It has been almost a year since our previous stamps milestone. Now there are 555,555 Stamps on Colnect!
"Palace" (Abu Dhabi), from the Colnect catalog
Stamps have proven to be one of the most popular categories of our community. Out of 124,000+ colnectors, more than 27,720 are stamps collectors :) Are you one of them?
Being one of the oldest categories on Colnect, it has been loyally supported and lead by hard-working coordinators - Guido Fußhöller [footy68] and Klaus Jochimsen [Lola22].
Colnect is also constantly updated by our 915 contributors and almost 200 of editors. We are thankful to all the colnectors devoting their time to increase our Stamps catalog and making it globally accessible.
For this blog post, we decided to brush up collectors' knowledge of philatelic history. The Royal Mail of the United Kingdom was established in 1516. The first stamp was issued on May 6th in 1840. It was issued by Britain and it was called "Penny Black", which we, of course, have on Colnect ;)
1st stamp in the world - "Penny Black" (The UK), from the Colnect catalog
The first perforated stamps, though, saw the light of the world in 1854 in Great Britain too. In the next years other countries issued their own perforated stamps.
People started collecting stamps, or philately, right after first stamps went into circulation.
Impressive fact: in 1841 there was an ad posted in a newspaper about a woman seeking other philatelists to help her decorate her bedroom's wall with stamps.
Interestingly enough, The UK is the only country in the world that does not mention its name on stamps. In addition, the first non-royal face on British stamps was William Shakespeare's portrait.
Another unique stamp is the Banana stamp issued in Tonga! :)
"Banana" (Tonga), from the Colnect catalog
Do you have a favourite stamp in your collection? Do you have suggestions for our Stamps Catalog? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!
And finally, if you want to contribute to stamps catalog, follow the instructions here.
Happy Colnecting! ;)