Portal:Philately

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The United States Accomplishments in Space Commemorative Issue of 1967

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.

Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects, such as covers (envelopes, postcards or parcels with stamps affixed). It is one of the world's most popular hobbies, with estimates of the number of collectors ranging up to 20 million in the United States alone.

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The Antarctic Treaty issue is a postage stamp that was issued by the United States Post Office Department on June 23, 1971. Designed by Howard Koslow, it commemorates the tenth anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty, and is notable as Koslow's first postage stamp design.

The stamp has a face value of eight cents. One-hundred thirty million were issued. (Full article...)

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The Universal Postal Union (UPU, French: Union postale universelle) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that coordinates postal policies among member nations and facilitates a uniform worldwide postal system. It has 192 member states and is headquartered in Bern, Switzerland.

Established in 1874 as the General Postal Union, the UPU is among the oldest extant intergovernmental organizations. It sought to standardize international mail delivery by establishing a uniform postal rate and equal treatment between domestic and foreign mail. The organization adopted its current name in 1878. It operated independently before being incorporated into the UN in 1948. (Full article...)

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Image 1A fawn colored UPSS size 7 stamped envelope, watermark 6, laid paper, US postal stationery envelope from the Plimpton series of 1883.
Image 2Advertising for the stamp dealer Charles Nissen on a booklet pane from the 1929 PUC stamps of Great Britain.
Image 3A crash cover is any type of cover, (including air accident cover, interrupted flight cover, wreck cover) meaning any piece of mail that has been recovered from a fixed-wing aircraft, airship or aeroplane crash, train wreck, shipwreck or other postal transportation accident during its journey from sender to recipient. In many cases it was possible to recover some or even all of the mail being carried and the postal authorities typically apply a postal marking (cachet), label, or mimeograph that gets affixed to the cover explaining the delay and damage to the recipient, and possibly enclose the letter in an "ambulance cover" or "body bag" if it was badly damaged and forwarded to its intended destination.
Image 4A 1956 half penny stamp of the British Solomon Islands
Image 5A military stamp used by the British forces in Egypt around 1935
Image 6Widespread hoarding of coins during the American Civil War created a shortage, prompting the use of stamps for currency. To be sure, the fragility of stamps made them unsuitable for hand-to-hand circulation, and to solve this problem, John Gault invented the encased postage stamp in 1862. A normal U. S. stamp was wrapped around a circular cardboard disc and then placed inside a coin-like circular brass jacket.
Image 7Unissued 1956 £1 Jamaican chocolate and violet, the first stamp designed for Queen Elizabeth II. Held in the British Library Crown Agents Collection.^[1]
Image 8A magnifying glass is a convex lens which is used to produce a magnified image of an object. The lens is usually mounted in a frame with a handle though other designs are produced. A magnifying glass works by creating a magnified virtual image of an object behind the lens. Stamp collectors frequently use magnifying glasses to inspect their stamps. This photograph shows the magnified image of the Deutsche Post 1 Reichsmark stamp issued on May 12 1946.
Image 9This is a very scarce use of the world's first postage stamp, the Penny Black, used on first day of valid use, May 6, 1840, tied by red Maltese Cross cancellation on folded cover to Warwickshire, brown "C MY-6 1840" first day datestamp on backflap verifies date of use. This was sold as lot 1018 at Robert Siegal's 2006 Rarities of the World auction for $45,000.
Image 10A 1910 Italian stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Expedition of the Thousand
Image 11Ross Dependency 1957 issue (3 of 4 stamps)
Image 11Ross Dependency 1957 issue (3 of 4 stamps)
Image 12Cover sent by Zeppelin from Gibraltar on 20 November 1934 to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil via London and Berlin for the Christmas flight (12th South American flight) of 1934 that took place between the 8th and 19th. The two red "MIT LUFTSCHIFF GRAF ZEPPELIN" and green circular marking were applied by the post office. This is a printed matter item that has been registered.
Image 13United States newspaper and periodicals stamps of 1875
Image 14A postal stationery envelope used from London to Düsseldorf in 1900, with additional postage stamp perfinned "C & S" identifying the user as "Churchill & Sim" per the seal on the reverse shown on inset. A perfin, the contraction of 'PERForated INitials', is a pattern of tiny holes punched through a postage stamp. Organizations used perforating machines to make perforations forming letters or designs in postage stamps with the purpose of preventing pilferage. It is often difficult to identify the originating uses of individual perfins because there are often no identifying features but when a perfin is affixed to a cover that has some user identifying feature, like a company name, address, or even a postmark or cancellation of a known town where the company had offices, this enhances the perfin.

