Christine Zaccarellip age 12f of Victoria, .C.,
What is a philatelist?
The word philatelist is coined from older Greek words. Usually the origin of a word gives us a clue to its meaning. This one is baffling, For those Greek words mean someone who loves tax free things. According to this we could all be philatelist. For though sensible people pay up with a cheerful face, nobody honestly enjoys those little penny taxes on this and that. perhaps a philatelist knows how to dodge the tax on these small items. Not at all, He has merely made a hobby of collecting certain items which are tax free by the time he gets them.
You could never guess the hobby from the origin of the word philately, But a philatelist has not always been called a philatelist. The original hobbyists were called timbromaniacs ‑ here we can pounce on a clue. For timbre is French for postage stamp and a mania is a fad or a craze, depending on who is talking, A philatelist collects postage stamps.
The first stamp bore a picture of Queen Victoria and is now a valuable collectors item called the Penny Blacki It was issued in England on May 6 1840. Timbromania broke out almost at once. In 1841, a young lady advertised in the London Times for more used postage stamps. She was., she explained using them to paper her dressing room. The 16,000 she already had were not enough to finish the job. What a treasure trove for someone to find in 1956.
Some folks made fun of the timbromaniacs. But the fad grew into a fascinating hobby. Collectors became more interested in `unusual, rare and beautiful stamps than in bulk. A new name was needed for this new interest in the old fad, The word philately was coined in 1865. Philatelists really do love tax free things. For there is no tax on the little stamp that faithfully delivers a letter to your door. The tax has already been paid.
Some stamp collections are worth fortunes and many famous people are ardent philatelists, You can have just as much fun with this fascinating hobby as anybody, You need a magnifying glass to study the miniature pictures the post marks and anything unusual on each stamp. You need an album to keep your collection and a pair of tweezers to handle the stamps.
Chances are, directions for handling and mounting come with the album. Packages of foreign stamps can be bought for pennies, Most waste baskets yield interesting specimens for free.
Almost all stamps are beautiful and interesting. All of then deserve a close look. The valuable ones are the rare ones, the beauties, those with errors and those with unusual post marks. Collectors love it when the government stamp printers make an error. In 1918, the U, S~ printed an upside down airplane on a stamp. Those 20 cent stamps are now worth $24 to ardent philatelists. One of those rated as a beauty is a mourning picture of queen Astrid of Belgium issued in 1935.
The most valuable stamp in the world is called the Penny Magenta. It was issued in British Guiana in 1856, ‑In 1943, the Penny Magenta was valued at $150,000. This stamp is no prettier than the cancelled three cent stamps that deliver Andy’s mail every day. But, so far as we know it is now alone in the world and therefore unique.