Stamp-collecting was a dominant hobby in the 19th and 20th centuries, and people continue to pursue it even today. This valuable guide on stamp-collecting is for the enthusiastic collectors and helps them study the specimens rather than just hoarding them. The author gives practical advice on starting the collection and maintaining and keeping track of it. He provides some insightful tips on differentiating the fake stamps as it was one of the major concerns of the philatelist of the time. Contents include: The Genesis of the Post The Development of an Idea Some Early Pioneers of Philately On Forming a Collection The Scope of a Modern Collection On Limiting a Collection Stamp-collecting as an Investment Forgeries, Fakes, and Fancies Famous Collections Royal and National Collections

"Peeps at Postage Stamps" by Stanley C. Johnson. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

More than three thousand different images appeared on United States postage stamps from the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. Limited at first to the depiction of a small cast of characters and patriotic images, postal iconography gradually expanded as the Postal Service sought to depict the country’s history in all its diversity. This vast breadth has helped make stamp collecting a widespread hobby and made stamps into consumer goods in their own right. Examining the canon of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American stamps, Laura Goldblatt and Richard Handler show how postal iconography and material culture offer a window into the contested meanings and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. They argue that postage stamps, which are both devices to pay for a government service and purchasable items themselves, embody a crucial tension: is democracy defined by political agency or the freedom to buy? The changing images and uses of stamps reveal how governmental authorities have attempted to navigate between public service and businesslike efficiency, belonging and exclusion, citizenship and consumerism. Stamps are vehicles for state messaging, and what they depict is tied up with broader questions of what it means to be American. Goldblatt and Handler combine historical, sociological, and iconographic analysis of a vast quantity of stamps with anthropological exploration of how postal customers and stamp collectors behave. At the crossroads of several disciplines, this book casts the symbolic and material meanings of stamps in a wholly new light.

Contains list of "Fictitious and pseudonymous names."