Postage stamp collecting

Postage stamp collecting is one of the most popular hobbies in the world, with over 20 million collectors in the United States alone! Stamps are one of the easiest investments to store and preserve, more so than jewelry or art. Postage stamp collecting -- or Philately -- is so widespread that there are organizations, festivals and magazines all dedicated to the subject.

American postage stamp collecting began with the issuance of a 5-cent Ben Franklin and a 10-cent George Washington in 1847. People found that collecting stamps was a cheap investment, as well as an easy way to display historical artifacts. Like their British counterparts, they often passed down stamp collections from generation to generation. Today some of those early stamps go for $500 to $200,000!

It became the misprints that became the most coveted in the world of collecting postage stamps. Most serious collectors will try to seek out a rare stamp resulting from a printing error. For instance, the "Inverted Jenny" is a US postage stamp from 1918 featuring a photo of a Curtiss JN-4 airplane where the plane was mistakenly printed upside-down! Only 100 were ever printed and a block of four just sold at an auction for $2.7 Million! The US-made "Benjamin Franklin Z Grill" stamps were made with a waffle pattern embossed into the paper supposedly to prevent the ink from running. Only two were printed before they realized this process was impractical. Now one stamp could get as much as $3 Million!

Internationally, collecting postage stamps often equates with big bucks. For example, the "Treskilling Yellow" stamp from Sweden was misprinted in the wrong color, placing its value at over $2 Million. Historically, Britain's "Penny Black" (the first official adhesive stamp) sold for $200 in the year 2000, and unused went for as much as $3,000! Or imagine owning the "British Guiana Magenta," a rare stamp with a face value of one cent but an estimated value of $935,000! There is much controversy surrounding this stamp. Since there is only one known copy in existence, some say that it was an altered 4-cent stamp, however these claims were disproved. Others speculate that another copy was discovered but was purchased by Arthur Hind, who owned the original and who quietly destroyed the copy so he wouldn't lose the value. In 1999 a forged copy was found in Bremen, Germany.

Postage Stamp collecting is an expansive library of options, values and designs. Some people prefer "Cinderellas" (or stamps not intended for postage), while others prefer souvenir sheet stamps from various countries. There are themed topical stamps, revenue stamps, PHQ cards, postal stationery, pictorals, definitive stamps and commemorative stamps. It can be overwhelming to know where to begin, but you can find a lot of organizations and literature dedicated to the subject.