Portal:Philately
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Philately is the study of Revenue or postage stamps. This includes the design, production, and uses of stamps after they are issued. A postage stamp is evidence of pre-paying a fee for postal services. Postal history is the study of postal systems of the past. It includes the study of rates charged, routes followed, and special handling of letters.
Philip Ferrari de La Renotière, known as Philipp von Ferrary was an early stamp collector who assembled what is considered the most complete stamp collection that ever existed. Ferrary started collecting in his youth, then inherited a great fortune, which he dedicated to the purchase of rare stamps and coins. Although he lived in Paris, Ferrary frequently travelled, meeting with dealers and often paying them in gold on the spot. He was impulsive in his buying and seemed to be indifferent to price.
He owned some of the most notable stamps known, like the unique Treskilling Yellow of Sweden, the 1856 British Guiana 1c magenta and the only unused copy of the Two Cent Hawaii Missionary of 1851.
Cover sent by Zeppelin from Chemnitz, Germany to Sausalito, California on the first North American flight of the LZ 129 Hindenburg, 6-9 May 1936. The "Nach Nord Amerika" and red circular marking were applied by the German Post Office; the latter marking includes a small "d" indicating it was applied at Frankfurt am Main. The postage stamps were issued specially for this airmail flight, and one of them has a piece of the sheet margin bearing a postal control marking still attached. A handstamp indicating the return address of the sender, Kurt Krippner, and a New York City receiving mark dated 9 May are on the reverse.
WikiProject Philately organizes the development of articles relating to philately. The collaboration focuses on one article at a time until they can proudly put that article up as a featured article candidate. This will last until they have run through a pool of "featurable" articles, then they will use a time-based system.
For those who want to skip ahead to the smaller articles, the WikiProject also maintains a list of articles in need of improvement or that need to be started. There are also many red inked topics that need to be started on the list of philatelic topics page.
... that the first Penny Post was established in London in 1680 by William Dockwra nearly 200 years before the better known Uniform Penny Post that was part of the postal reforms of 1840 in the Great Britain.
... that Czesław Słania (1921-2005) is the most prolific stamp engraver, with more than 1 000 post stamps for 28 postal administrations?
... that a forerunner is a postage stamp used during the time period before a region or territory issues stamps of its own?
... that the Royal Philatelic Society is the oldest philatelic society in the world, founded in London in 1869?
Stuart Rossiter & John Fowler (1991 reprint). World History Stamp Atlas. pub: Black Cat. ISBN 0-7481-0309-0.
The "Treskilling" Yellow, or 3 skilling banco error of color, is a postage stamp of Sweden, and as of 2004 the most valuable stamp in the world. To date no other example has been found, so is most likely the only one in existence.
The 3-skilling banco value of the first postage stamps of Sweden, issued in 1855, was normally printed in a blue-green color, while the 8-skilling was printed in a yellowish orange shade. In 1886, a young collector named Georg Wilhelm Baeckman was going through covers in his grandmother's attic, and came across one with a 3-skilling stamp printed in the yellowish orange shade of the 8-skilling.
Each time it has been sold it has set world records. In 1984 the stamp made headlines when it was sold by David Feldman for 977,500 Swiss francs. A 1990 sale realised over one million US dollars and in 1996 it sold again for 2,500,000 Swiss francs.
Philately tells you about:
- airmail
- postal societies
- info re every stamp issuer
- postage by countries
- postal history
- people on stamps
- postmarks
- postal services
- collecting
- stamps
- glossary
- the UPU
and much, much more
