The Philatelic Database – Archive of Stamp Collecting Articles

The message from Danzig on the back of this card is a simple enquiry: “why has it been so long since we have heard any news from you?” The writer’s anxiety may well have been heightened when the card came back over three months later as the addressee could not be traced.

This article tracks the first ten years of Chile airmail, from the inaugural pioneer official airmail services between Santiago and Valparaiso in 1927 to the subsequent links to the United States and Europe.

World War I naval/military postal historians will find this article from Maurice Mishkel most interesting…

The cover has a total postage of 1/ 7d made up of a pair of ½d orange KGV heads and the 1/6 Hermes airmail stamp. It has two ENMORE/ 130P 16 JL 36/ N.S.W postmarks plus a blue By Air Mail/ Par Avion vignette. It is addressed to E. L. Angeloglou. Esq./ 13. El. Manakh. [...]

This information has been extracted from the “Official Year Book of the Union of South Africa and of Basutoland, Bechuanaland Protectorate, and Swaziland” (1933-4).

Z 127 Graf Zeppelin was a large rigid airship (or dirigible). It was named after the German pioneer of airships, Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

This is one of the most extravagant advertising covers I have written about, and it is also the third cover to the Congo I have recorded.

Lot 142 in the Postal History Auction run by Yorkshire Cover Auctions, which closed 5 June 2004, appeared to have a familiar address. And yes, it was another Blatter cover, this time from Bahamas.

Published by kind permission of the author.

Before telling the story behind the fascinating cover illustrated, a description is necessary…

The first cover I suspect may have been philatelically contrived by the unidentified sender. It is addressed to Mr. Walter George Rendall, Artist, Goulburn…

This cover was addressed to No 1157. L.A.C. Palmer, T.P., R.A.A.F. Detachment, Australian Coronation Contingent, Australia House, London W.C. 2, England, and the two mauve 9d ‘Kangaroo on Map of Australia’ stamps were postmarked with an ASHFIELD/ 1 AM/ 7 MAY/ 1937/ N.S.W with a slogan roller cancel.

I discovered this interesting article in an English newspaper, The Standard published in 1910. It should be of great interest to French postal historians.

There is an extraordinary interest in all things philatelic, related to China. In this account taken from “The Postage Stamp” (Feb 1911), we have valuable information regarding the early postal rates and arrangements from 1834 onwards. Postal historians of China and Hong Kong will find much of interest in this article.

Bernie Madoff dominated the news from the revelation of his Ponzi scheme for investment to his recent sentencing. We should remember he is not the first, nor will he be the last, of the villains who separate people from their money.

I have recently acquired from New Zealand a collection of early philatelic journals. Amongst this acquisition was The Stamp Collector’s Magazine (February 1, 1871), published in London. The magazine published articles by such philatelic notables as Moëns, Ferrary and Edward Pemberton. We hope to publish some of these in the future…

Since 2002, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has been the location of various combatants captured in Afganistan. When was the start of Cuba’s association with prisoners-of-war? Go back 104 years to 1898.

Having been a general collector of world issues and trying to keep up with the flow of new issues, I decided to restrict my collecting. I tried British West Indies and Scandinavia, and finally settled for Canada as a nice simple country! This collection took place about 1957, when I felt to collect used Canada would give me a country of interest without any variations of watermark, perforation and paper.

Here is an interesting picture postcard sent by a young Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) member to his family whilst attending the Nuremberg Rally of 1935. One wonders if he survived till the end of the war, a mere ten years later…

The decline of the Portuguese Empire and the rise of Dutch and British mercantile interests in the East led to the isolation and neglect of Portuguese outposts, none more so than Timor.

There are many philatelic commonalities amongst the different areas that we all collect. To explain further, if we collect Postal History or stamps of a particular country or period, then our individual reasons for collecting them will in general be similar. The reasons that will differentiate our collecting habits will be more ephemeral ones such as an affinity with that country or period because we live there or served there during the war, or know a fellow collector who has been a mentor, or we read a book or our family has a connection or there is an historical interest etc.

In 1920 the famous pioneer air concern was born, under the title of the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service, and its initials soon became known wherever aviation matters were discussed.

This postcard is an important and almost unique piece of Australian postal history. This naval vessel had a very small crew and so any mail sent from Zanzibar during WWI is necessarily rare.

This article is probably one of the first airmail articles, certainly of any length, to be published in a philatelic journal. It was first published in Stamp Collectors’ Fortnightly (January, 1921) from a paper read by Major RS Archer, MC, as his Presidential Address before the Liverpool Junior Philatelic Society, October 11th, 1920.

For many years philatelists have been puzzled by these overprints, who produced them, and the circumstances which led to their production. The solution was thought to be provided in articles published in the philatelic press in the 1980s…