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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Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

Benn in 2006

Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as The 2nd Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party politician who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the Member of Parliament for Bristol South East and Chesterfield for 47 of the 51 years between 1950 and 2001. He later served as President of the Stop the War Coalition from 2001 to 2014.

The son of a Liberal and later Labour Party politician, Benn was born in Westminster and privately educated at Westminster School. He was elected for Bristol South East at the 1950 general election but inherited his father's peerage on his death, which prevented him from continuing to serve as an MP. He fought to remain in the House of Commons and campaigned for the ability to renounce the title, a campaign which eventually succeeded with the Peerage Act 1963. He was an active member of the Fabian Society and served as chairman from 1964 to 1965. He served in Harold Wilson's Labour government, first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as Minister of Technology. (Full article...)

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Selected article -

Benjamin Franklin postage stamp of 1895

Postal service in the United States began with the delivery of stampless letters whose cost was borne by the receiving person, later encompassed pre-paid letters carried by private mail carriers and provisional post offices, and culminated in a system of universal prepayment that required all letters to bear nationally issued adhesive postage stamps.

In the earliest days, ship captains arriving in port with stampless mail would advertise in the local newspaper names of those having mail and for them to come collect and pay for it, if not already paid for by the sender. Postal delivery in the United States was a matter of haphazard local organization until after the Revolutionary War, when eventually a national postal system was established. Stampless letters, paid for by the receiver, and private postal systems, were gradually phased out after the introduction of adhesive postage stamps, first issued by the U.S. government post office July 1, 1847, in the denominations of five and ten cents, with the use of stamps made mandatory in 1855. (Full article...)

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Selected images

Image 1A 1956 half penny stamp of the British Solomon Islands
Image 2A 1910 Italian stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Expedition of the Thousand
Image 3Cover 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 4A military stamp used by the British forces in Egypt around 1935
Image 5A 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 6This 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 7A fawn colored UPSS size 7 stamped envelope, watermark 6, laid paper, US postal stationery envelope from the Plimpton series of 1883.
Image 8A 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.
Image 9Unissued 1956 £1 Jamaican chocolate and violet, the first stamp designed for Queen Elizabeth II. Held in the British Library Crown Agents Collection.^[1]
Image 10Widespread 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 11United States newspaper and periodicals stamps of 1875
Image 12A 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 13Advertising for the stamp dealer Charles Nissen on a booklet pane from the 1929 PUC stamps of Great Britain.
Image 14Ross Dependency 1957 issue (3 of 4 stamps)

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that a decline in the sale of stamps from the Pitcairn Islands led to the territory's bankruptcy?
... that the coat of arms of Jersey was allowed to be featured on its stamps during the occupation in World War II, with the Germans unaware that it was also the royal arms of England?
... that after Irish post office clerk Maureen Flavin Sweeney reported worsening weather conditions, Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed to postpone D-Day by 24 hours?
... that in 1850, about a quarter of the post offices of the Swiss Post were located in taverns?
... that in 2007, Arthur Gray's £2 Kangaroo and Map stamp sold for a world record price for a single Australian stamp?
... that Argentinian Ricardo D. Eliçabe qualified as a physician, co-founded a petroleum refinery, and wrote about forgeries of Bolivia's first stamps?

