Stamp Collecting for Beginners – this is the second post in this series of posts for beginning stamp collectors. This time around, we will explore the long and rich history of this “hobby of kings” or as I prefer to call it, the king of hobbies. As you will see, few hobbies have enjoyed the prestige and glamour that stamp collecting has, with the possible exception of car collecting. I doubt, though, that many of you have the resources to start a car collection today. It’s much more likely that buying a few stamps through an online stamp auction or at your local stamp dealer will be a much more reasonable investment for your hobby expenses than running out today and buying a historically significant Ferrari or Duesenberg!

As with any endeavor, the more you know about it’s background and history, the more you will enjoy the subject. Stamp collecting is no different in this respect. In fact, the stories and history of stamp collecting are part of the reason that many people become interested in the hobby in the first place. The history of stamp collecting involves kings and queens, presidents, business barons, counts, dukes, and every other kind of important person you can think of. The best part of it is, you can enjoy the same hobby without having to be one of them. Today stamp collecting isn’t restricted to high society, nor do you need to blow your savings (http://www.lovemoney.com/savings/) on it. You just need a little spare time and enthusiasm. With patience and dedication, you will build a beautiful collection. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the history of stamp collecting.

Most people will tell you that the story of stamp collecting begins with the issue of the world’s first postage stamp, the Penny Black of Great Britain. While I don’t discount the significance of the event, this completely discounts all of the stamps that came before postage stamps. After all, the world of stamp collecting does not just involve postage stamps, but instead involves every kind of stamp imaginable including tax or revenue stamps, charity stamps, seals of all kinds, and of course the ubiquitous postage stamps. While I don’t deny that postage stamp collecting is the focus of the majority of stamp collectors, to say that stamp collecting began with the issuance of a postage stamp is wrong.

So, to truly go back to the beginnings of stamp collecting, one has to look back all the way to the year 1624. This was the year in which the Netherlands introduced the very first tax stamp, which was used to provide a way of prepaying various taxes levied by the government. Revenue stamps or tax stamps became pretty popular amongst the European countries in a fairly short amount of time, and by 1694 England had introduced its first tax stamp in order to raise funds for carrying on the war with France. The use of revenue stamps by governments around the world continued until around the 1950′s, when other, more efficient ways of tracking revenues paid began to take over.

One of the most significant events related to tax stamps has got to be the Stamp Act of 1765, a tax that was levied on the English colonists in what was to become the United States of America in just a few short years. This tax virtually sparked the American Revolution because it gave a symbol to the colonists to rally behind the call “No taxation without representation”, referring to the fact that the English Parliament passed the act without any sort of input from the colonies.

It’s hard to say how many people actually collected these type of stamps in the early days, but there’s no doubt there were at least a few collectors. Today, these early revenue stamps are amongst the most prized collectibles in the world. Unfortunately, most of them are so rare that the few examples left are relegated to important museum collections.

Stamp collecting as most people know is really postage stamp collecting, the beginnings of which coincide almost exactly with the issue of the very first government-issued postage stamp in 1840: Great Britain’s famous Penny Black and Penny Blue. To be sure, these were not the first postage stamps, as many had been privately issued before 1840 for use with private post companies, but the Penny Black and Penny Blue represent a turning point in the history of postage stamps by being the first stamps to be officially issued and sanctioned by a government postal entity.

The idea for the first postage stamps came from one Sir Rowland Hill, who sought a way to provide a universal rate for all postage throughout the British Isles. In addition to the universal rate, the stamps brought a change in the way postage was paid – for the first time postage was to be prepaid instead of sending mail at the expense of the receiver. From this point on, the idea caught like wildfire and most of the world soon followed in establishing prepaid universal rates of postage on mail sent through their systems. The United States issued it’s first official postage stamps in 1847.

