Portal:Philately
Philately portal | WikiProject Philately |
The Philately Portal
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.

The Penny Penates is a postcard that was posted on 14 July 1840 to Fulham in London. It was addressed to the writer and practical joker Theodore Hook, who was probably also its sender and artist. The hand-painted design on the postcard shows an image of post office clerks sitting around a giant ink well.
The postcard was discovered in 2001 by a stamp dealer while he was examining a stamp collection, and verified by the British Philatelic Association's expert committee as genuine and the world's oldest known postcard. It is also the only known surviving example of a Penny Black stamp, the world's first adhesive postage stamp, used on a postcard. It was sold at auction in 2002 for £31,750 (US$44,300), the most ever paid for a postcard. (Full article...)
Selected article -

Postage stamps of Pakistan are those issued since Pakistan's independence in 1947. Pakistan Post has issued more than 600 sets and singles totalling more than 1300 stamps. Immediately after the independence of Pakistan in 1947, the new Pakistan government was preoccupied with setting up the government so British Indian stamps continued in use without an overprint as was the practice in other countries.
The history of postage stamps in the region dates back to 1852, when Sir Bartle Frere of the British East India Company became the Chief Commissioner of Sind in 1851 and in 1852. Following the British example set by Rowland Hill, Frere improved upon the operations of the postal system of Sindh, introduced a cheap and uniform rate for postage (independent of distance travelled) and initiated the production of the Scinde Dawk stamps. These became the forerunners of the adhesive stamps to be used throughout India, Burma, the Straits Settlements and other areas controlled by the British East India Company. Their usage ceased with the introduction of official British Indian stamps in 1854. (Full article...)
Selected images
Did you know (auto-generated)

- ... that James Diossa rescued the only public library and post office in Central Falls, Rhode Island, when the city went into bankruptcy?
- ... that after Irish post office clerk Maureen Flavin Sweeney reported worsening weather conditions, Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed to postpone D-Day by 24 hours?
- ... that an investigation into the Royal Oak post office shootings led one congressman to accuse the Postal Service of having been "asleep at the switch"?
- ... that both of Karl R. Free's New Deal-era U.S. post office murals with Native American subjects have been challenged as offensive?
- ... that working at a post office was how Derrick Harden became an NFL player?
- ... that Amrita Sher-Gil's painting Hill Women appeared on a 1978 Indian postage stamp?
General images -
Selected stamp -

The Inverted Head Four Annas of India is a postage stamp prized by collectors. The 1854 first issues of India included a Four Annas value in red and blue. It was one of the world's first multicolored stamps; the Basel Dove preceded it by nine years. However, an invert error occurred during production, showing the head "upside down." (Full article...)
List articles

- List of philatelists
- List of most expensive philatelic items
- List of postage stamps
- Lists of people on postage stamps (article) • (Category page)
- List of entities that have issued postage stamps (A–E)
- List of entities that have issued postage stamps (F–L)
- List of entities that have issued postage stamps (M–Z)
- List of postal services abroad
- Timeline of postal history
Related portals
Topics
Categories
WikiProject
WikiProject Philately organizes the development of articles relating to philately. 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.
Selected works
- Williams, Louis N., & Williams, Maurice (1990). Fundamentals of Philately {revised ed.). American Philatelic Society. ISBN 0-9335-8013-4.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Hornung, Otto (1970). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Stamp Collecting. Hamlyn. ISBN 0-600-01797-4.
- Stuart Rossiter & John Fowler (1991). World History Stamp Atlas (reprint ed.). pub: Black Cat. ISBN 0-7481-0309-0.
Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools
Other Portals
Sources
- ^ "Philatelic Collections: General Collections". British Library. 2003-11-30. Archived from the original on 30 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-16.