Now that you’ve decided what type of stamps you want to collect, here are some tips on the best way to keep these stamps in good condition. You may end up with one that is worth a lot of money someday and you’ll want it to be in the best possible condition.

One of the most difficult areas of philately is learning how to detect fakes or fraudulent stamps. The first forged stamp emerged twenty years after the very first stamp was issued by Great Britain in 1840. This was a stamp that was put out on the market with the intent to defraud collectors and philatelists into believing it was a real one.

While Philately includes the study of both technical and topical aspects of stamps, it can extend to much more than that. Some concentrate their studies on the history of the postal system and still others may study only “Cinderella” stamps, which are basically stickers that look like stamps but aren’t. Some examples of Cinderella stamps would be the Easter Seal stamps or Christmas stamps.

The first stamp was issued in Britain back in the early 1800’s. Sir Rowland Hill was the man who first came up with the idea of using postage stamps to prepay for postal mail. It was called the Penny Black, a picture of Queen Victoria. One had to use scissors to cut each individual square from the sheet. The next country to follow suit in using stamps to pay for postage was Brazil

With so many stamp collectors around, it’s no wonder some find forging stamps to be a profitable business. Some stamps are in high demand and if a successful forger were to be able to reproduce it in such a way that it couldn’t be detectable, then he’s in for a cash windfall. Many of your philatelists work at studying forgeries and fakes to prevent this from happening.

Over the years a certain few stamps have emerged as the most sought after objects by stamp collectors. They are…

The “Treskilling” Yellow. This is considered one of the most valuable stamps in the world. This was one of the first stamps distributed by Sweden back in 1855. They created a set of five stamps that ranged from 3 to 24 skillings banco. Each one was printed with a different color. Somehow the 3 skilling stamp got imprinted with the yellow-orange color, which is reserved for the 8 skilling stamp. Speculation is that a plate may have gotten damaged and the wrong plate was substituted for it. The end result is that this error was never caught and shortly after distributing these stamps, Sweden changed their currency and printed out new stamps depicting the new currency. A collector found a 3 skilling stamp with the orange-yellow color and realized that he had a find. After a number of years went by with many collectors searching specifically for this particular stamp, it was realized that this one found in the attic might have been the only surviving stamp of its kind. At this point the value of this stamp rose dramatically. Each consecutive time this Treskilling Yellow stamp has been sold, it has set records on the amount of money exchanged for it.

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