How to Grade the Condition of Stamps


Stamp collecting is a fun, educational hobby that always provides pleasure.  And it can, at times, be lucrative.  Serious stamp collecting requires a certain amount of knowledge.  This knowledge will allow the collector to build a strong stamp collection, not overpay and know the value of the collection.  A stamp collector should always determine the grade and condition of the stamps in his or her collection.

Stamp catalogs provide basic guidance on the grade and value of stamps, but all collectors should be aware of stamp varieties (almost always much more valuable than the most common version of a stamp) that in many cases can be detected only through a magnifying glass, watermark detector or perforation gauge.  It is therefore critical that collectors examine their stamps with these stamp collecting tools.  But that's not the only purpose of a close examination:  some stamp faults that seriously detract from the value of stamps can only be seen this way. 

Evaluation of condition and stamp grading involves centering, gum condition and cancellations.  Centering describes how well the stamp design is located:  ideal centering occurs when the design is smack in the middle of the stamp, mid-way between the stamp's perforations on all sides. 

Superb stamps feature centering that is as close to perfection as is possible. The margins between the design and perforations are precisely the same in each direction, all the way around the stamp.  The color of these stamps should be fresh and bright and of course no faults, even microscopic, should exist.

Extremely Fine stamps are close to perfection, with well-centered designs.  The color of these stamps should be fresh and bright and of course no faults, even microscopic, should exist.

Very Fine stamps are slightly less well-centered but still balanced.  This is the stamp grade used by many stamp catalogs, including those by Scott, for their stamp values.  The color of these stamps should be fresh and bright and of course no faults, even microscopic, should exist.

Fine, Good and Poor stamps feature increasingly more off-center stamp designs.  In poorly centered stamps the design there may be no margin on one or more sides, with the design entering into the perforations.  No faults should exist in Fine stamps.  Stamps may be graded "Good" or "Poor" because of centering, blurred or very heavy cancels, or the presence of a variety of faults.

Stamp Expertizing Certificates


Stamp collecting has been an extremely popular hobby for several generations - almost since the day the world's first postage stamp was issued, in 1840.  Stamp collecting is fun, educational, and not at all stressful; in fact it can be quite relaxing and rewarding in a laid-back way.  But in addition to having all those qualities, stamp collecting can also, sometimes, be financially rewarding.  It's likely that at least part of the reason stamp collecting is so popular is the stories we all hear about valuable stamps. 

Almost all of us have heard of stamps that are worth thousands of dollars.  In fact, a very few stamps are worth much more than that - a million dollars or more.  Finding one of these stamps is every philatelist's dream. 

Just like many other collectible items, stamps can be counterfeited or forged.  And the great popularity of stamp collecting sadly motivates some bad people to create forged stamps.  Fortunately, we can protect ourselves from these bad people because any stamp can be sent to a stamp expertizing service.  These stamp expertizers carefully evaluate every stamp that is submitted to them and determine whether it is genuine and authentic or a counterfeit or forgery.  They certify the result of their findings by means of an expertizing certificate that they issue.

Stamp expertizing services are especially helpful when a stamp collector is thinking of purchasing an expensive stamp.  If the stamp is submitted and certified as genuine, the sale can go through.  But if the result indicates it's a forgery, the stamp collector can back out and save a great deal of money.

The American Philatelic Society - the APS - runs one of the most sought-after expertizing services in the world, and it has been helping stamp collectors since 1903.  It's called the American Philatelic Expertizing Service - APEX - and it's an official division of the APS.  The process is simple:  just send the stamp to APEX in Pennsylvania, along with their minimal fee.  The stamp is numbered, photographed and examined by a team of up to five expert stamp collectors that are members of the service.  It can take a bit of time to have a stamp expertized, and al the experts on the panel must agree.  If they don't, APEX refunds the fee and declines to give an opinion.  If they do agree, the expert opinion of the panel is set forth on a certificate and send to the owner of the stamp, along with the stamp itself.  If the stamp owner disagrees the stamp can be re-examined within one year. 

APEX opinions are limited to whether a stamp is genuine - they never comment on a stamp's value.  But all items certified as genuine by APEX carry a guarantee - if a collector buys a stamp that's been certified as genuine by APEX but it later is shown to be a fake or misidentified, APEX will pay up to $5,000.  APEX and several other stamp expertizing services have fees that are minimal, and it's an easy way to be sure. 

Your First Stamp Collection

Stamp collecting is fun and it can be rewarding too.  You gain a definite sense of accomplishment when you build a stamp collection, and when your collection gets noticed by other people it makes you feel great. People around the world collect almost everything, including coins, postcards, dolls, toys and even barbed wire, but for some people there is nothing like collecting stamps.

