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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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Smith c. 1924

Dean Cullen Smith (September 27, 1899 – March 4, 1987) was a pioneer American mail pilot, test pilot, flying instructor, Antarctic pilot, and airline pilot. At 17 years of age, he became the youngest flight instructor in U.S. Army history. He was a lead pilot for the U.S. Postal Service's airmail service, and was the first pilot to initiate night air mail flights. He was an executive for many airlines and aircraft companies.

Smith was a pilot for the Byrd Antarctic Expedition of 1928–1930 involved in aerial overflights to discover new land that could be claimed for the benefit of the United States. The land was later viewed by Byrd and named after his wife. Smith was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Congressional Gold Medal. An Antarctic peak bears his name. He was inducted into the New Jersey Aviation Hall of Fame in 1986. (Full article...)

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Portrait by Joseph Duplessis, 1785

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general.

Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23. He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richard's Almanack, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders". After 1767, he was associated with the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament and the Crown. He pioneered and was the first president of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected its president in 1769. He was appointed deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753, which enabled him to set up the first national communications network. (Full article...)

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

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 Amrita Sher-Gil's painting Hill Women appeared on a 1978 Indian postage stamp?
... that working at a post office was how Derrick Harden became an NFL player?
... that James Diossa rescued the only public library and post office in Central Falls, Rhode Island, when the city went into bankruptcy?
... 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 an investigation into the Royal Oak post office shootings led one congressman to accuse the Postal Service of having been "asleep at the switch"?

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

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

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The block of four "Small One Dollar" stamps is the crown jewel of Red Revenues

The Red Revenues (Chinese: 紅印花郵票) are Qing dynasty Chinese revenue stamps that were overprinted (surcharged) to be used as postage stamps in 1897. Their limited number, fine design and the intaglio process made the stamps in this series some of the most sought-after in the world.

There are several varieties of Red Revenue stamps, with the "Small One Dollar" being the rarest and most valuable. It has been called "China's rarest regularly issued stamp". In a 2013 Hong Kong auction, a single stamp was sold for HK$6.9 million. Another was sold in a 2013 Beijing auction for 7.22 million yuan. A block of four, considered the "crown jewel" of Chinese philately, was reportedly sold in 2009, together with a different stamp, for 120 million yuan (US$18.8 million). (Full article...)

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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.

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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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