Postage

Seigniorage is the profit that governments make on securities that they issue, on which they don’t pay interest, and that are retained unused by the public. Cash in mattresses represents a form of seigniorage and, more than anything else, old face value postage stamps held by collectors do as well. The money that collectors have…

When an organization is facing large deficits like the USPS is facing now, the temptation is to look at bold changes. Finding several billion dollars to balance the budget is never easy, but managers are often tempted to forget that a large forest is made up of many trees and that many small changes can…

There are three aspects of any philatelic specialty to consider when you are looking around for a new area to collect-difficulty, cost and satisfaction. Specialties vary in difficulty and difficulty is not always relative to cost. Collecting the mint stamps of the United States is a moderately difficult undertaking if you plan to try to attain…

If there is ever a date that goes into history books to mark the demise of printed books in the battle with electronic information on the Internet, it may well be March 14, 2012-the day that The Encyclopedia Britannica announced that it was ceasing publication of its 20 volume annual edition. For nearly 300 years…

The USPS announced this year that they were going to begin to waive the” ten year deceased” rule for commemoration on US postage stamps. Looking at the list of notable deaths of 2011, I don’t think we need to worry that we are going to be inundated by a massive amount of  new issues. It seems…

For thousands of years before the introduction of the postage stamp in 1840, postal service existed on several levels. Originally, postal service was a private contractual affair-a merchant or a friend was traveling to another place and took your letters along. Later, private companies entered the market and provided service between locations that had a…