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that Sophie Rain went from living on food stamps to making US$43 million in a year on OnlyFans?
... that working at a post office was how Derrick Harden became an NFL player?
... that a 1991 US postage stamp based on a print by Sabra Field sold more than 60 million copies?
... that Amrita Sher-Gil's painting Hill Women appeared on a 1978 Indian postage stamp?
... that Post Office Square does not have any post offices?

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The following are images from various philately-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1The Red Mercury, a rare 1856 newspaper stamp of Austria (from Postage stamp)
Image 2Zeppelin mail from Gibraltar to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil via Berlin on the Christmas flight (12th South American flight) of 1934 (from Postal history)
Image 3The 1981 United Nations stamp on the "Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People". (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 41834 pre-adhesive mail with Wittingen straight-line town handstamp to Ebsdorf (from Postal history)
Image 5A philatelic First Day Cover from Abu Dhabi (from Postage stamp)
Image 6With the growth of urban centres across the Western hemisphere in the 19th century Post Offices were located on main arterial routes (from Postal history)
Image 7A Costa Rica Airmail stamp of 1937 (from Postage stamp)
Image 8A busy United Nations Post Office at the United Nations Headquarters, New York City (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 9The Penny Black, the world's first postage stamp (1 May 1840) (from Postage stamp)
Image 10The first officially perforated United States stamp (1857) (from Postage stamp)
Image 11The 1985 postage stamp for the 115th birth anniversary of Vladimir Lenin. Portrait of Lenin (based on a 1900 photography of Y. Mebius in Moscow) with the Tampere Lenin Museum. (from Postage stamp)
Image 12Postal censorship of 1940 civil cover from Madrid to Paris opened by both Spanish and French (Vichy) authorities (from Postal history)
Image 13A 1979 stamp issued for the United Nations Geneva office, denominated in Swiss francs (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 14The first United Nations stamp issued in 1951. (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 15The main components of a stamp:
1. Image
2. Perforations
3. Denomination
4. Country name (from Postage stamp)
Image 16Rowland Hill (from Postage stamp)
Image 17A 1987 Faroe Islands miniature sheet, in which the stamps form a part of a larger image (from Postage stamp)
Image 18The US Mail postage stamp of Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim from 1961 (from Postage stamp)
Image 19Pre-stamp 1628 lettersheet opened up showing folds, address and seal, with letter being written on the obverse (from Postal history)
Image 20Lovrenc Košir, 1870s (from Postage stamp)
Image 21Rows of perforations in a sheet of 1940 postage stamps (from Postage stamp)
Image 22Le Philatéliste by François Barraud (1929) (from Postage stamp)
Image 23First flight cover for Nassau to Miami airmail route in 1929 (from Postal history)
Image 24Bavarian postal stationery postcard used from Nuremberg to Munich in 1895 (from Postal history)
Image 25The Basel Dove stamp (from Postage stamp)

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The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840 but was not valid for use until 6 May. The stamp features a profile of 21-year-old Queen Victoria.

In 1837, British postal rates were high, complex, and anomalous. To simplify matters, Sir Rowland Hill proposed an adhesive stamp to indicate pre-payment of postage. At the time it was normal for the recipient to pay postage on delivery, charged by the sheet and on distance travelled. By contrast, the Penny Black allowed letters of up to 1⁄2 ounce (14 grams) to be delivered at a flat rate of one penny, regardless of distance. (Full article...)

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WikiProject

WikiProject Philately organizes the development of articles relating to philately. 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.

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Selected works

Williams, Louis N., & Williams, Maurice (1990). Fundamentals of Philately {revised ed.). American Philatelic Society. ISBN 0-9335-8013-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Hornung, Otto (1970). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Stamp Collecting. Hamlyn. ISBN 0-600-01797-4.
Stuart Rossiter & John Fowler (1991). World History Stamp Atlas (reprint ed.). pub: Black Cat. ISBN 0-7481-0309-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)