Portal:Philately

Topics Culture Geography Health History Mathematics Nature People Philosophy Religion Society Technology 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. A pillar box is a free-standing post box where mail is deposited to be collected by the Royal Mail and forwarded to the addressee. Pillar boxes have been used since 1852, just 12 years after the introduction of the first adhesive postage stamps and uniform penny post. According to the Letter Box Study Group, there are more than 150 recognised designs and varieties of pillar boxes and wall boxes, not all of which have known surviving examples. Royal Mail estimates there are over 100,000 post boxes in the United Kingdom. Most traditional British Pillar boxes produced after 1905 are made of cast iron and are cylindrical in shape, though other shapes have been used; the hexagonal Penfolds, rectangular boxes, and an oval shape used mainly for the large "double aperture" boxes seen in large cities, such as, London and Dublin. In recent years boxes manufactured in glass-fibre or ABS plastic have been produced. The advent of the wayside post box can be traced to Sir Rowland Hill and his Surveyor for the Western District, the noted novelist, Anthony Trollope who was sent to solve the problem of collecting the mails in the Channel Islands caused by the irregular sailing times of the Royal Mail packet boats due to weather and tides. Trollope arrived in Jersey in early 1852 and his recommendation was to employ a “letter-receiving pillar” he may have seen in Paris. Cover 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. 150px Henry Bishop (1611–1691) was Postmaster General of the United Kingdom and inventor of the first postmark used on mail. In 1660, at The Restoration, Henry Bishop paid £21,500 per year to farm the Post Office for a term of seven years. Bishop was the first officially appointed Postmaster General to Charles II but within a year of taking office he was accused of abuses. Bishop gave up the remainder of his lease to Daniel O'Neill. The "Bishop Mark" which take his name, introduced in 1661, was designed to show the date on which a letter was received by the post and to ensure that the dispatch of letters would not be delayed. There is a discussion about getting more people involved in Philately on Wikipedia. Join the discussion and share your thoughts here. WikiProject Philately organizes the development of articles relating to philately. The collaboration focuses on one article at a time until they can proudly put that article up as a featured article candidate. This will last until they have run through a pool of "featurable" articles, then they will use a time-based system. Currently there is one philatelic featured article, if you can help with another candidate, please do so. 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. Postage stamps of Ireland is a Featured article British Library Philatelic Collections, Postal codes in Canada, Pony Express, and 2009 Royal Mail industrial disputes are Good articles Template:/box-header ... that the first Penny Post was established in London in 1680 by William Dockwra nearly 200 years before the better known Uniform Penny Post that was part of the postal reforms of 1839 and 1840 in Great Britain. ... that Czesław Słania (1921-2005) is the most prolific stamp engraver, with more than 1,000 post stamps for 28 postal administrations? ... that a forerunner is a postage stamp used during the time period before a region or territory issues stamps of its own? ... that the Royal Philatelic Society is the oldest philatelic society in the world, founded in London in 1869? ... that Marcophily is the specialised study and collection of postmarks, cancellations and postal markings applied by hand or machine on mail? ... that throughout U.S. history, different types of mail bags have been called mail pouch, mail sack, mail satchel, catcher pouch, mochila saddle mailbag, and portmanteau depending on form, function, place and time? ... that Non-denominated postage are postage stamps that do not show a monetary value on the face? ... that the Daguin machine was a cancelling machine first used in post offices in Paris in 1884? ... that the first airmail of the United States was a personal letter from George Washington carried on an aerial balloon flight from Philadelphia by Jean Pierre Blanchard? Template:/box-footer The "Treskilling" Yellow, or 3 skilling banco error of color, is a postage stamp of Sweden, and as of 2004 the most valuable stamp in the world. To date no other example has been found, so is most likely the only one in existence. The 3-skilling banco value of the first postage stamps of Sweden, issued in 1855, was normally printed in a blue-green color, while the 8-skilling was printed in a yellowish orange shade. In 1886, a young collector named Georg Wilhelm Baeckman was going through covers in his grandmother's attic, and came across one with a 3-skilling stamp printed in the yellowish orange shade of the 8-skilling. Each time it has been sold it has set world records. In 1984 the stamp made headlines when it was sold by David Feldman for 977,500 Swiss francs. A 1990 sale realised over one million US dollars and in 1996 it sold again for 2,500,000 Swiss francs. 15 November 2014 Lost Continental 11 November 2014 Postmaster General for Scotland 22 September 2014 Galfridus Walpole 30 October 2013 Alexandria "Blue Boy" Postmaster's Provisional 29 October 2013 St. Louis Bears Archive 13 Nov. 2014 Inverted Jenny – 23 Oct. 2013 Trans-Mississippi Issue – Archive What are portals? List of portals Featured portals Purge server cache