Before you begin a stamp collection you must first decide what kind or type of stamps you want to collect. You can collect any kind of stamps but it might be more fun and rewarding if you focus on collecting a certain type of stamp.  You can choose from a variety of stamp types, countries, years, formats, purpose or condition (mint or used), or you can be a general worldwide stamp collector, including stamps of all types.  But if you want to go the worldwide route, keep in mind that more than 10,000 new stamps are issued every year throughout the world, and a complete collection would be prohibitively expensive.  Collecting the stamps issued by a specific country or on a specific topic is much more realistic, although with any stamp collection there will be stamps that are much too expensive for your budget. 

The easiest stamps to collect are those issued by the country where you live because they are much more accessible.  But you may choose to collect stamps from countries that have some sort of special significance to you. 
You can also collect stamps by topic.  Popular topical stamp collections - sometimes called thematic stamp collections - include stamps featuring birds, ships, trains, airplanes, flowers, space and sports.  But you can pick any topic you want:  one man even collects stamps featuring toilets!  

Stamp collecting is an easy hobby to begin, even if you have no money to spend on it.  Everyone gets mail, often with stamps on it, and you can begin there, because those stamps are free.  You can also ask friends, relatives and acquaintances to save the stamps they receive for your collection.  If you want stamps from another country, try finding a penpal who lives there.  You can exchange letters and stamps at the same time!

If your finances allow you can look for stamps at stamp shops in your area or at online stamp dealers.  Joining a local stamp club will let you learn more about stamps and stamp collections, give you more opportunities to trade stamps and sometimes buy them, too.

Make sure you are properly equipped with basic stamp collecting tools like a stamp album, tongs, hinges or mounts, a perforation gauge, a magnifying glass and a watermark detector.  Never mount your stamps using adhesive tape or glue: they will damage your stamps beyond repair.  Always use stamp tongs to handle your stamps:  no matter how often you wash your hands, there will always be oils which can damage the stamps.  A magnifying glass can help you separate and identify different varieties of stamps that look the same when seen with the naked eye.

No matter what you collect or how you go about it, make sure you enjoy it.  Stamp collecting is, after all, a hobby.

The Universal Postal Union / Union Postale Universelle (the UPU)
     

The Universal Postal Union is an international organization that controls the world's postal system by coordinating postal policies among its member nations.  Each country that's a member of the Universal Postal Union agrees to the same rules for international postal carriage, thereby standardizing postal arrangements.  But before the UPU was established each country had to enter into a separate treaty with each other country in order to regulate international mail to and from that country.

Recognizing that this situation resulted in a hodge-podge of postal rates and confusion, many countries signed the Treaty of Berne to create the "General Postal Union" in 1874.  It quickly revolutionized the processing and delivery of mail throughout the world.  Re-named the Universal Postal Union in 1878, the UPU is now a United Nations agency with its headquarters in Berne, Switzerland.

The UPU ensures that stamps of its member nations are accepted for the entire international route that a piece of mail takes, instead of the previous arrangement where mailers had to affix stamps of every country through which a piece of mail would pass.  It also established a more or less uniform rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world.

The UPU and its uniform policies for mail handling were a great success.  After the United Nations was founded, the Universal Postal Union became one of its agencies.  Any country that's a member of the UN may become a member of the UPU, and other than Andorra, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, all 192 United Nations member countries are also UPU members.  Vatican City, although not a member of the UN, is also a member of the UPU.

Throughout the years many countries have issued stamps in honor of the UPU, and many of these stamps feature beautiful designs.  Some stamp collectors form topical stamps collections that consist only of these UPU stamps.  They're generally not expensive to collect, so why not try it?

USA New Stamp Issues For 2010 (Tentative Schedule)


The tentative schedule for U.S. stamp subjects to be 

issued in 2010, announced August 6 at  the American 

Philatelic Society's Stampshow in Pittsburgh, includes 

entertainers Katharine Hepburn, Roy Rogers and Kate 

Smith, along with Garfield the cat and other comic strip 

characters.

Here's the tentative schedule, although it's subject to 

change.  Face values will of course depend on the 

applicable postage rates.

