Portal:Philately

WikiProject Philately

The Philately Portal

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.

Recognized content -

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

The Melita issue is a series of dual-purpose postage and revenue stamps issued by the Crown Colony of Malta between 1922 and 1926, depicting the national personification Melita. They were commemorative stamps since they celebrated the islands' new status as a self-governing colony following a new constitution in 1921, but also a definitive issue intended for regular use over an extended period of time.

Designed by two leading Maltese artists, Edward Caruana Dingli and Gianni Vella, the issue consisted of stamps in various denominations from ¼d to £1; Caruana Dingli's designs were used on the pence and pound values and Vella's design on the shilling values. The designs were poorly received when they were issued, and Caruana Dingli himself criticized the execution of the design. In subsequent years, however, Caruana Dingli's design came to be regarded as one of the most iconic Malta stamps, and his design for the figure of Melita formed the basis of the Maltese lira banknotes of 1989–2008 and gold and silver bullion coins minted since 2018. (Full article...)

List of recognized articles

Selected article -

The postage stamps and postal history of Palestine emerges from its geographic location as a crossroads amidst the empires of the ancient Near East, the Levant and the Middle East. Postal services in the region were first established in the Bronze Age, during the rule of Sargon of Akkad, and successive empires have established and operated a number of different postal systems over the millennia.

In the era of modern postage, the postal administrations in Palestine have included Austrian, French, Italian, German, Egyptian, and Russian post offices (through arrangements made with the Ottoman Empire), the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces, the British Mandate, and various interim authorities in the lead up to and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Since 1948, postal services have been provided by Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian National Authority. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Selected images

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

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that both of Karl R. Free's New Deal-era U.S. post office murals with Native American subjects have been challenged as offensive?
... that after the British Army captured New York City in 1776, Samuel Loudon fled to the village of Fishkill, where he founded the state's first post office?
... that Amrita Sher-Gil's painting Hill Women appeared on a 1978 Indian postage stamp?
... that an investigation into the Royal Oak post office shootings led one congressman to accuse the Postal Service of having been "asleep at the switch"?
... that James Diossa rescued the only public library and post office in Central Falls, Rhode Island, when the city went into bankruptcy?
... that a new Christmas stamp that debuted in the 350-person town of Bethlehem, Georgia, in 1967 got so much attention that the two-employee post office had to hire forty-three temporary workers?

General images -

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

Image 1The 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 2With 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 3Bavarian postal stationery postcard used from Nuremberg to Munich in 1895 (from Postal history)
Image 4The controversial 1981 United Nations stamp focusing on the "Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People". (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 5The US Mail postage stamp of Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim from 1961 (from Postage stamp)
Image 6The main components of a stamp:
1. Image
2. Perforations
3. Denomination
4. Country name (from Postage stamp)
Image 7The Penny Black, the world's first postage stamp (1 May 1840) (from Postage stamp)
Image 8Zeppelin mail from Gibraltar to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil via Berlin on the Christmas flight (12th South American flight) of 1934 (from Postal history)
Image 9Le Philatéliste by François Barraud (1929) (from Postage stamp)
Image 101834 pre-adhesive mail with Wittingen straight-line town handstamp to Ebsdorf (from Postal history)
Image 11The first officially perforated United States stamp (1857) (from Postage stamp)
Image 12A 1979 stamp issued for the United Nations Geneva office, denominated in Swiss francs. (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 13A Costa Rica Airmail stamp of 1937 (from Postage stamp)
Image 14A 1987 Faroe Islands miniature sheet, in which the stamps form a part of a larger image (from Postage stamp)
Image 15Rows of perforations in a sheet of 1940 postage stamps (from Postage stamp)
Image 16Lovrenc Košir, 1870s (from Postage stamp)
Image 17Rowland Hill (from Postage stamp)
Image 18The Basel Dove stamp (from Postage stamp)
Image 19The Red Mercury, a rare 1856 newspaper stamp of Austria (from Postage stamp)
Image 20A busy United Nations Post Office at the United Nations Headquarters, New York City (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 21First flight cover for Nassau to Miami airmail route in 1929 (from Postal history)
Image 22Postal censorship of 1940 civil cover from Madrid to Paris opened by both Spanish and French (Vichy) authorities (from Postal history)
Image 23The first United Nations stamp issued in 1951. (from United Nations Postal Administration)
Image 24A philatelic First Day Cover from Abu Dhabi (from Postage stamp)
Image 25The Penny Red, 1854 issue, the first officially perforated postage stamp (from Postage stamp)
Image 26Pre-stamp 1628 lettersheet opened up showing folds, address and seal, with letter being written on the obverse (from Postal history)

Selected stamp -

The Bull's Eye (Portuguese Olho-de-boi) postage stamps were the first stamps issued by Brazil, on 1 August 1843, having face values of 30, 60, and 90 réis. Brazil was the second country in the world, after the United Kingdom, to issue postage stamps valid within the entire country (as opposed to a local issue). Like the United Kingdoms's first stamps, the design does not include the country name.

The unusual name derives from the ornamental value figures inside the oval settings, and the arrangement of the stamps in the sheet, which permitted se-tenant pairs that looked like a pair of bull's eyes. The unusual naming of Brazilian stamps continued with the later issue of smaller, but rectangular designs, which were nicknamed snake's eyes, and the issue of similar designs to the Bull's Eyes, but smaller, of which the blue were called goat's eyes, and the black, cat's eyes. (Full article...)

List of selected stamps

List articles

Related portals

Topics

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.

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.

Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Commons
Free media repository
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals
Wikidata
Free knowledge base
Wikinews
Free-content news
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations
Wikisource
Free-content library
Wikiversity
Free learning tools

Other Portals

Discover Wikipedia using portals

Sources

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

Purge server cache

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.

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
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