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Philatelists' traditional method of identifying postage stamps uniquely has long been to number each country's stamps consecutively; Norway #1 is the 4-skilling blue stamp issued in 1855, and so forth. However, this seemingly straightforward numbering system runs into immediate difficulties, which have been solved in different ways by different stamp catalogs.
The difficulties are as follows:
Although the definition of "country" may seem obvious, there are occupations of one country by another, stamp issued by areas in rebellion, reunifications, and regions that have issued their own stamps for one reason or another. A classic example is Germany: unified from many smaller entities, then divided into multiple zones of occupation at the end of World War II, then divided into West Germany and East Germany, then reunified. Catalogs typically treat West Germany as part of a single sequence under the name "Germany" while giving East German stamps their own numbers.
The definition of "postage stamp" can also be problematic for catalogers. For instance, some countries have issued adhesive labels purporting to be postage stamps, but which had the "cancel" printed directly on the stamp and shipped to dealers, without ever being sold to the public for use on letters. The treatment of these has long been a vexing issue, and catalogs vary greatly on whether to list the stamps. A related issue is a small number of extremely rare stamps that may or may not be old forgeries; the assignment or removal of a number is a key step in the consensus as to their authenticity.
Philatelists typically identify more types of stamps than do the governments issuing them. Changes of perforation, watermark, often occur without any official notice, as do printing errors. In a few cases, even the date of first issue of a stamp has no surviving record.
The issuance of multiple types on a single day is an old practice, but usually these were different denominations, and could be numbered in ascending order of value. More recently, it has become common to issue a group of stamps with related designs and the same denomination on the same day.
Finally, it is common for the stamps of a definitive series to be issued one or a few at a time, as postal rates change. Logically, they are part of a single group, with a unified design theme and a sequence of values, even though ten years or more may have elapsed from the first to the last. The same reasoning could be applied to special-purpose stamps such as airmail or postage due stamps.
Over time, stamp numbers may become a shorthand for collectors and dealers. Scott Catalogue, Gibbons, Yvert and Michel catalogs all use different arrangements for numbering regular and special-purpose types, and attach different importance to variations in paper, perforation, watermark and other types.
Because of its commercial importance the publishers of the Scott Catalogue claim copyright on their numbering systems, and grant only limited licences for their use by others. The inconsistency with which Scott enforced these licences resulted in a lawsuit by Krause Publications (publishers of the Minkus Catalogue) for copyright infringement. After Krause filed a defence the suit was settled out of court, and Krause continued to reference the Scott numbers. It has been speculated that Scott was not successful. [1] Attempts by philatelists to establish an alternative have not yet been successful.
In general, governments have not tried to number their own stamps. The People's Republic of China is a notable exception, having inscribed most of its stamps with a unique numbering system since 1949.
In 2002, as part of efforts to control allegedly illegal stamps, the Universal Postal Union introduced the WADP Numbering System (WNS) for new issues by UPU members.
Philately is the study of postage stamps and postal history. It also refers to the collection, appreciation and research activities on stamps and other philatelic products. Philately involves more than just stamp collecting or the study of postage; it is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps. For instance, the stamps being studied may be very rare or reside only in museums.
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage, who then affix the stamp to the face or address-side of any item of mail—an envelope or other postal cover —that they wish to send. The item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark or cancellation mark—in modern usage indicating date and point of origin of mailing—is applied to the stamp and its left and right sides to prevent its reuse. The item is then delivered to its addressee.
Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects. It is an area of philately, which is the study of stamps. It has been one of the world's most popular hobbies since the late nineteenth century with the rapid growth of the postal service, as a never-ending stream of new stamps was produced by countries that sought to advertise their distinctiveness through their stamps.
Philatelic literature is written material relating to philately, primarily information about postage stamps and postal history.
The Scott catalogue of postage stamps, published by Scott Publishing Company, now a subsidiary of Amos Media, is updated annually and lists all the stamps of the world that its editors recognize as issued for postal purposes. It is published in fourteen large volumes that include twelve volumes containing all the countries of the world that have ever issued postage stamps, the United States Specialized Catalog, and the 1840–1940 Classic Specialized Catalogue. It is also produced in non-printable CD and DVD editions. The numbering system used by Scott to identify stamps is dominant among stamp collectors in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
For postage stamps, separation is the means by which individual stamps are made easily detachable from each other.
The Penny Red was a British postage stamp, issued in 1841. It succeeded the Penny Black and continued as the main type of postage stamp in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until 1879, with only minor changes to the design during that time. The colour was changed from black to red because of difficulty in seeing a cancellation mark on the Penny Black; a black cancellation mark was readily visible on a Penny Red.
A definitive stamp is a postage stamp that is part of the regular issue of a country's stamps, available for sale by the post office for an extended period of time and designed to serve the everyday postal needs of the country. The term is used in contrast to a "provisional stamp", one that is issued for a temporary period until regular stamps are available, or a "commemorative stamp", a stamp "issued to honor a person or mark a special event" available only for a limited time. Commonly, a definitive issue or series includes stamps in a range of denominations sufficient to cover current postal rates. An "issue" generally means a set that is put on sale all at the same time, while a "series" is spread out over several years, but the terms are not precise. Additional stamps in a series may be produced as needed by changes in postal rates; nevertheless some values may be permanently available, regardless of prevailing rates; examples include 1c or 1p and $1 or £1.
In philately, a cinderella stamp is "virtually anything resembling a postage stamp, but not issued for postal purposes by a government postal administration". There is a wide variety of cinderella stamps, such as those printed for promotional use by businesses, churches, political or non-profit groups. The term excludes imprinted stamps on postal stationery.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of New South Wales, a former British colony now part of Australia.
