Portal:Philately
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Sir Rowland Hill was a British teacher and pamphleteer who popularised the concept of penny postage at a rate of a penny per half ounce, without regard to distance. He is usually credited in the UK with originating the basic concepts of the modern postal service.
Hill published his famous pamphlet Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability in 1837 in which he called for postage to be prepaid by the sender. Hitherto postage had been paid by the recipient. He suggested the prepayment be proven by prepaid letter sheets or adhesive stamps.
In 1840 his proposals led to the introduction of the world's first postage stamp; the Penny Black.
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 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 British Guiana 1c magenta is among the rarest of the world's postage stamps, issued in limited numbers in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1856. Only one specimen is now known to exist.
The anticipated arrival of stamps never arrived by ship in 1856, so the local postmaster, E.T.E. Dalton, authorised a printer, Joseph Baum and William Dallas, of Georgetown, to print an emergency issue of three stamps. Dalton gave some specifications about the design, but the printer chose to add a ship image of his own design on the stamp series. The one copy known to exist is in used condition and has been cut into an octagonal shape. A signature, in accordance to Dalton's policy, can be seen on the left hand side. Although dirty and heavily postmarked on the upper left hand side, it is nonetheless regarded as priceless.
An unsubstantiated rumour developed in the 1920s that a second copy of the stamp had been discovered, and that the then owner of the stamp, Arthur Hind, quietly purchased this second copy and destroyed it.
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
