ABOUT PHILATELY Articles | Stamps

By: Darren Williger

Their goal is just to build a collection of stamps according to whatever they chose as their theme. Philatelists, on the other hand, are not necessarily collectors. They could be but their main goal is to study rare stamps and gain knowledge about them without any expectation of owning one. All serious collectors however, could benefit from a general knowledge of philately. This could assist a collector in determining the true value of a stamp and avoid paying too much for a basically worthless one.

The study of stamps came about when people started observing that some of the same types of stamps were on different papers, had varying watermarks, color hues, perforations, and many other little differences. This brought up questions on how and why they were different. Consequently some of these individuals began researching postal records to determine the origin of these stamps and find out why there were variations on supposedly identical stamps. Additionally, over the years people have found ways to produce forgeries of these stamps. Some of them are excellent copies and only someone experienced in studying stamps would be able to tell the difference.

Basically philately is divided into two groups. There is technical philately, which examines the technical end of the stamps and topical philately, which specifically studies the designs on the stamps.

Technical philately involves being intricately familiar with the design process of the stamp. Understanding the type of paper normally used for a particular stamp such as whether it’s a woven or laid and if it includes watermarks. Knowing the printing methods that are used, this includes engraving, typography and such. Searching for stamps that have been reprinted over an existing design. Study of these technicalities goes as far as to investigate the type of separation and gum used on the stamps. Technical philately is widely used to determine forgeries in stamps.

Topical philately is strictly the study of a stamp’s topical design. Sometimes famous pictures are edited before their use in a stamp and topical philately includes learning about the story behind the editing. Some stamps have the wrong pictures on them. Learning about certain images and why those images came to be used on stamps. With the wide variety of subjects that have been used on stamps over the years, topical philately can provide an endless number of topics to be studied.

Philately is an extremely detail oriented field of study; one has to have a good eye for some of the tiniest detail that can be found on stamps. Even someone who is just a casual collector would benefit from just some of the basic knowledge about philately. This information would help a collector understand better about the various stamps and reasons behind their values. It may also help someone avoid making costly mistakes in the buying or selling of pieces in their collections. Some may hold value that a collector isn’t aware of while others may be literally worthless.