Something about Philately !

As God of Free & Open Knowledge, the Wikipedia, puts, Philately is as follows :

"Philately is the study of stamps and postal history and other related items. Philately involves more than just stamp collecting, which does not necessarily involve the study of stamps. It is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps.For instance, the stamps being studied may be very rare, or exist only in museums."

Courtesy: Wikipedia & Carlton, R. Scott. The International Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Philately, Iola WI: Krause Publications, 1997, p.196.

In the world of Philately, there are two well-known corporate giants, i,e Stanley Gibbons Ltd., UK (Estd. 1856) and Scott Publishing Co.,USA (Estd.1868) who deal with several related activities like updating and printing stamp catalogues, online & offline selling and buying of rare and latest stamps from across the world, and supplying   philatelic accessories like magnifiers,albums, lightings,color strip,perforation strip,special tweezers etc. 

There are other known players too who specialize in certain region of stamps like Michelle catalogue for German stamps. 


Philately is not about only collecting postage stamps, but also a wide range of postal collectibles, some of which are as follows:-

• First Day Covers (FDCs)
• Miniature Sheets
• Stamp blocks
• Special Issue Postcards
• Wide

Interested visitors may refer the Stanley Gibbons Philatelic Glossary for more details about different terminologies used in philately.


Coming back to my collection, I am in the process of narrowing down my philatelic interest to Indian Pre-Independence and Princely States Stamps.


I shall be giving an introduction on the above in the upcoming blogs.Mean while , interested visitors may refer the following rough map of India before independence during which there were British Indian territory and the hundreds of princely states, each of which behaved more like military protectorates rather than independent political entities. 

For more detailed map, please click on Pre-Independence Political Map of India (Region wise). 


Happy collecting :)