Israel Stamp Reviews

Hobby , identity and community are distinct but closely related concepts. The distinction is one of experience: a hobby is a thing we do, an identity is a thing we have, and a community is a thing of which we are a part. The relationship, meanwhile, is one of progression: engaging in a hobby can form part of a person's identity, and people with common identities tend to cling to one another and form communities. Not everyone who collects stamps will identify as a stamp collector, and not everyone who identifies as a stamp collector will join a philatelic community; however, the distance from point A to point B and from point B to point C is shorter now than at any time in the past. What has shortened the distance has been the rise of social media, because social media has increased the visibility of identities and made accessing communities virtually effortless. Case in point: Had it not been for social media -- specifically YouTube, and more specifically Graham Beck's Ex...

The "Alexandru Ioan Cuza Bicentenary" cover that features in this report arrived in Israel from Chișinău, Moldova courtesy of the International Moldovan Philatelic Society . In January of this year, the IMPS held a prize draw in which ten members were selected at random to receive the cover by mail. When the drawing results were announced in March, yours truly was listed among the winners. Just then, however, the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic began sweeping across the globe, and by the time the cover was issued postal authorities in many countries including Moldova had suspended international operations. It took until July for the cover to finally reach its destination. In a letter accompanying the cover, IMPS President Niall Murphy indicated that only twenty-four "Cuza" stamps were printed. Anticipating that some collectors might be tempted to capitalize on the stamp's rarity and sell it to the highest bidder on Sotheby's or eBay, Murphy expr...

Hardly a day goes by when one of the two main Israeli stamp collecting groups on Facebook does not see a message posted by a new member asking what to do with a deceased relative's stamp collection or sharing photos of a collection to solicit assessments of its worth. The responses to these messages typically range from silent disregard to curt replies a-la "worthless" and "garbage" to scornful rebukes. When Gal Rotem decided to sell his grandfather's collection, one look at the reality on Facebook was enough to convince him he needed to approach the situation differently if he were to have any hope of his collection getting noticed and being taken seriously. The end result was Ruvikrotem.com , a website registered with the goal of showcasing Grandpa Ruvik's 40-album collection and maximizing its value to potential buyers. But as Gal's involvement in digitizing his grandfather's collection grew, so did his fascination with it. The website ...

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...

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...