As of June 1, 2017, a philately oriented tradition has been revived: the collecting of date stamps. In the November edition of the monthly magazine for stamp collectors 'Filatelie' (p. 655), an appeal was printed in which Kees Verhulst asks readers to...
One of the most impressive volcanoes is Mount Merapi on the island of Java, near the major city of Yogyakarta. It is one of the most active volcanoes in the Indonesian archipelago, with a height of nearly 3 kilometers. The name...
Collectors of Canadian stamps know that the Canadian Post is good at issuing unusual shapes of blocks and stamps. This is also true for the stamp issued on January 3, 2003, on the occasion of the Chinese Year of...
Far Oer Collectors of stamps from the Faroe Islands know that in 1919 the post office in Thorshavn received official permission, due to a shortage of 7 Øre stamps, to halve Danish 4 Øre stamps and...
It happens almost daily, and travelers are often annoyed by it: the train to … is delayed by … minutes. Is this something from recent years? The accompanying map from 1899 also shows a delay, or is it a coincidence?...
On an auction site, I came across a stamp bearing the postmark “Leiden – Woerd”. As a Leiden collector, my curiosity was piqued. I know of no post office in Leiden named “Woerd”. So where does this postmark come from? Ho(o)gewoerd...
It is known that in Belgium, a number of post offices were sent a stamp with the letter T to exchange ordinary postage stamps for postage due stamps. T stands for tax. This was an emergency measure because, for a short period, there was a shortage of postage due stamps...
Before the Second World War, it was common practice for postal workers who had to sort mail on delivery routes to invalidate the stamps that had remained uncancelled on incoming mail using a pen. This was often done with wild pen strokes, causing the stamps...
In February 1911, the steamship 'Oranje Nassau' was launched, built for the Royal West India Mail Service. The ship was built by the Royal Company 'De Schelde' in Vlissingen and could carry 62 passengers and 214 deck passengers. In 1927, it was...
Mail items with 'something special' always catch my attention. Like an envelope that was sent from Ambon (Amboina) on December 18, 1934, and arrived in Bandung on December 25, 1934. Despite Christmas, no Christmas thoughts occurred to the civil servant who...
The frequency of scheduled flights used to transport mail was much lower in the 30s than it is today. I therefore looked through my collection at the connections between Amsterdam and the Dutch East Indies and vice versa during that period. That is how it came...
On November 30, 1938, the city post agency on Beijerlandschestraat in Schiedam, which had existed since February 16, 1931, was closed. A new post agency was opened on Wilhelminaplein on December 1, 1938. On December 1, 1938, the postal agent was given the...
Every postal service considers it important that as many new stamps as possible are purchased by collectors. To achieve this, the philatelic press is provided with color photographs of the stamps to be issued. However, series are also provided to journalists for that purpose....
It has always surprised me a little why stamp impression collectors have given such strange names to some types of stamps or letters used in stamps. Take the 'long stamp', for instance. Where did that name come from? As a counterpart to a 'short stamp'? No,...
In almost all cases, post offices used a post office box number as the address for forwarding mail. In the stamps of the main post offices, usually only the place name was entered, along with a stamp serial number. Large towns sometimes had more...
On May 9, 1928, the following announcement was made by the State PTT: During the Olympic Games to be held in Amsterdam, a temporary district office for the Post, Telegraph, and Telephone Service will be established there on the grounds of the Stadium....
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