile that the cards were nearly impossible to send. It was the post's ability to connect people that started the Valentine tradition. And the early ornate Valentines are very collectible and have always been collected by philatelists. Candy and candlelight dinners came later and though it is a bit beyond the scope of this blog, don't forget to get the person you love a card if you have forgotten to do so.

United States Postal Service Loss

News this week came that the Post Office lost $7 billion dollars last year and this is after an accounting change postpones a $5 billion loss due to how pension contributions are paid. Worse, the Post Office's business model is failing and, despite what really seems to be significant efforts at increasing efficiency, loses will only compound in the years ahead without major changes. But change is something the USPS is forbidden to do by law except with Congressional approval. And the Post Office will be out of money this fall, just in time to be a political issue during the Prsesidential campaign. The vast majority of Americans agree that we need a Postal Service. And we need that service to be a service, not just a profit driven business. As a nation we have always subsidized two things with our postal service-first rural America,  by maintaining daily postal delivery to every home in America for the same low price and second,  low cost newspaper, magazine and book delivery to maintain an educated populous. These, most Americans believe, continue to be worthy goals and it is these goals that contribute significantly to the Postal Service deficit. This is what is so frustrating about our current political process. Even though most of us agree about what we want from our postal service and even how to get there, given the political hostility in Washington the problems of the postal service will continue to be negotiated and argued until maybe this time it is too late.

Tom Wilson

Tom Wilson had been a customer of ours for years when he called us to come and see his collection that he was ready to sell.Tom and I spoke on the phone and set up an appointment for me to come to his home in Chula Vista, quite a ways from my Jenkintown office but for a collection the heft of Tom's, well worth the trip. We set up a date and time and as I was saying goodbye Tom asked "how will I know it is you when you come to the door?" I replied lightly that since I was probably the only one with whom he had an appointment that day to see his stamps, when someone showed up and rang his doorbell, it was probably me. It didn't reassure him. I said that he and I had spoken on the phone scores of times, that I knew his birthday because his wife had often called to arrange philatelic presents and that, though we had never met, my voice and my driver's license should be enough to convince him of my identity when I arrived. "We need a password" he said. I thought he was joking. But after a few small attempts at levity I realized that Tom Wilson was very serious and that we needed to establish a pass word. He would say "Moon" when he open the door and I would say "Beam". But he still seemed tentative and unsure that this was enough."But how will I know that it is you Tom?"I asked, as if showing up at his door on the appointed day wasn't proof enough that I knew that it was him I was going to see. "We need a counter pass word so I know for sure that it is you". That sealed the deal. We established a counter pass word for me to use and, paranoia assuaged, Tom Wilson was a delightful person to do business with.

Philatelic Immigration

When I started in the stamp business in the late 1960s there was still active a large group of professional philatelists who had been political refugees from the 1930s. These were people who had escaped Germany and Eastern Europe and had come to the United States, often by very circuitous routes. All had a story and most appeared to be alive only because of the most fortuitous of circumstances. Stamp Dealers had a better survival rate from the Nazi final solution than did many other professionals and this was because they were less reluctant to pick up stakes and leave, and so got out earlier while there was still time. Most professionals deal in a language and culturally specific skill (a German lawyer or Polish accountant is unemployable in the United States in the often lucrative profession in which he was trained) and most business men have their investments in unmovable plant and equipment. But stamp dealers are more mobile. But rearranging his stock to fewer, scarcer items a dealer can take a small fortune in his pockets when he needs to leave his country of birth to start a new life. And so many did in the 1930s that the stamp business had a real foreign flavor when I was young.  Julius Stolow was Russian, S. Serebrackian was Armenian (interestingly Mr Serebrakian and Mr Stolow were married to sisters who they had met here in America), Arthur Korzyn was German and came here by way of China. There were many more. They all had stories and they all felt they owed their adoptive country hard work and good citizenship as a small exchange for saving their lives.

Occupation Stamps

Occupation stamps are war time issues that are printed by an occupying force for use in the territory of a conquered area. As such, they are usually quite popular in the country that did the occupying as sort of a jingoistic memory and quite unpopular in the country that was occupied  reminding them of their weakness and pain. For example, the Japanese issued hundreds of occupation stamps for their military conquests of East Asia during WW II. These stamps are rarely collected by native Chinese, Burmese or Filipino collectors. But they are avidly sought out by native Japanese. Indeed, when dealers list them in their catalogs they are listed under the issuing country (in this case Japan) as that is where the real interest lies. There is one exception to this rule is the Germans. They collect the WW II Occupation of Germany more avidly than do any of the occupiers and are especially assiduous in collecting the Soviet Zone Occupations. Partly this is because of the seriousness with which the Germans take our hobby. I've often though that a Michel Deutschland Specialized catalog should be one of the objects placed in a space capsule to show aliens the best Earth has to offer. But partly too it is founded on the way Germany has approached the Nazi period and WW II. No doubt springing from the WW I experience that produced National Socialism, there is a realistic, hard nosed, no illusions quality about the Germans view of what happened mid century. There have little fondness for the idea of occupying others and no fear of admitting what happened to them. It seems to be the attitude of a nation that can move forward, philatelically and otherwise. 

