Encyclopedia of United States Stamps and Stamp Collecting

[Relax]

No matter how attractive this book is, the more important attribute is that it is useful! This book manages to do both quite well, and we will dwell on the usefulness in this review.

With 62 chapters and four appendices, the book is nicely structured. The chapters are grouped into three sections: stamps of the United States; history, production, and technology; and, expanding the collector’s scope.

The section on history, production, and technology begins with the early Bureau of Engraving and Printing presses and continue through modern private printers. There are two chapters each devoted to booklets and coils. The compartmentalization evident in this presentation in many respects places it ahead of that of the classic work Fundamentals of Philately.

With accompanying high-quality photos and other illustrations, the reader is able to take advantage of an excellent flow of data.

Opening the book are 31 chapters devoted to U.S. stamps. Each definitive series has its own chapter, following chapters related to stampless covers and postmasters’ provisionals. Following five chapters dealing with commemoratives are individual chapters on air mail, special usage, federal revenues, state revenues, possessions / usages abroad / occupied areas, postal stationery, carriers’ and locals, and Confederate States of America.

Rather than attempt to be a stamp catalog, these chapters utilize illustrations to present information that make the issues more interesting and, for want of a better word, “collectible.” On one two-page spread in the chapter that describes the Transportation Coils are four illustrations. Three show how the type size of the denomination was increased as the lengthy series drew on. Another illustration shows—rather than merely describing—how to identify coil stamps produced on the Cottrell Press by the joint line between two stamps.

The chapter on state revenues is key because this interesting, and quite broad, body of material generally is not part of U.S. philately’s mainstream.

Chapters within the section “Stamps of the United States” contain a constant set of sub-headlines. My favorite is “Notes on Collecting,” each with down-to-earth information that quickly relates that aspect of U.S. material to how to collect and enjoy it. The chapter on Confederate material first makes the point, under this sub-headline, that “Successfully collecting Confederate stamps and postal history requires a good working knowledge or many dates of civil war history.” Current collectors of Confederate material take that statement for granted. Prospective collectors need to know early on that this is an aspect of philately where filling pre-printed album pages are rather anti-climatic.

This book has become part of my personal philatelic reference library, complete with its own bookmark in advance of it yet being needed. In short, this one is a keeper.

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