Portal:Philately
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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 Auberge d'Italie (Maltese: Berġa tal-Italja, Italian: Albergo d'Italia) is an auberge in Valletta, Malta. It was built in various stages in the late 16th century to house knights of the Order of Saint John from the langue of Italy, and it originally had a Mannerist design by Girolamo Cassar and several other architects. The building continued to be modified throughout the course of the 17th century, with the last major renovation being carried out in the 1680s during the magistracy of Gregorio Carafa, giving the building a Baroque character.
After the Order was expelled from Malta in 1798, the auberge was used for a number of purposes, housing a military headquarters, an officers' mess, a museum, a school of arts, a courthouse, the General Post Office and various government departments. Until recently, it housed the Malta Tourism Authority, and there are ongoing works of restoration. It is now converted to host the national collection (previously at National Museum of Fine Arts). In 2018 it became the new National Community Art Museum, MUŻA (from the Maltese acronym Mużew Nazzjonali tal-Arti). (Full article...)
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Sir Rowland Hill, KCB, FRS (3 December 1795 – 27 August 1879) was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer. He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of Uniform Penny Post and his solution of pre-payment, facilitating the safe, speedy and cheap transfer of letters. Hill later served as a government postal official, and he is usually credited with originating the basic concepts of the modern postal service, including the invention of the postage stamp.
Hill made the case that if letters were cheaper to send, people, including the poorer classes, would send more of them, thus eventually profits would go up. Proposing an adhesive stamp to indicate pre-payment of postage – with the first being the Penny Black – in 1840, the first year of Penny Post, the number of letters sent in the UK more than doubled. Within 10 years, it had doubled again. Within three years postage stamps were introduced in Switzerland and Brazil, a little later in the US, and by 1860, they were used in 90 countries. (Full article...)
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Did you know (auto-generated)

- ... 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 Sophie Rain went from living on food stamps to making US$43 million in a year on OnlyFans?
- ... 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?
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The Moldavian Bull's Heads (Romanian: cap de bour, lit. "aurochs head") are the first Romanian postage stamps, sold by Moldavia from July to October 1858. Released in four values, these stamps are renowned for their rarity. The second and third Romanian issues also feature the head of the aurochs, symbol of Moldavia—the former on its own and the latter, printed after the Union of the Principalities, alongside a representation of Wallachia. (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
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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.
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: 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.
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: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
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Sources
- ^ "Philatelic Collections: General Collections". British Library. 2003-11-30. Archived from the original on 30 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-16.