Portal:Philately
Philately portal | WikiProject Philately |
The Philately Portal
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.
The postage stamps of Ireland are issued by the postal operator of the independent Irish state. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland when the world's first postage stamps were issued in 1840. These stamps, and all subsequent British issues, were used throughout Ireland until the new Irish Government assumed power in 1922. Beginning on 17 February 1922, existing British stamps were overprinted with Irish text to provide some definitives until separate Irish issues became available within the new Irish Free State. Following the overprints, a regular series of definitive stamps was produced by the new Department of Posts and Telegraphs, using domestic designs. These definitives were issued on 6 December 1922, the day that the Irish Free State officially came into existence; the first was a 2d stamp, depicting a map of Ireland (including Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom). Since then new images, and additional values as needed, have produced nine definitive series of different designs.
These were the major stamp productions for everyday use. Commemorative stamps first appeared in 1929, and these now appear several times a year, celebrating many aspects of Irish life, such as notable events and anniversaries, Irish life and culture, and many famous Irish people. Some definitive and commemorative stamps have been produced in miniature sheet, booklet and coil configurations in addition to the common sheet layout. Postage dues and airmails complete the stamp issues of the two, sequential, Irish stamp-issuing authorities. Two styles of watermark were used though the overprinted issues came with the watermarks of the British stamps provided for overprinting by the British Post Office. (Full article...)Selected article -
In philatelic terminology a letter sheet, often written lettersheet, is a sheet of paper that can be folded, usually sealed (most often with sealing wax in the 18th and 19th centuries), and mailed without the use of an envelope, or it can also be a similar item of postal stationery issued by a postal authority. Letter sheets derive from the form in which written correspondence was made up before the mid-19th century—letters were written on one or more sheets of paper that were folded and sealed in such a way that the address could be written on the outside.
The term lettersheet has been used to describe the unstamped folded sheet letters used before envelopes became popular. Recent academic research and conservation initiatives have termed such folded and sealed letters as "letterpackets”; however, only a relatively small number of early examples, such as the Brienne Collection (1689–1706) at The Hague, are known to exist. Envelopes were not used much before the second half of the 19th century, because most countries' postal rates calculated for the extra sheet of paper that made up the envelope, thereby increasing the cost of mailing when an envelope was used. (Full article...)Selected images
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that James Diossa rescued the only public library and post office in Central Falls, Rhode Island, when the city went into bankruptcy?
- ... that British philatelist Alma Lee specialised in the "standing Helvetia" stamps of Switzerland?
- ... that in 1850, about a quarter of the post offices of the Swiss Post were located in taverns?
- ... that a new Christmas stamp that debuted in the 350-person town of Bethlehem, Georgia, in 1967 got so much attention that the two-employee post office had to hire forty-three temporary workers?
- ... that after the British Army captured New York City in 1776, Samuel Loudon fled to the village of Fishkill, where he founded the state's first post office?
- ... that Iranian-American aerospace engineer Joe Youssefi was posthumously awarded a gold medal for his collection of Persian stamps?
General images -
Selected stamp -
The St Paul's Shipwreck 10/- black is a postage and revenue stamp issued by the Crown Colony of Malta on 6 March 1919, and it is generally considered to be the country's rarest and most expensive stamp. It is rare because a very limited quantity of 1530 stamps was printed and it was inadvertently issued prematurely by the Post Office.
The stamp had been printed by De La Rue in 1913, and its design was based on an 1899 postage stamp which depicted the same scene but had different inscriptions around the frame. A reprint of the 1919 design was issued in 1922 with a different watermark, and this was more numerous resulting in the stamp not being as rare as the previous issue. (Full article...)List articles
- List of philatelists
- List of most expensive philatelic items
- List of postage stamps
- Lists of people on postage stamps (article) • (Category page)
- List of entities that have issued postage stamps (A–E)
- List of entities that have issued postage stamps (F–L)
- List of entities that have issued postage stamps (M–Z)
- List of postal services abroad
- Timeline of postal history
Related portals
Topics
Categories
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.
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.
Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools
Other Portals
Sources
- ^ "Philatelic Collections: General Collections". British Library. 2003-11-30. Archived from the original on 30 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-16.