Philately

The Universal Postal Union (UPU), a United Nations specialized agency headquartered in the Swiss capital Bern, was founded in 1874. Thus 2024 is the organisation’s 150th anniversary, and to celebrate this milestone the UN Postal Administration has produced three stamp…

World-renowned scientists feature on the stamp sheets and definitives produced by Paraguay in 1965. The imperforated stamps above include portraits of Einstein and Galileo. Born in March 1879 in Ulm, Germany, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics…

Spain’s postal service Correos paid tribute to philatelic collectors in 2020 by issuing this stamp showing the famous painting The Philatelist, a beautiful work from 1929 by Swiss painter François Barraud (1899-1934). In addition, it is printed with a magnifying glass…

Thousands of items are added weekly to PostBeeld’s vast stock. Here we have a very small selection from Nigeria, Brazil, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Botswana and Vietnam: A fine set of mint, never-hinged definitives from 1965. The colourful artwork depicts wild animals native…

Singapore Flora and Fauna Here is a small selection of stamps from Singapore featuring the country’s flora and fauna. Our featured stamp sheet is one of a limited edition of 9,000 pieces produced for the Singapore World Stamp Exhibition in…

Many of us Europeans are aware of great artists from France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Great Britain etc. and we don’t tend to know much about art from the eastern reaches of the continent. Consequently, here are some definitives from Poland,…

Unfortunately we fell victim to a hacker back in March this year, which resulted in enormous problems for the Freestampmagazine service we hope our readers enjoy. I’m pleased to announce we’re up and running again so please keep a look…

Here we have a very small selection of stamp sheets from Great Britain recently added to PostBeeld’s vast stock. Please visit PostBeeld’s website for a more comprehensive view of many more. In 2012 Great Britain hosted the Olympic Games, previously…

There were so many great stamps issued by France last year I find it difficult to make a small selection for this article! Above and below: could these be the first postage stamps depicting electric bicycles? Please enlighten me if…

This year, 2024, is the Year of the Wood Dragon and the Chinese New Year, which begins on February 10th, will be celebrated in dozens of countries across the World. The dragon is considered to be one of the luckiest…

In 2023 Great Britain’s Royal Mail issued various philatelic items to commemorate the remarkable 70-year career of the Welsh-born singer Dame Shirley Bassey. Shown above is the cover of a Royal Mail Prestige Stamp Book, an informative 24-page publication written…

Staff at Freestampmagazine and PostBeeld wish our readers and buying customers a very happy time over the Christmas and New Year period. Christmas (from the Anglo-Saxon: Cristesmæsse, meaning “Christ’s Mass”) is the annual festival that commemorates the birth of Jesus…

PostBeeld has, in the last few weeks, acquired an enormous amount of stamps from private collections and is in the process of adding the items to its already incredibly vast and varied stock. This will provide a great opportunity for…

In 2018 the United Nations Postal Administration issued a beautifully-illustrated set of stamps to celebrate 25 years of its Endangered Species series featuring 12 threatened flora and fauna species. The €0.80 U.N. Vienna stamps here above show the leafless fat-stemmed…

This article was originally published in December 2013: The United States Postal Service (USPS, which is heavily in debt) is destroying an entire run of stamps because the activities illustrated on three of the stamps in the fifteen stamp series…

Here we have a very small selection of stamps recently added to PostBeeld’s vast stock. Please visit PostBeeld’s website for a more comprehensive view of newly-added items. We begin with a few examples taken from a sizeable addition of stamps…