The Postage Stamps of the United States (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798259501836)

John N. Luff's 1902 masterwork stands as the foundational reference for serious collectors of United States postage stamps, and this Frontier Model Bibliophile edition makes it available in a modern print-on-demand format while preserving the meticulous scholarship that established its reputation over a century ago. Luff, who served as an expert advisor to the New York Public Library's philatelic collection and was among the most respected figures in American philately during the early twentieth century, produced a work of remarkable comprehensiveness that cataloged every United States stamp issue from the first general adhesives of 1847 through the turn of the century. The text covers regular issues, commemoratives, postage dues, special deliveries, newspaper and periodical stamps, officials, and revenues with a level of detail that remains valuable to researchers and advanced collectors today. For each issue, Luff provides design descriptions, printing methods, perforation gauges, watermark details, color varieties, and known errors, supplemented by production data drawn from Post Office Department records that were accessible to researchers of his era but have since become more difficult to locate. His discussions of the contract printing firms, including the National Bank Note Company, the Continental Bank Note Company, and the American Bank Note Company, illuminate the industrial processes behind stamp production in ways that pure catalog listings cannot. The treatment of nineteenth-century revenue stamps is particularly noteworthy. The Civil War era produced an extraordinary proliferation of revenue stamp designs as the federal government taxed everything from playing cards to proprietary medicines, and Luff's systematic coverage of these issues remains one of the most accessible guides to a collecting area that can overwhelm newcomers with its sheer variety. Beyond its utility as a reference, the work offers a window into the state of American philatelic knowledge at a pivotal moment. By 1902, stamp collecting in the United States had matured from a Victorian parlor hobby into a field with professional dealers, institutional collections, and scholarly societies. Luff's book both reflected and advanced that transformation, establishing standards for descriptive rigor that influenced subsequent catalogs and reference works for decades. His methodology of combining visual description, production history, and variant documentation set a template that later catalogers would follow. This reissue preserves the original text and illustrations in their entirety. Collectors, postal historians, and researchers in the history of American printing and engraving will find it an indispensable primary source. Students of philatelic historiography will appreciate seeing how the field's standards of evidence and description were established during the golden age of classical philately. The Frontier Model Bibliophile edition ensures that this landmark reference remains accessible to new generations of collectors rather than surviving only in fragile original copies held by institutional libraries and advanced private collections.

Author: John N. (John Nicholas) 1860-1 Luff
ISBN-13: 9798259501836
Publisher: Frontier Model Bibliophile
Language: English
Published: 08/04/2026
Pages: 446
Format: Paperback
Weight: 3.05lbs
Size: 11.00h x 8.50w x 1.21d