Virtual Exhibits

There have been thousands of competitive stamp exhibits that have been prepared and displayed over the last century. These collections take years to develop and many hours to mount, describe and write up. They are then put up in frames at a stamp show, seen by a few score people and, on average, exhibited a dozen times before the owner doesn't win enough awards for his interest to stay piqued. Modern technology has created a great philatelic possibility. Over the last ten years millions of scans of stamps and covers have appeared on the Internet. Collectors now could easily put together a Virtual Exhibit, consisting of stamps and covers that pertain to the theme of the exhibit but which the collector doesn't own and many never have actually seen except as scans. In favor of this proposal is that it appeals to what exhibitors have long stated was their main philatelic goal- creating a philatelic exhibit that uses stamps to tell a postal or historical story that is both compelling and complete. Contraindicating this idea is that it goes against the great philatelic fundamental -ownership. Still, imagine the wonderful exhibits that could be created if competitive philately were more a battle of creativity and knowledge and less a display of size of bankbook.

Modern Stamp Shows

OrcoExpo (in Southern California)  has long been one of the more popular and well attended stamp shows in the United States despite being only a dealer's bourse and having no exhibits. Many attendees who go to stamp shows go only for the dealer bourse, having little interest in competitive exhibits. And nearly all of the collectors who go for the exhibits find, in no small degree, the dealers bourse of interest. So it is no surprise that there are many stamp shows that consist entirely of dealer's bourses and none that consist entirely of exhibits. In this respect, competitive stamp exhibits are the classical music or Shakespearean drama of our hobby-something that you are supposed to like (and probably would if you gave yourself the time) but also something that doesn't provide the quick thrills of Easy Listening or Star Wars. This is nothing new. What is new is that the Internet has reduced the need for collectors to go to stamp shows to find stamps for their collections and because the draw of the exhibits is not great enough, show attendance has languished. There are several suggestions for web sites where serious exhibits could be displayed and even compete against each other. This would allow serious philatelists to continue to compete for awards as the economics of smaller shows make it more difficult to continue real life exhibitions.

US Offices in China

Offices Abroad stamps are stamps that are issued for use in a foreign post office under a treaty with a foreign government. It allows the first country the right to maintain one of its own post offices on the the territory of the second. Offices Abroad are usually the result of powerful commercial interests in the occupying country obtaining a treaty from a weakened central government and are seen primarily in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in two main areas-the faltering Turkish Empire and China. Offices Abroad stamps for China were issued by France, Germany, Great Britain and the United State (these are the "K" numbers) and it was at Shanghai that the United States maintained its post office. Offices Abroad stamps are usually not avidly collected by the country that they were issued for. In the case of China, the treaties that established foreign post offices in China were foisted on a weakened Chinese state and the nationalistic pride of the current PRC collectors is little flattered by collecting these issues. Still, they are scarce. My rough back of the envelope calculation shows them rising in price ten fold if the current generation of Chinese collectors ever wished to add them to their collections. Since their prices now are little more than what a normal US back of the book set with this degree of scarcity should sell for, now would be a good time to add a set to your collection

Backup Bidders

In the last ten years two main areas of philately have seen substantial rises in prices and popularity- Russia and China. But the increases have not been all in straight lines. Rather, for a period prices rise substantially, and then fall back either with general economic weakness or because of market demand. What has been interesting in the case of these two areas is that each time prices have fallen back a bit a strong cadre of American collectors have stepped in to buy, propping up prices and using the market lull to add these foreign stamps to their collections. This is a very healthy phenomena for the long term price structure of these two collecting areas. All of the so called "best bet" investment areas (for example, United States stamps or British Commonwealth) are strong not only because of intense internal demand but because philatelists world wide desire these stamps and are trying to obtain them. It's not as if there aren't enough Chinese or Russians who wish to collect their own stamps. But when a collecting area reaches the first rung of collecting interest and has a strong and maintainable price structure, it is almost always because their stamps sell well to the international community. It is nice to see that the rise in popularity and price of both Chinese and Russian philately is not to be short lived.

Stamp Collecting in the 1950's

The 1950's were the beginning of the modern period in philately. The overarching history of our hobby is a triad-the classic period from about 1850 to about 1910 defined by world wide collectors studying and accumulating their stamps with scant regard for quality (and even little attention to genuineness). Then there was the middle period, 1910-1950, defined by increasing philatelicazation of the hobby (with items created solely for collectors, such as First Day Covers, becoming popular), increasing specialization and the beginnings of a philatelic "establishment" (ie societies and national news magazines). And finally, there is the modern period which began about 1950 and continues today and has seen increasing specialization (most collectors collect only one country or even part of a country). Our hobby has become less social, originally because of magazines and direct mail, and now because of the demise of clubs and stores and rise of the Internet. The modern period of Philately which began in the 1950s coincided with and was influenced by the baby boom. The decade saw millions of young collectors enter the hobby with their Harris world wide albums and at the higher end collectors like Alfred Caspary assembled one of the finest collection in the history of the world. The 1950s were the decade when stamps made it from the back alleys to the front pages when Life magazine did it's 1954 cover article on stamps that was seen by millions of people. Philately began to be seen as an academic and educational hobby that most young children in the 1950s were encouraged by parents and teachers to enjoy. It is these baby boom collectors who, as they are getting back to their hobby today, are giving philately it's current strength.

