Israel Stamp Reviews

33rd Conference of Israeli Philatelists | כנס יום הבולאות The 33rd Conference of Israeli Philatelists was held on 25 December 2019 at the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv. Organized by the Israel Philatelic Federation , the event featured seven speakers and numerous award ceremonies and included a raffle and an auction. Each event attendee was given a limited-edition souvenir leaf with a uniquely CTOed 2019 Weizmann Institute stamp prepared exclusively for the event. A light breakfast buffet was laid out as guests made their way to the conference area, mingled and rushed to save seats in the conference hall. Eli Weber | אלי ובר First to address the audience was Eli Weber, president of the Israel Philatelic Federation. The theme of his talk was the future -- the future of philatelic exhibitions, of philatelic research, of authentication methods, of device technologies, and of commerce. As a potential model for the future, Weber cited an exhibition two years ago in Finland at wh...

The digital revolution of the 1990s introduced an array of challenges to stamp collecting that the hobby is still grappling with today. In particular, email's displacement of snail mail is universally regarded as the original sin from which all subsequent evils flowed. As snail mail, once the primary gateway into the hobby of stamp collecting, slipped further and further into obsolescence in inverse correlation to email's rise, a generation was born into a reality where the very notion of what a stamp is was already fading into obscurity. In the larger context of collecting generally, snail mail's decline was but one early symptom of the shift undergone in our emotional attachment patterns from physical property to digital property. Whereas prior to the digital revolution memories were preserved in physical form and it was fundamentally the physical form that was valued, the new paradigm sees less and less value in the accumulation of physical mementos when their digit...

After Hebrew, English and Russian, the most popular language in my stamp collection is Armenian. There are a number of reasons for Armenian's popularity, but the main one has to do with my place of employment for the past eight years. This place has engendered an appreciation not only of the local Armenian families with whom I interact almost daily but of their homeland, their history, their culture -- and most recently, their stamps. If last month the oldest stamp in my collection was the 1927 "Zamenhof" from the U.S.S.R., this month that distinction has passed to four stamps dating back to 1922 from the Armenian S.S.R. The stamps are part of a series identified by Stefan Berger as the " Erivan pictorials " and, having been printed with postal intent but never surcharged for actual use as postage, correspond to the second of the series' three 1922 subsets. Where I acquired the stamps was at a weekly meeting of the Jerusalem Stamp Club. It was my secon...

The Sigd Festival | חג הסיגד The Sigd Festival stamp, issued November 26th, 2019, is the third and final installment of Israel Post 's Ethnic Festivals in Israel series. The series began in May with a Moroccan Mimouna stamp, continued in September with a Kurdish Sehrane stamp , and concluded last week with a stamp dedicated to the Ethiopian Sigd. All three stamps were designed by Mario Sermoneta and Meir Eshel, who in 2014 collaborated on a series called Pioneering Women and whose stylistic imprints are readily discernible in their work. Among the Ethnic Festivals trio, "Sigd" was assigned the highest face value at ₪7.40. "Sigd" depicts five kesim , or priests, in traditional robes and qob hats standing shoulder to shoulder as a view of Jerusalem's Old City with its Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock forms the background rising behind them. Three of the kesim are holding microphones, and the rightmost among them, who is slightly foregrounded relat...

Monsters | מפלצות There are two kinds of stamp collectors in the world: passion collectors and investment collectors. Passion collectors engage in stamp collecting because it brings them joy; investment collectors do so in the hope it will bring them profit. Where I stand is squarely in the first category. I collect stamps that appeal to me on an esthetic and intellectual level, with virtually zero interest in what demand there might be for them on the market down the road. "Monsters," a six-stamp minisheet issued on November 26th, 2019, is somewhat of an exception to my rule. On the one hand, it's hard to fault it for lacking esthetic appeal -- it is eye-catchingly colorful, it explores a visual realm that is rarely featured on stamps, and its abundance of detail is guaranteed to keep the optic nerves working overtime. On the other hand, "Monsters" fails to move the needle much intellectually, as it is clearly catering to a junior audience. Why, then, ...

1927 U.S.S.R. Esperanto stamp Sooner or later in the growth of every young stamp collector, there comes a time when he feels his collection will forever remain incomplete until he adds to it that storied philatelic ancestor from which all subsequent stamps are descended -- the Penny Black. This, however, is not the tale of how I acquired my first Penny Black -- mainly because I have not acquired a Penny Black yet, but also because the title above would not hold much interest to the reader if its referent were a stamp about which hundreds of articles have already been written. Instead, the oldest stamp in my collection as of now is one that was issued in 1927 by the U.S.S.R. It commemorates forty years since the creation of the Esperanto language and features an oval portrait of Esperanto's inventor, L.L. Zamenhof (1859-1917). Measuring 43.5x24 millimeters, the stamp is printed on thick paper, which has presumably helped it survive with no creases or other damage for almost...

Earlier this week I paid my first visit to the offices of the Israel Philatelic Federation in Tel Aviv. My main reason for visiting was to become a member of the Federation, since doing so unlocks a range of benefits that collectors otherwise don't have full access to, such as a quarterly magazine, a library, and reduced admission fees to events. This won't be an in-depth report on the Federation, its staff or its activities -- that I'll save for a later date -- but a few brief impressions accompanied by photos to convey a sense of what my visit was like. The Israel Philatelic Federation is located in an office building at the corner of Tel Aviv's Allenby and Pinsker Streets, just a couple blocks east of the beach. The building exterior is run-down and makes for a poor first impression -- an AM:PM supermarket occupies most of the ground floor -- but it is typical of the area and belies the more cheerful surroundings that await once inside the building and after clim...

Preview of U.S. Postal Service 2020 stamp program The United States Postal Service recently offered the public a glimpse into its 2020 stamp program . The sample size is small, less than half of what the USPS will ultimately issue next year; but if it is any indication of what else is in store, collectors have got to be feeling let down and and at a loss to understand the program's rationale. If I were an American collector and 2019 happened to be the year I made my first steps into the hobby, 2020 would in all likelihood be the year I retired from it. The creative drought on the part of U.S. stamp designers is so severe that one of the sets headlining the 2020 program is "Fruits and Vegetables," which includes such stamps as lettuce , tomatoes , carrots , and eggplant . Twenty years ago, when the U.S. Postal Service transitioned from moisture-activated stamps to self-adhesives, stamp collectors felt not only that the world around them was crumbling before their eye...