Collecting
Telegraph stamps are regarded by many philatelists as desirable and collectable, either as part of the (back of the book) country collection or cinderella collection. They are listed in most country specific catalogues. General stamp catalogues do not list these stamps, except the French Yvert & Tellier. Telegraph and Telephone Stamps of the World by S.E.R. Hiscocks, published in 1982, is the only general catalog and now the latest Stanley Gibbons British Commonwealth Catalogue. American telegraph stamps are also listed and described in detail in United States Telegraph Stamps and Franks by George Jay Kramer. The first American telegraph stamps were issued by the New York City and Suburban Printing Telegraph Co., probably in 1859.
The Royal Philatelic Collection of Queen Elizabeth II has many telegraph stamps as George V was an enthusiastic collector. It includes examples of British and Commonwealth stamps as well as private companies such as Bonelli's Electric Telegraph Co. Ltd., the Electric Telegraph Company and the British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company.
Read more about this topic: Telegraph Stamp
Famous quotes containing the word collecting:
“What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?”
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946)
“In the very midst of the crowd about this wreck, there were men with carts busily collecting the seaweed which the storm had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of the tide, though they were often obliged to separate fragments of clothing from it, and they might at any moment have found a human body under it. Drown who might, they did not forget that this weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of society.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism—victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)