Eastern Rumelia or Eastern Roumelia was an autonomous province (vilayet) in the Ottoman Empire from 1878 to 1908; however, it was under Bulgarian control beginning in 1885. The province is remembered today by philatelists for having issued postage stamps from 1881 on, although a postcard was issued locally for internal use in 1880.
The Mexican postal system has its roots in the Aztec system of messengers which the Spanish adopted after the Conquest. A postal service was established in 1580, mainly to communicate between the viceroyalty of New Spain with the motherland Spain. During the 18th century, Spain established a formal postal system with regular routes. In 1856, Mexico issued its first adhesive postage stamps, with "district overprints", a unique feature among postal systems worldwide, employed to protect from theft of postage stamps.
The Benjamin Franklin Z Grill, or simply "Z-Grill", is a 1-cent postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service in February 1868 depicting Benjamin Franklin. While stamps of this design were the common 1-cent stamps of the 1860s, the Z-Grill is distinguished by having the so-called "Z" variety of a grill pressed into the stamp, creating tiny indentations in the paper. Although the 1-cent Z-Grill is generally cited as the rarest and most valuable of all US postage stamps, the 15-cent Lincoln Z-Grill is just as rare and the 10-cent Washington Z-Grill scarcely less so. All three of these stamps were produced at the same time, along with more common Z-grill versions of the contemporary 2-cent, 3-cent, 5-cent and 12-cent stamps. The "Z" pattern, unique among grill templates used by the Post Office because it incises horizontal ridges into the stamp rather than vertical ridges, was replaced within a very short time, for stamps with the D- and E-Grills were already being postmarked in mid-February.
In general, philatelic fakes and forgeries are labels that look like postage stamps but have been produced to deceive or defraud. Learning to identify these can be a challenging branch of philately.
The postal history of Turkey and its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, dates to the 18th century when foreign countries maintained courier services through their consular offices in the Empire. Although delayed in the development of its own postal service, in 1863 the Ottoman Empire became the second independent country in Asia to issue adhesive postage stamps, and in 1875, it became a founding member of the General Postal Union, soon to become the Universal Postal Union. The Ottoman Empire became the Republic of Turkey in 1923, and in the following years, its postal service became more modernized and efficient and its postage stamps expertly designed and manufactured.
Postage stamp paper is the foundation or substrate of the postage stamp to which the ink for the stamp's design is applied to one side and the adhesive is applied to the other. The paper is not only the foundation of the stamp but it has also been incorporated into the stamp's design, has provided security against fraud and has aided in the automation of the postal delivery system.
The 1930 Graf Zeppelin stamps were a set of three airmail postage stamps, each depicting the image of the Graf Zeppelin, issued by the United States Post Office Department in 1930, exclusively for delivery of mail carried aboard that airship. Although the stamps were valid for postage on mail sent on the Zeppelin Pan American flight from Germany to the United States, via Brazil, the set was marketed to collectors and was largely intended to promote the route. 93.5% of the revenue generated by the sale of these stamps went to the Zeppelin Airship Works in Germany. The Graf Zepplin stamps were issued as a gesture of goodwill toward Germany. The three stamps were used briefly and then withdrawn from sale. The remainder of the stock was destroyed by the Post Office Department. Due to the high cost of the stamps during the Great Depression, most collectors and the general public could not afford them. Consequently, only about 227,000 of the stamps were sold, just 7% of the total printed, making them relatively scarce and prized by collectors.
The first revenue stamps in the United States were used briefly during colonial times, among the most notable usage involved the Stamp Act. Long after independence, the first revenue stamps printed by the United States government were issued in the midst of the American Civil War, prompted by the urgent need to raise revenue to pay for the great costs it incurred. After the war ended however, revenue stamps and the taxes they represented still continued. Revenue stamps served to pay tax duties on items that came under two main categories, Proprietary and Documentary. Proprietary stamps paid tax duties on goods like alcohol and tobacco, and were also used for various services, while Documentary stamps paid duties on legal documents, mortgage deeds, stocks and a fair number of other legal dealings. Proprietary and Documentary stamps often bore these respective designations, while in several of the issues they shared the same designs, sometimes with minor variations. Beginning in 1862 the first revenue stamps were issued, and would continue to be used for another hundred years and more. For the first twelve years George Washington was the only subject featured on U.S. revenue stamps, when in 1875 an allegorical figure of Liberty finally appeared. Revenue stamps were printed in many varieties and denominations and are widely sought after by collectors and historians. Revenue stamps were finally discontinued on December 31, 1967.
The Washington–Franklin Issues are a series of definitive U.S. Postage stamps depicting George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, issued by the U.S. Post Office between 1908 and 1922. The distinctive feature of this issue is that it employs only two engraved heads set in ovals—Washington and Franklin in full profile—and replicates one or another of these portraits on every stamp denomination in the series. This is a significant departure from previous definitive issues, which had featured pantheons of famous Americans, with each portrait-image confined to a single denomination. At the same time, this break with the recent past represented a return to origins. Washington and Franklin, after all, had appeared on the first two American stamps, issued in 1847, and during the next fifteen years, each of the eight stamp denominations available featured either Washington or Franklin.
The Series of 1902, also known as the Second Bureau Issue, is a set of definitive postage stamps in fourteen denominations ranging between one cent and five dollars, produced by the U. S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing and issued by the United States Post Office. Two denominations appeared in November and December 1902 and the other twelve were released between January and June 1903. These stamps were assigned the Scott Catalogue numbers 300 through 313. Also considered part of the series is a fifteenth stamp which appeared in November 1903—a second version of the 2¢ value, the original having faced severe criticism. This series, particularly noted for its exceptional ornateness and opulence of design, remained in circulation until late 1908, when it was superseded by the Washington-Franklin Issues.