January:

• 44-cent Year of the Tiger commemorative and souvenir sheet
• 44-cent Olympic Winter Games commemorative
• Mackinac Bridge in Michigan Priority Mail stamp
• Bixby Creek Bridge in California Express Mail stamp
  
  
  

February:

• Four 44-cent Distinguished Sailors commemoratives (William S. Sims, Arleigh A. Burike, John McCloy and Doris Miller)

April:

• Poet Julia de Burgos commemorative (Literary Arts series)
• Four American Flag stamps showing the flag flying in four seasons
• 10 stamps (five cats and five dogs) titled Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet in booklet form
• 
  
  

  Love stamp (purple pansies in a basket)

  
  

May:

• Katharine Hepburn commemorative (Legends of Hollywood series

June:

• Kate Smith commemorative
• Oscar Micheaux commemorative (Black Heritage series)
• Fourth set of 10 Flags of Our Nations coils
• Two Negro League Baseball stamps

July:

• Five Sunday Funnies commemoratives ("Archie," "Beetle Bailey," "Dennis the Menace," "Garfield" and "Calvin and Hobbes")
• Four Cowboys of the Silver Screen commemoratives (William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers)

August: 

• Winslow Homer commemorative (American Treasure series)
  
  

September:

• 10 commemorative stamps featuring abstract expressionists (Hans Hofmann's "The Golden Wall," Adolph Gottlieb's "Romanesque Facade," Mark Rothko's "Orange and Yellow," Arshile Gorky's "The Liver is the Cock's Comb," Clyfford Still's "1948-C," Willem de Kooning's "Asheville," Barnett Newman's "Achilles," Jackson Pollock's "Convergence," Robert Motherwell's "Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34" and Joan Mitchell's "La Grande Vallee 0")

October:

• 10 Hawaiian rain forest commemoratives (Nature of America series)
• Four Holiday Evergreens (ponderosa pine, eastern red cedar, blue spruce and balsam fir) Christmas stamps
• Madonna and Child Christmas stamp (a detail of "Madonna of the Candelabra" by Raphael)

Possible Additional New Issues:

• 100th anniversary of Boy Scouts of America commemorative
• Definitive stamps featuring illustrations by Laura Stutzman
  
  
  

The History of Stamp Collecting - Part III


This post continues and completes our series on the history of stamp collecting.

The 20th century saw a steady increase in the popularity of stamp collecting, with the number of stamps that were available for collecting positively exploding.  Many of the stamps from the 1910s-1940s are not rare, but they are nonetheless fine examples of design and engraving. 

Although the period between 1840 and 1940 is often called the "Classic Era" of stamps, the period right around 1940 probably represents the peak of the so-called "Golden Age" of stamp collecting, at least in the US.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, an avid stamp collector himself, was President and stamp collecting garnered publicity and prestige through him.  During this period almost every young boy (and many young girls) collected stamps.  They spent many an hour every week happily trading stamps and otherwise working on their stamp collections.  Philatelic periodicals and stamp shops were plentiful, and even ordinary department stores all had stamp departments stocked with stamps and stamp supplies.  I well remember the Gimbels store stamp department and how going there was the highlight of every weekend.

The periods immediately before and after World War II gave birth to a variety of interesting philatelic items - everything from Weimar inflation stamps through Hitler head stamps to stamps from behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.  Some countries that formerly issued stamps went away and became so-called dead countries, while other countries, such as East Germany, sprung up.  The British Empire was seeing its final days but stamps from exotic British colonies were still of very high quality, and seeing them let us have a glimpse of life in those exotic places.

After the war, new stamp printing technologies were developed.  Stamp issuing countries began to realize that they could garner significant income by marketing their stamps directly to collectors.  Collecting mint never hinged stamps became the rage.  Some countries (and pseudo-countries) issued stamps solely for the purpose of selling them to collectors, with no intent to ever be used on the mail.  The number of stamps issued throughout the world hugely increased, with the result that building a comprehensive worldwide collection is now very difficult if not impossible - there are just too many stamps being issued.

Even though the US now produces more than 100 new stamps every year, in today's era we see post offices printing postage labels to be affixed to mail.  Post offices should be selling stamps at the counter for use on the mail, and in truth they do, but they'd rather just print those labels and sell stamps to a few die-hard users and collectors.  But that's not the only strike against the future fate of stamps:  postage also can be printed using peoples' home computers and printers.  

Are stamps becoming irrelevant to the mail?  Perhaps so.  In the future it may well be that the only stamps sold are sold to collectors.  A dire prediction and a bleak thought, because that will likely bring the hobby to a crashing end.  

How to avoid this?  Buy stamps, but use them on your mail in addition to adding them to your collection.  And don't just buy self-adhesive definitive stamps, either - buy some commemorative stamps.  Don't let the post office put those postage labels that they print out onto your mail.  Use stamps whenever possible.  That's the best way to ensure the hobby continues.

A Primer on the History of Stamp Collecting - Part II


As we mentioned yesterday, stamps were one of the main causes of the American Revolution.  Great Britain's Stamp Act of 1765 imposed a tax on the population of the American British colonies without any input from the colonists.  This tax led to one of the most famous rallying cries of the colonists and one of the founding principles of the USA:  "No taxation without representation."  But those types of stamps are different than the postage stamps that most people collect today.