General images -

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

Image 1Stamps of the Philippine Republic, 1898–1899 (from Postage stamp)
Image 2A philatelic First Day Cover from Abu Dhabi (from Postage stamp)
Image 3Lovrenc Košir, 1870s (from Postage stamp)
Image 4The Penny Red, 1854 issue, the first officially perforated postage stamp (from Postage stamp)
Image 5The Red Mercury, a rare 1856 newspaper stamp of Austria (from Postage stamp)
Image 6The US Mail postage stamp of Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim from 1961 (from Postage stamp)
Image 7The Penny Black, the world's first postage stamp (1 May 1840) (from Postage stamp)
Image 8Pre-stamp 1628 lettersheet opened up showing folds, address and seal, with letter being written on the obverse (from Postal history)
Image 9A busy United Nations Post Office at the United Nations Headquarters, New York City (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 10The main components of a stamp:
1. Image
2. Perforations
3. Denomination
4. Country name (from Postage stamp)
Image 11The controversial 1981 United Nations stamp focusing on the "Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People". (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 12A 1987 Faroe Islands miniature sheet, in which the stamps form a part of a larger image (from Postage stamp)
Image 13With 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 14The first United Nations stamp issued in 1951. (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 15Rowland Hill (from Postage stamp)
Image 16Zeppelin mail from Gibraltar to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil via Berlin on the Christmas flight (12th South American flight) of 1934 (from Postal history)
Image 171834 pre-adhesive mail with Wittingen straight-line town handstamp to Ebsdorf (from Postal history)
Image 18Le Philatéliste by François Barraud (1929) (from Postage stamp)
Image 19The first officially perforated United States stamp (1857) (from Postage stamp)
Image 20First flight cover for Nassau to Miami airmail route in 1929 (from Postal history)
Image 21Bavarian postal stationery postcard used from Nuremberg to Munich in 1895 (from Postal history)
Image 22The 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 23A 1979 stamp issued for the United Nations Geneva office, denominated in Swiss francs. (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 24A Costa Rica Airmail stamp of 1937 (from Postage stamp)
Image 25Postal censorship of 1940 civil cover from Madrid to Paris opened by both Spanish and French (Vichy) authorities (from Postal history)
Image 26Rows of perforations in a sheet of 1940 postage stamps (from Postage stamp)
Image 27The Basel Dove stamp (from Postage stamp)

Selected stamp -

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 Franklin 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, also with only 2 known to exist. The 10-cent Washington Z-Grill scarcely less rare with only 6 known to exist. First production runs of Z-Grill process were made of the common Z-grill denominations - the 2-cent Jackson, 3-cent Washington, and 12-cent Washington stamps. The earliest known postmarks of these Z-grill stamps date from January 1868. Then in February 1868 three other denominations were printed with the Z. Grill, the above mentioned 1-cent Franklin, 10-cent Washington and 15-cent Lincoln stamps. These three denominations were only in production for a short period of time with only about 1000 of each being printed before production shifted to the F-grill - resulting in the rarity of these 3 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. (Full article...)

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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.

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.

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Sources

↑ "Philatelic Collections: General Collections". British Library. 2003-11-30. Archived from the original on 30 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-16.

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This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] "Philatelic Collections: General Collections". British Library. 2003-11-30. Archived from the original on 30 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-16.

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Revenue stamps by country
Africa	Basutoland Bechuanaland British Somaliland Cape of Good Hope Eritrea Ethiopia Gold Coast Kenya Lesotho Libya Malawi Mali Mauritius Nigeria Nyasaland Rhodesia Rhodesia and Nyasaland Seychelles South Africa Transvaal Uganda Zanzibar Zululand
Americas	Antigua Argentina Bahamas Barbados Bermuda Bolivia British Guiana British Honduras British Virgin Islands Canada Colombia Dominica Falkland Islands Guatemala Guyana Jamaica Leeward Islands Montserrat Trinidad and Tobago Turks and Caicos Islands United States Uruguay
Asia	Aden Bahrain Bangladesh Batum China Hong Kong India Malaysia Malay states Oman Pakistan Philippines Sarawak Singapore United Arab Emirates Weihaiwei
Europe	Cyprus Gibraltar Guernsey Ireland Isle of Man Italy Jersey Malta Northern Cyprus Switzerland Basel United Kingdom Northern Ireland Scotland
Oceania	Australia Australian Capital Territory New South Wales Northern Territory Queensland South Australia Tasmania Victoria Western Australia British Solomon Islands Fiji Hawaii New Zealand
Philately portal

Mail and postal systems
History	Timeline of postal history African countries Asian countries European countries Oceanian countries Pan-American countries Postal censorship	Envelope for mailing
Components	Advertising mail Bulk mail Envelope Indicia Information-Based Indicia Letter box Mail Mail bag Meter stamp Parcel Parcel locker Post box / Mailbox Relay box Post office Post office box Postage meter Postage stamp Postal code Postal marking
Delivery	Airmail Express Package delivery Registered Surface Surface Air Lifted (SAL)
Staff	Mail carrier Postal worker Postmaster Postmaster General
Processing	Intelligent Mail barcode Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Multiline Optical Character Reader Mail cover Mail sorting Package forwarding PLANET POSTNET
Institutions and systems	Postal entities Postal museums Postal services Postal systems by country Trade unions
Related	Courier Philately most expensive philatelic items Stamp collecting notable stamps catalogues Philatelic terminology
List of entities that have issued postage stamps	A–E F–L M–Z
Philately portal Category Commons