From the category archives:

Stamp Collecting

Andorra Stamp Collecting

February 22, 2010

Stamp collectors who enjoy Andorra collect the stamps of one country that has two governments. Spain and France each release stamps for this principality, which is the sixth-smallest country in Europe.

Wedged between France and Spain on the southern slope of the Pyrenees, Andorra is home to 30,000 Europeans whose heritage is linked to France, Spain [...]

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A Liechtenstein Stamp Design Challenge

February 7, 2010

Liechtenstein issued a gorgeous sheet of 16 stamps in 2008 to commemorate the EURO 2008 Football Tournament. The games were hosted by Liechtenstein’s neighbors, Austria and Switzerland, and they were played in June, 2008.
The challenge for the designers of Liechtenstein’s stamps… there were three stamps in the set, and sixteen positions for stamps in the [...]

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French Stamps of La Belle Epoque

February 6, 2010

Some collectors call these French stamps the Sage series. Others call them the Peace and Commerce series.
The two names refer to the same stamps, a fascinating series issued by France during the last quarter of the 19th century. During these remarkable Belle Epoque years, the stamps designed by the winner of a contest represented France [...]

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Collecting Stamps From the 1950s

January 23, 2010

The 1950s are a decade wedged into obscurity by many stamp collectors.

The fans of big, bright, colorful stamps don’t find fifties stamps sufficiently attractive. Topical stamp collectors, for the most part, find the subject matter somewhat limited. And other collectors see an outpouring of dull, commonplace and poorly produced stamps from Latin America and an [...]

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Understanding U.S. Postage Stamp Prices

January 2, 2010

As with all stamps, the value of U.S. postage stamps is determined by supply, demand, and condition.
Almost every stamp dealer in the United States has had something like this happen. There is a phone call from somebody who has inherited a collection of US stamps. These stamps are in full sheets, well protected, and in [...]

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Are You New To Stamp Collecting?

January 1, 2010

Welcome… stamp collecting has been called “the hobby of kings and the king of hobbies.” If you’re interested in learning a bit about stamp collecting for beginners, a good place to start is with this thought.
You collect whatever stamps you want. Stamp collecting for beginners starts off as whatever you want.
If you want to collect [...]

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The World’s Greatest Stamp Collector

January 1, 2010

Was Sir Edward Bacon really the greatest stamp collector of all time? Any list of our hobby’s top five philatelists would probably include his name.
Even if Sir Edward’s status as a great collector is disputed, the collection he assembled is unquestionably in a league of its own. Bacon was the first curator for the Philatelic [...]

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The Strange Saga of the World’s Most Valuable Stamp

December 31, 2009

When I was growing up in stamp collecting, it was the British Guiana 1856 one cent Magenta that fired our imaginations as the rarest stamp in the world.

Today, the honor goes to the 1858 Sweden Treskilling Yellow, which sold for 2.5 million Swiss Francs in 1996.

It is a member of a series of five definitives [...]

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The Value of Old Postage Stamps

December 29, 2009

A good place to start when it comes to determining the value of old postage stamps is to define what “old” really means.
Stamps have been produced since 1840, and stamp collecting has been a major hobby for almost as long. It is not difficult for a collector to find stamps from the nineteenth century, and [...]

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