Almost from the very beginning, postage stamp collecting became a popular hobby. Of course, the beginnings of the hobby looked nothing like the organized pastime we all know today, but it was collecting nonetheless. There is a story, in fact, of a lady that became so enamored of the new Penny Black that she purchased sheets of the stamp and used them to wallpaper her parlor! Now, that’s a stamp collection! I wonder how true the story is, and whether any of those stamps were ever recovered and resides in collections even today.

The growth of stamp collecting as a hobby depended then, as it does today, on the ability of a collector to acquire, house, and organize his or her collection. To satisfy this need, in the great tradition of capitalism, stamp dealers began to appear on the scene almost simultaneously with the birth of the hobby. Some of the stories surrounding these dealers have become the stuff of legend in the hobby. That, however, is outside the scope of this article. There are some excellent books out there that cover this aspect of the hobby, though, and I highly encourage the beginning collector to go ahead and read some of them, as it will certainly increase your interest in philately and stamp collecting and give you a good grounding in the basics of the hobby.

One thing that should be noted about these early dealers is that their methods for displaying and selling stamps were not exactly the museum quality displays you see today. In fact, many displays consisted simply of a board or piece of plywood in which stamps were affixed using push-pins! Oh, the horrors! This is why you will find many classic stamps with tiny pinholes in them today. Indeed, some of the rarest stamps in the world have these pinholes due to the lack of knowledge in the care and keeping of stamps in the early days of the hobby.

For the absolute beginning stamp collector, you might be wondering why a pinhole in a stamp might be such a big deal. The truth of the matter is, for most stamps a pinhole, or any other flaw no matter how minute, completely destroys the value of the stamp as a collectible. As a general rule, the more perfect the stamp, the more it is worth in terms of resale value. We won’t go into this in depth in this article, but it will definitely be the subject of a later one entirely dedicated to stamp condition and value.

By the end of the 19th century, stamp collecting had become a very popular hobby, and stamp dealing became a very lucrative business. Also, by this time some of the more recognizable tools of the hobby had become more readily available to collectors, and stamps were being much better cared for. Some of these tools included stamp albums, stamp tongs, stamp hinges, magnifiers of ever-increasing quality, and the ubiquitous stamp catalog (catalogue for my friends across the oceans).

During the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th century, some of the most important stamp series in United States stamp collecting history were issued. These include the Columbian series of 1892, which were issued in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition celebrating the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America. This set is one of the most highly prized sets in all of stamp collecting, and really represent the pinnacle of stamp design due the high quality of the engraving and the beauty of the designs themselves. They also happen to be the first commemorative stamps to be issued in the United States, though some would argue that one of the values from the 1869 series was issued to commemorate the passing of president Abraham Lincoln. Also, during this time period came the Trans-Mississippi series, and Pan-American series of stamps. In my humble opinion, these three sets combined represent the best that United States postage stamp collecting has to offer, in terms of availability, beauty, and quality of design.

There is one very notable event that should be considered before we move on into the 20th century: the 4th Congress of the Universal Postal Union(UPU) in 1891. This single event would have such a significant impact on the moving of mail across the globe that even as just a casual collector you should understand the effect this treaty had. The Universal Postal Union is an organization that establishes postage rates and terms for delivery of mail between the member countries. During the 1891 Congress, the UPU adopted a standard of colors that would be used on stamps to signify particular international postal rates. This, of course, caused a flurry of stamp issues world-wide to conform to these new requirements.

As the 20th century wore on, stamp collecting became more and more popular. Along with that, the number of stamps available to collectors practically exploded both from the United States and from the rest of the world. While most of the stamps from this period of time are not particularly rare today, many of them are some of the finest examples of stamp design ever created. For prime examples of what I’m referring to, see some of the British colonies stamps from African countries, early 20th century Australia, or the 1901 series of definitives issued by our own United States.

