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This handbook contains everything you need to know to get started stamp collecting. It was written by prolific philatelic author Stephen Datz in consultation with famed philatelist Wayne Youngblood. The book covers the essentials and illustrations augment the text. The authors define philatelic terms, discuss all the different ways stamps are hinged, and dive into the history of stamps. 

This book is a large-font reprint of the 1938 original. It was written by Columbia University graduate, mining expert, and California historian Ernest Abram Wiltsee, who was a collector of covers. (A cover is the name stamp collectors have given to what most people call envelopes.) The original limited-edition of this seminal work was only 500 copies; this copy plays an important and unusual role in the field of United States postal history.

This 50-page book is copy number 160 of only 500 in a limited-edition printing. Number six of the Pacific History Series, this book's cover features a handsome 1867 image of the wooden side-paddle wheel steamer "China." This ship was manufactured to transport mail across the Pacific, from San Francisco to Japan. One side effect of the California Gold Rush was the increase of California's commercial ties with Asia.

This pocket-sized hardcover book was published in 1946—the 50-year anniversary of rural free delivery by the U.S. postal service. The advent of rural delivery service made a big difference in the lives of farmers. Before rural free delivery, many farmers had to travel long distances to pick up their mail at the nearest post offices, or pay someone else to pick it up for them. This copy was donated by the National Rural Letter Carriers Association 40 years after publication.

This book contains over 250 pages of letters to and from the Postmaster General, along with charts and tables. It documents the work of mail agents who carried mail from the eastern states to California by steamship until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in the late 1860s. Professor Theron Wierenga wrote this book for his students, after his son was born.

This gold-covered book is especially appropriate for the Smithsonian Library's golden anniversary celebration. In the early days of the U.S. postal system, mail traveled to California overland, or by steamship, pony, jackass (pack mule), and railroad. The goal was to connect isolated California with the rest of the United States. At almost four hundred pages in length, this book contains hundreds of black-and-white photos (and a few color plates) of canceled covers—envelopes stamped by the post office so they cannot be reused as fresh postage.

Kenneth J. Kutz is the former President of Texasgulf Mining Corporation. He is also the former President of the Collectors Club of New York. The Collectors Club of New York was founded in 1896, making it one of the oldest existing philatelic societies in the United States. This book is about the philatelic history of oil. Stamps and covers (envelopes) are interwoven with postcard illustrations in chronological order of when the events depicted occurred. The book begins with Noah making the ark with coats of pitch.

Each page of this short, beautifully illustrated book is packed with information about Black Heritage Series postage stamps. From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to Jesse Owens, twenty-eight African American heroes are described in this book. Each chapter has a portrait of the subject (painted by Thomas Blackshear), followed by an extensive biography and an image of their postage stamp, including its date of issue.

This thin, thirty-paged color booklet was published by the United States Postal Service in 2004. The Black Heritage stamp series began in 1978 and ever since, African American heroes and heroines have been honored on postage stamps. The Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) votes on which candidate will be the next postage stamp. Harriet Tubman was the first Black Heritage postage stamp. This booklet is arranged alphabetically from A to Z beginning with the dancer Alvin Ailey and ending with Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Whitney Moore Young.

At over two hundred pages long, this hardback book is basically an encyclopedia of African American heroes on postage stamps, both from the United States and around the world. Arranged alphabetically by last name, it provides short biographies, followed by black and white illustrations of each postage stamp. The stamps are numbered and references to the numbered stamps are in the biographies. For example, Michael Jordan, illustration #289, Tanzania postage stamp.

This gigantic "book" is actually a stack of unnumbered color plates, arranged in alphabetical order, by the last name of the African American hero featured on each. The author, Thomas Blackshear, is a contemporary African Americna artist who draws, paints, illustrates, and sculpts. Mr. Blackshear's artwork is seen on the 25c Ida B.