Danger

Fifty years ago, if you had to draw a picture of the average stamp collector, he (and it was a “he”) was an older white male who had a general world wide collection, maybe a US mint collection and definitely a collection of US Plate Blocks and First Day Covers. Today if you were to…

The postal authorities of the United States had a paranoic streak about postal users soaking stamps off envelopes, cleaning off the cancellations, and reusing the stamps. Philatelists who have examined millions of stamps and covers of the period know that this was pure fantasy on the part of the Post Office Department. The hard evidence…

The Great Recession has done more to increase the numbers of stamp dealers than any event since the Great Depression. Large numbers of well educated people are out of work. And more people are finding job mobility difficult as the weak housing market has made selling your home and moving to a new job impossible. And middle…

Every country has sub specialties that are avidly collected by internal collectors, but which foreign specialist collectors of those countries never really warm too. As an auctioneer you can see this in bidding patterns and where certain stamps eventually sell to. Ordinary Great Britain stamps in our auctions sell to Americans, Canadians, Britons and Europeans….

Of all the first issue imperfs of all the major countries, Austrian first issues are among the most interesting and certainly among the most inexpensive. The first stamp in yellow and the second stamp in black are the scarcest, selling for about $20 each (and the balance of the set (Scott #3-5) can be had…