The first quarter issue of the Philatelic Literature Review for 2023 is now available to read here for subscribers.
The PLR is your number one source for information about new book issues, book reviews of important additions to the literature, unusual and unheard of philatelic resources, and discussions about research and the hobby’s future. A year’s subscription is $21 for U.S. members, which comes with access to all back issues. Subscribe here.
In the first quarter issue, we bring back Michael Bloom, president of the International Society of Guatemala Collectors, who wrote a sister article to one that appeared in the January 2023 issue of The American Philatelist . On January 1, the society published a free digital handbook called The Postage Stamps and Postal Stationery of Guatemala. The society not only used OCR technology to digitize and republish its long out-of-print Guatemala handbooks, but also relied on crowd-sourcing and peer review from its members to update its contents. A major project – and Michael explains the challenges they underwent and the difficult questions they had to answer and solve.
The take-away: Many specialty societies struggle to keep their resources up to date and relevant. Could digital, crowd-sourced handbooks be the answer?
Author Abhishek Bhuwalka has a knack for uncovering the unscrupulous actors in our hobby’s history. In this issue, spurred by an oddly named book Ten Under Cat [ten percent under catalog value], Abhishek deals justice to Cecil Rose, a stamp dealer in England who ran Ponzi schemes on collectors in the 1950s – until he was caught.
The take-away: You can use a variety of resources to piece together philatelic history. Plus, bad actors are nothing new.
Are you new to collecting Belgium or Czech philately? Do you want to ramp up your collection to the next level? Two authors share the best resources you’ll want to read to become more familiar with those collecting areas.
The take-away: Why stumble around looking for information when an expert can tell you exactly where to find it? Every quarter, the PLR publishes these essential literature lists.
You’d never guess where you can find a philatelic archive. Author Christopher Smith found one in Hamburg, Germany – and it happened to have exactly the book he needed.
The take-away: Hidden gems are all around – the PLR is the place to reveal them.
Also find:
Belgium - From the Beginning by Christopher C. Smith
Many resources for Czech and Slovak Philately by James A. Buckner
Author's Inquiry, Book Reviews, New Books Noted, and a lot more!
We will have some of these articles coming to the website next week, so stay tuned!