US Stamps

Examining a reader’s postage due stamp, zeppelin covers soar: Week’s Most Read

Jul 7, 2017, 6 AM

In our top post of the week, a reader asked U.S. Stamp Notes columnist John M. Hotchner how a “working-man” collector can identify a catalog-numbered postage due stamp from 1879 to 1916. His answer, as always, was educational and illuminating.

By Colin Sallee

It’s time to catch up on the week that was in stamp-collecting insights and news.

Linn’s Stamp News is looking back at its five most-read stories of the week.

Click the links to read the stories.

5. Sudan 50th Death Anniversary set for Charles Gordon still in demand: This exciting historical set is popular across a broad range of collectors, and demand has been steady.

4. First use of stamp in U.S. tops $19,000 in Kelleher sale: It was a row over a tax stamp in the 1760s that started the process that led to the American Revolution. But that was not America’s first stamp, either.

3. Largest U.S. national stamp show Aug. 3-6: The American Philatelic Society will present Stampshow 2017, the nation’s largest annual postage stamp show and exhibition, Aug. 3-6 in the Greater Richmond Convention Center, 403 N. Third St., Richmond, Va.

2. If you can find a booklet of these Vintage Seed Packet forever stamps, buy it: In theory, you could buy the booklet pane of 20 and strip the other 10 stamps off the pane leaving yourself with a block of 10. However, few collectors or dealers will do that.

1. Which postage due stamp do you have?: The question is timely because the great majority of early generations of U.S. collectors paid little attention to U.S. issues past the airmail listings in the Scott catalog.

Connect with Linn’s Stamp News:

  Sign up for our newsletter
  Like us on Facebook
  Follow us on Twitter