#philatelist

WW Stamp of The Day #1

For my first ever Worldwide Stamp of The Day I selected one of my first ever stamps!

This is a used Japan 1940 Kirishima National Park stamp. I actually have this whole set and maybe as I continue this series you’ll get to see the rest! You can see that this stamp has been cancelled three times from receiving postmarks along the route it travelled when it was still attached to an envelope. Japanese stamps are one of the main focuses of my collection and this was one of the stamps that started it all!

It depicts a torii gate, which in Shinto marks the transition from between the average world and sacred spaces. This stamp was printed with the photogravure method in the colour scarlet. It was issued on 8/21/1940 with a print run of 350,000. There’re no variations.

I love this stamps because it exemplifies what I love about stamp collecting! It’s both a beautiful piece of art and reflects the history and culture of the country it’s from! Stamps are an extremely accessible way to collect art while learning more about the world too.

Franklin Roosevelt was an avid, lifelong stamp collector who gathered over 1.2 million stamps into his personal collection during the course of his life. He began collecting stamps at the age of eight at the suggestion of his mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, who passed on her collection to him. This is the very first stamp album from the President’s collection. It includes a number of foreign stamps. Many members of the Delano side of FDR’s family were involved in overseas trade, and young Franklin consequently received a steady supply of foreign stamps from his Delano relatives that he carefully stored in this and other early stamp albums.

After FDR's death, his personal stamp collection, including this album, was sold at public auction in 1946 in accordance with his wishes: https://fdr.artifacts.archives.gov/objects/33569

Join us throughout 2023 as we present #FDRtheCollector, featuring artifacts personally collected, purchased, or retained by Franklin Roosevelt, all from our Digital Artifact Collection.