Many collectors today specialize in what they call the Classic Era of postage stamps, which is everything from 1840 through 1940. Without doubt, the stamps issued during the first 100 years of modern postal systems contain most of the value and appeal of stamp collecting and you can’t really go wrong with keeping your collection limited to the Classic Era. Keep in mind, though, that this will also cost a fortune if you’re one of those collectors that must have a collection that is as complete as possible. We will talk more about specializing your collection in a future post on the subject.

The year 1940 represents the pinnacle of the Golden Age of stamp collecting. It was at this time that we had a US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, that was a stamp collector. Because of this, stamp collecting gained a prestige in this country that it has never seen since. At this time, almost every boy in the country was a stamp collector and the public eye was firmly fixed on promoting stamp collecting as an educational and worthwhile hobby. There were radio shows dedicated to the hobby, philatelic periodicals were numerous and plentiful, and nearly every department store in the country had a stamp department where collectors could easily go and acquire items for their collection.

Of course, this was also the time in which the country was just recovering from a severe Depression and was wrapped up in a worldwide war the likes of which had never been seen before and will likely never be seen again. It is both because of the war and in spite of it that some of the most interesting philatelic collectibles known were issued. Some examples include the Weimar inflation issue stamps and the rise and fall of the Third Reich in Germany as chronicled in its stamp issues. The subsequent rise of the Iron Curtain and the cold war can also be followed through stamps in many different ways, including the disappearance of countries that had formerly issued stamps and the rise of new countries such as East Germany.

The history of stamp collecting and of postage stamps themselves becomes quite confusing after World War II. The war stimulated an economy and a spirit worldwide of rapid technological innovation that also affected the postal systems of the world. New stamp design, printing, production, and distribution methods would literally explode onto the scene creating dizzying numbers of varieties and areas of focus for philatelists.

Also, at the same time, governments began to realize that a significant revenue stream could be realized at the hands of stamp collectors through the sale of stamps that were never used in the mails. As a result, in the best tradition of capitalistic greediness, we began to see stamps issued for no other purpose than to try and pry money away from collectors. This even included non-existent stamp issuing entities such as the famous Sand Dune countries of the middle east. For other countries, including our own, this greediness manifested itself in a drastic increase in the number of different stamps issued each year. This has gotten to the point now that it is literally impossible for a collector to get a single example of every stamp issued in every country in the world.

This now brings us to the modern era of stamp collecting, which is an altogether different creature than what existed back in the golden age. Stamps have now become all but irrelevant in the moving of mail from one place to another, replaced by computer produced indicia that indicates postage paid at the time of mailing. There are now private companies that run some of the postal services for countries such as New Zealand, and while they do issue stamps, they are not truly accepted as such in the collecting community at large. This will probably be a growing trend in the world as governments begin to realize how much more cost-effective private industry can be at running postal systems. There may come a time in the not-so-distant future in which stamps will only be issued to try to appeal to collectors, which will likely bring an end to the hobby as we know it now, at least as far as collecting new issues goes.

Aside from the generation of new stamps, the modern era has also brought tremendous change to other areas of the hobby. Computers and the Internet have allowed stamp collectors to communicate with each other in ways that were never possible in earlier days. We now have online stamp clubs and forums, online stamp auctions, online stamps stores, and even on-demand printing of catalogs and album pages via the Internet. As a result of the Information Age, stamp collecting has enjoyed many positive changes as well as negative ones. Again, we will explore this topic in more depth in a future post on this site.

I’ve tried to give a decent overview of the history of stamp collecting in this post, and I hope that I’ve done a decent job of it. It would be absolutely impossible to cover the entire history in depth on a forum such as this, so please forgive me if I’ve overlooked something you might think is very important in the history of stamp collecting. If you do feel something should be mentioned that I have not covered, please leave a comment below and tell us about it. This site is just as much yours as it is mine, so tell me and the rest of the readers about it. Also, if there is something in this topic of stamp collecting for beginners that you would like to see covered, let me know that, too.

For other posts on Stamp Collecting for Beginners see the following:
Stamp Collecting for Beginners

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