Legendary Stamp Collectors - Freddie Mercury (of all people!)


Who would ever have guessed that the late Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the famous British rock group Queen, was a stamp collector?

His interest in philately began when he was still a young boy in India, long before he changed his name from Farrokh Bulsara to Freddie Mercury. Freddie, whose parents were both Indian, was born in Zanzibar. His father, who worked in the British Colonial Office, collected British Commonwealth stamps and inspired his son to follow in his stamp collecting footsteps.

Rather than trying to acquire valuable stamps, Freddie chose each of the stamps in his collection based on their design and color - in other words, based on whether they were pleasant to the eye. He carefully placed them in his stamp album in beautiful arrangements. By the time of his death in 1991, his stamp collection was substantial although not of great value in and of itself. After his death his father sold his own and Freddie's stamp collections to raise money for an AIDS charity, the Mercury Phoenix Trust.

Legendary Stamp Collectors - Ferrary

Philipp von Ferrary, probably the world's foremost stamp collector with the possible exception of Queen Elizabeth II, assembled the most complete stamp collection in the world. A member of the French nobility, he eventually renounced his titles and asked to simply be known as "Ferrary," which is how most stamp dealers and collectors refer to him even today.

Stamps were Ferrary's passion, and he began collecting at a young age. Eventually it became so large that he hired people to maintain it. His worldwide stamp collection was amazingly complete, and included true stamp rarities such as the unique Tre Skilling Yellow of Sweden, the 1856 one cent "Black on Magenta" of British Guiana and an unused copy of the two cent Hawaiian
Missionary stamp of 1851, for which its previous owner had been murdered by a fellow stamp collector.

After the outbreak of World War I, Ferrary willed his stamp collection to the Berlin Postmuseum in hopes that it would be made accessible to the public after his death. Late in the war he moved from France to Switzerland, leaving several hundred stamp albums in the safekeeping of the Austrian embassy in Paris. He died shortly after moving, so he was fortunate to not witness what happened next. After the war's end the French government seized his incredible collection, claiming it as reparations for the war. It was broken up and sold off, bit by bit, over the next several years for a total of around 30 million francs.

His legacy lives on, however: many rare stamps proudly bear an "ex-Ferrary" in their provenance. Ferrary compiled an unequalled collection, and his name will live on in philatelic history for as long as the hobby exists.