Next year will be the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Mainsheet. And to bring it in to the 21st century, the entire run has now been digitised. For those not familiar with The Mainsheet, it is one of the most (if not the most) comprehensive sources of information on the myriad aspects of […]
Publications
The Collector | Peter Bamert | Mexico
Peter Bamert is the editor of the ‘Postal Stationery of Mexico’, a comprehensive work that catalogues Mexico’s envelopes, postal cards, wrappers and more. CLA How did you get interested in collecting postal stationery? PB As a boy I began collecting stamps of the whole world. Then I started a topical collection about reptiles. One day […]
The Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue: a review
Once upon a time, Stanley Gibbons’ twin volume South America and Central America catalogues were my daily reference tools. They are still powerful weapons in the Latin America collector’s armoury but for a number of years, the Scott Classic Specialized has been my ‘go to’ first port of call. Gibbons hasn’t updated the aforementioned volumes […]
New specialized Argentina catalogue published
It wasn’t so long ago that stamp catalogues contained a handful of grainy, black and white images to help identify an issue. The new GJ Argentina Catalogue shows just how far things have come. Profusely illustrated in full colour on heavyweight, glossy paper, this A4 format catalogue brings the stamps to life and conveys a […]
Collect Brazil? You probably need this…
Pre-internet, collectors tended to be far more reliant – dependent even – on the catalogue that was written in their own language. Buying and selling was limited to the relationships with dealers you knew, and the auctions you attended were those nearer to home. I’m generalising but you get the picture. Move on to the […]
SOFICH, so good
I recently acquired a very nice collection of pre-1940 Chile that had been collected by SOFICH and cross-referenced by Scott. It clearly shows just how much room for expansion there is by collecting using this specialized work. The SOFICH catalogue is published by the Chilean Philatelic Society (Sociedad Filatelica de Chile). It is a lavish, […]
Part 20, Part 20, wherefore art thou Part 20…?
It is now ten years since Stanley Gibbons printed the fourth and current edition of their ‘Part 20’ South America stamp catalogue. And the separate ‘Part 15’ that covers Central America was last published in 2007. It looks like these are the final editions of these heavily referenced catalogues. Stanley Gibbons business has gone through […]
Bookshelf Essentials Part II – The Central American Newsletter
Although The Mainsheet covered all twenty republics, its focus was primarily on South America. In 1980, under the editorship of Bernard Davies, The Central American Newsletter was launched as a sister publication to The Mainsheet. Bernard edited until his death in 1985 when Mike Birks took over the helm. The CAN ran for twenty years, […]
Bookshelf Essentials – The Mainsheet
If there is one thing philatelists are not short of it is reading material. Decades of book publishing has produced a wealth of literature on every subject imaginable and each month brings a swathe of new titles. Coupled to that, society magazines, articles, catalogues and the multitude of websites and forums and, well…you get the […]
Book Review – Introducing Venezuela’s Escuelas Stamps by Williams Castillo
Before we get to the content, I should point out that the beauty of this book is the author’s skill for taking a complicated subject and making it very simple to understand. There are countless philatelic books and articles that undertake to enlighten the reader on less complex issues but end up making things far […]
Scott Specialized adds another 67 listings to Venezuela
It’s taken a while but Scott is now recognizing Venezuela’s postal fiscals (or postage and revenue stamps) in the 2017 edition of its Classic Specialized Catalogue. This bumps up the number of stamps listed during the classic period to a further 67 items, all of them now prefixed under an “AR” code. AR1 through to […]