Know the lingo of stamp collectors

Stamp collecting is a hobby that dates back to the 1840s when the first stamp known as "Penny Black" was issued by Great Britain. Prior to this year, man's communication system was done primitively without the use of postal service.  This was before society learned to appreciate the functions of a postmaster and the corresponding costs of hiring him and a staff.

British postmaster general Sir Rowland Hill came up with the concept of using a stamp that would be paid by the letter sender as early as 1837 but the long debates stretched the issuance of the first stamped letter three years after that proposal.

The first issued stamp, which had a photo of Queen Victoria, became known as Penny Black because it used black ink and it required a penny for one stamp.  The United States, which caught on to the practice of sending letters with a stamp, made its first stamp in 1847 with the image of Benjamin Franklin.

Since then, philatelists or stamp collectors started their vocation.  Stamp collecting may look like a simple hobby but listen to philatelists do their stamp banter and you would get lost along the way.

While the word ambulant may commonly refer to medicine or ambulances, philatelists view an ambulant as a roving post office.  And do you know that stamp makers protect stamps from counterfeiting by placing a burelage or a design on top of the stamp?

When philatelists say grill, they are not talking abut dinner but parallel line pattern pushed into stamps to prevent their reuse.  And when you hear the words killer or killer cancel, do not call a policeman just yet because they are just referring to the cancellation of a particular design of stamp.

Cancelled mail which does not reveal the identity of the canceling post office can be referred to as a mute cancel.   While a specimen naturally refers to an object placed and studied in a microscope, the word specimen in philatelist lingo refers to a stamp.

When you are just starting your stamp collecting hobby you will probably be inundated with words like adhesive which refers to that sticky substance under a stamp which enable you to stick it easily to an envelope.   Stamps with cancellation marks mean stamps that have been marked to show previous usage.

When choosing your stamp collection, you can start with collecting commemorative stamps or stamps issued to commemorate a particular person, event or for a significant reason.  In 1893, the United States issued its first commemorative stamps to mark the discovery made by Christopher Columbus

And when you are asked by a philatelist if you got your stamps from a covered enveloped, it may just mean that the envelope has been mailed.  A denomination on the other hand does not refer to a religious group but to how much the stamp is worth in terms of postage.

Stamp collectors use simple but weird terms like referring to a stamp placed on an envelope but which was canceled the very first day it was sold as first day cover.   Business people may be more familiar with the term revenue stamps which refer to stamps that are not for postage of a letter but for the payment of taxes.

So now that you are quite familiar with the philatelists' lingo, it may be time to get to know the process of creating stamps.  For quite a long time, it was the postmaster general who decided on the design of stamps that will be issued.  However, the US legislators started making laws about the subjects to be featured on stamps, giving rise to the formation of a committee that will review the stamp designs.

At least fifty thousand stamp design ideas from Americans are reviewed by the committee annually.  Out of these, only 35 ideas are recommended by the committee to the postmaster general who then makes the final decision.

While any design idea can be entertained, the general rule is that only dead people can be the subject of a US postage stamp.  As a general rule only former presidents can be depicted in US stamps at any time after their death while other people can only be depicted in the stamps at least ten years after their death.