The first government-issued postage stamps were issued by Great Britain in 1840, and they were a hit right from the beginning.  Although many private and local post stamps had been issued by then, Britain's Penny Black and Penny Blue were the first "official" stamps printed by a national postal authority.  Sir Rowland Hill came up with the idea as a means to prepay postage at the expense of the mailer instead of charging the recipient on delivery, but an additional benefit was a standardized rate for all mail carried throughout the country.  His idea caught on quickly and spread throughout the world, with the United States issuing its first postage stamp in 1847. 

Stamp collecting also became popular very quickly, and the wares of stamp dealers began to be in demand.  By the end of the 19th century stamp albums, along with stamp collecting tools such as stamp tongs, stamp hinges, magnifiers and stamp catalogs had come into common use.  Around this same time, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, some of the world's most important stamp sets were issued.  Classic US stamps falling into this category include the Columbian set of 1892, issued in connection with Chicago's Columbian Exposition - the World's Fair that celebrated the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America. Prized for their beautiful engraving and designs, the Columbians were also the first (technically, anyway) commemorative stamps issued by the US.  Other important US stamp sets from this period include the Trans-Mississippi Exposition set and the Pan-American Exposition set.  Far more (in my opinion) than the coveted (and in my opinion highly overpriced) Graf Zeppelin set, when taken together, the Columbians, the Trans-Mississippis and the Pan-Americans represent the pinnacle of US stamps, and I do not believe their quality and beauty will ever be surpassed.

The Universal Postal Union, created in the late 19th century, also significantly impacted stamp collecting.  We'll discuss the UPU more in a couple of days, but for now suffice it to say that the UPU imposed standardized stamp colors for international mail, causing a plethora of new stamps to be issued in order to comply.

Tomorrow we'll add the final post in this short series on the history of stamp collecting.

A Primer on the History of Stamp Collecting - Part I


Stamp collecting has a long and rich history, and few hobbies have enjoyed such enduring popularity.  Although stamp collecting is sometimes called the "hobby of kings," you don't have to be rich to enjoy it.  Many people of somewhat limited means have built beautiful, and above all, rewarding stamp collections.  

Collecting stamps can be the hobby of a lifetime, but if you're anything like me, the more you know about its history, the more you'll enjoy it.  The fact that many famous and important people have been dedicated stamp collectors has probably added much to its appeal.  Kings, queens, United States Presidents, corporate CEOS and people in just about every other profession you can think of have been stamp collectors, and you can share their passion for philately.

Most people collect postage stamps and those types of stamp collections could not exist before 1840, when the world's first government-issued postage stamp - Great Britain's Penny Black - was issued.  However, stamps of other types could be collected before 1840, including collecting tax stamps, revenue stamps, seals and more.  No one knows how many people collected these other types of stamps before 1840, but mankind's predilection to collect just about anything makes me pretty sure that at least some did.  

The Netherlands issued the first tax stamp way back in 1624.  They soon came into popular use throughout Europe, including Great Britain, and were used to indicate prepayment of taxes that were levied by those countries' governments.

Did you know that stamps were one of the main causes of the American Revolution?

Stay tuned for more stamp collecting history tomorrow.

More on Postage Stamp Values (Part II)


Some amount of philatelic knowledge and experience is required before anyone can determine the value of a vintage or modern postage stamp.  Sometimes it's just a matter of looking a stamp up in a stamp catalog, but in many cases stamps that are valuable look almost identical to stamps that have only the minimum value.  They can be so similar that even experienced stamp collectors and stamp dealers must sometimes send a stamp to a stamp expertizing service before they can be sure about the identity and value of a stamp.

There are a few things that anyone who inherits an old stamp collection - or even just a box of loose stamps - should realize. 

Most importantly, know that although there certainly are exceptions, the stamps you inherit probably won't be valuable enough to pay for a new car, put your child through college or buy a new house.  If you start out with this assumption and later find out otherwise, that the stamps do have a great deal of value, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

You should know that no one, whether they're an experienced stamp dealer, stamp collector or anyone else, will be able to tell you the value of your stamps without seeing them.  You should be willing to compensate the person who reviews your stamps, at least in some small way.  They'll spend a lot of time looking at your stamps and paying them something for their time and knowledge is only fair.  A stamp dealer who evaluates your stamps should be looked at in the same way as any other professional who gives informed opinions.

If it turns out that your stamps don't have much value, don't despair.  They just might provide you with a relaxing and challenging new hobby that you can enjoy for years to come.