The first philatelic journal, The Monthly Advertiser, was published on 15 December 1862. Over the next few decades, until the new century, hundreds of them took birth; most died after a few issues and well within their first year. These 19th century periodicals were usually not worth the paper they were printed on and and…
A few weeks back I wrote a blog post on an 1834 entire from Calcutta taking the curricle from Morpeth to Edinburgh. In it, I discuss how one needs to know the distances between the various towns the letter passed through in order to figure out the inland rate markings in Great Britain. Further, I…
This article was republished, with some modifications, as “The Calumnies of Samuel Singer, Charles Phillips, and Stanley Gibbons” Philatelic Literature Review 71 no. 4 Whole no. 277 (Fourth Quarter 2022). Philatelic Literature Review is the journal of the American Philatelic Research Library. Some years ago, while leafing through the auction catalogue of the George T….
Webb’s (Figure 1) The Philatelic and Postal History of Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports of China and Japan (PPHK) has been on my purchase short-list for some time now. A few days back I saw a reprint of book on eBay but it looked, well, different. I bid and managed to bag it. Having…
A few weeks back, Frank Walton RDP, was kind enough to alert me to the sale of his six-volume The De La Rue Collection (2014) at an Australian auction house – Abacus Auctions; he knew that I have been searching for the set. While I had placed an alarm to wake myself up early that…
More than a 100 years back, the best philatelic bibliography ever, Bibliotheca Lindesiana Vol VII: A Bibliography of the Writings General Special and Periodical forming the Literature of Philately or more popularly, ‘The Crawford Catalogue’, was published. Since then many libraries and private collectors (such as Dr. Stanley Bierman and Albert Kronenberg) have published bibliographies…
Since the earliest days of stamp collecting in the 1860s to date, there have been so many great philatelists that it is almost impossible to choose the GOAT – greatest of all time. However it is certain that Robson Lowe (1905 – 1997) would find his name in any potential voter’s top three list. Auctioneer,…
Arthur Hind was arguably 20th century’s greatest stamp collector. He was to the second and third decade of the century what Philippe De Ferrari and Thomas K. Tapling were to the final two of the previous one. Amongst his prized possessions were the British Guiana 1c magenta, currently the most expensive item in philately last…
There is this very popular saying in Hindi: जब भगवन देता है चपड़ फाड् कर देता है। This literally translates as, “When God gives, he tears down the roof and gives.” The implied meaning is that when good things have to happen, they often happen together in quick succession (Of course it applies equally to…
After many suggestions and discussions (Figure 1), eight stalwarts (of the 49 invited) met exactly 150 years ago on 10 April 1869 (Figure 2) at 93, Great Russell Street and formed The Philatelic Society, London. These fore-bearers included: Sir Daniel Cooper, who was elected the President Frederick A. Philbrick, the Vice President W. Dudley Atlee,…
A few days back I bought, off eBay UK, a copy of Beech et al’s New Zealand and Dependencies: A Philatelic Bibliography. The edition was shown as bound in bright red cloth and thank to Brian Birch’s magnus opus, The Philatelic Bibliophile’s Companion, I immediately recognised it to be the British Philatelic Trust’s version –…
It was sometime in 2012/13 that I started collecting Indian mails going to foreign destinations in the pre-UPU period. The comprehensive book on the subject is Col. D. N. Martin and Col. Neil Blair’s Overseas Letter Postage from India 1854 to 1876 but that covers only routes and rates and not accountancy markings on, well,…