Italian Colonies Revenues

It is really hard to give most general collectors a picture of just how rare most foreign revenue stamps issued before 1945 really are. Let me put it this way. In terms of volume of stamps, we sell hundreds of millions of individual stamps per year. And of that hundreds of millions perhaps only a few thousand are Foreign pre 1940 Revenues. And here is a little group- Italian Colony Revenues-containing stamps that we have never before offered. Italy was late to the colony game. The world's first great colonial power, Spain, was already weary of the exercise and retained only a fraction of its original colonial hoard before Italy was an active colonizer. And Italy largely played around the edges, administering larger cities and coastal areas of places like Libya and Ethiopia, unlike the British and French who vied to occupy entire continents. Even the regular postage stamps of the Italian Colonies are hard to find. Pictured above are a small group of late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century Libya and Eritrean revenue stamps that were used to pay various taxes. If I were collecting on a rarity to dollar ratio I would concentrate on foreign revenues.

Good News for the Hobby

Pessimism and philately have always seemed like stamp and tong-they just go together. Visitors to stamp clubs in the 1970s will all tell you stories about how the old timers then talked about the "good old days" and predicted the demise of philately. But as Mark Twain said in a slightly different context, reports of our hobby's death have been great exaggerated. The editor of Linn's, Michael Baadke, had an interesting and eye opening article in the January 30, 2012 of Linns Stamp News which he was kind enough to provide a link to. The article references a Wikicollecting.org study that places philately as the most popular of all the collecting hobbies. Badaake then goes on to some statistical analysis and finds that membership in the APS today on a per capita basis  is about twice as great as it was during the supposed philatelic heydays of the 1960s. This statistic is all the more meaningful as in 1960 membership in national philatelic organizations was more necessary to a serious philatelist than it is today. APS membership was the best reference for new auction bidders and it provided a lifeline of news and philatelic contact that can easily be obtained by collectors today simply by going online. This confirms what we are seeing and what other stamp professionals are telling me. Our hobby seems to be doing just fine.

Fiume Revenues

There are two major European cities that share a history of constant political change. Danzig in the north is at the border of the German and Russian areas of influence and has changed political affiliation many times, with incarnations as Polish/Russian dominated, German dominanted and independent. In southern Europe, Fiume is a philatelic entity at the northern end of the Adriatic sea which has formed a border between the Austro Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Italian area of influence. Fiume too has seen major political changes.  In the post Napoleonic period, Fiume was part of Hungary, which operated under the jurisdiction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fiume was the major port for the Hungarian section of the Empire. WWI saw the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Fiume was wrested from Hungary and given to Italy to administer (Hungary was left without a port and without a navy which created the anomaly that the WWII era leader of Hungary was a former naval officer Admiral Horthy-so you had a country without a navy ruled by an admiral). The Italians issued many stamps for Fiume which make for very interesting collecting. We have sold many better Italian area Fiume stamps and covers over the years but today I saw something I have never seen before-a collection of Fiume Revenues. They are very rare but like most revenues outside the US area not very avidly collected and so sell for only a few dollars a piece. This group has both Italian and Croatian influenced issues (Fiume is now part of Croatia). One of the things I've always wondered about is whether life changes much for people living in places like Danzig or Fiume when the political alliegence change, or whether it is more like what happens when your side loses an election-a bit of grumbling, the impression that things are certainly worse, but not much substantive change.

Junior Duck Stamps

Revenue from the sale of stamps fund many worthwhile projects. Early in the twentieth century, the first philatelic exposition souvenir sheets were issued to help pay for some of the world's first stamp shows. Most European countries today issue semipostals, stamps with a charity surcharge, to fund the work of the Red Cross or to fight cancer. And many smaller third world counties subsidize their government budgets with profits from the sale of stamps to collectors. America has been lax in using funds from commemorative stamp sales to fund worthwhile projects. Perhaps our secular tradition makes it difficult for quasi government organizations to get involved in charity work which is traditionally seen as the bailiwick of religion. Or perhaps we are such a fragmented society that we can't agree on which charities, if any, are worth government funding. But a diverse constellation of interest groups lined up over the Junior Duck Stamp program. Here is program that is hard to dislike. School children compete to design duck hunting stamps for duck hunters to collect, with the proceeds going to wetlands conservation. Wow- a plan that gets the NRA, the teachers unions, government funding of arts enthusiasts and the Green lobbies all on the same side!  We should ask the designers of this program to try their hands at peace in the Middle East. The stamps are lovely, well printed and well designed with small print runs. The first few are quite rare. By coincidence we will be offering quite a few of the better ones along with some very rare plate blocks in our next auction. To view these lots click here.http://stampauctionnetwork.com/ba/110667.cfm#84