What are Cinderellas?

We're often asked the question, "What are Cinderellas?"    You may remember the fairy tale about Cinderella, the stepchild that everyone pushed aside.  "Cinderellas" is the nickname given to the stepchildren of stamp collecting, all those stamps and things that no one can find in Scott's catalog, and that no one knows what to do with.  We've spent quite a few years bringing Cinderellas to philately's ball and guess what some folks are discovering ? What one collector thought was junk is just the specialty item that another collector has been hunting for years. Does all this sound familiar ? Simply put, if it looks like a stamp, or feels like a stamp and it's not listed in Scott's catalog then it's probably a Cinderella.

While that's a starting point, there's certainly a lot more to be said. A few years back we began to document what we could through a series of articles in "Stamp Collector" and "Scott Stamp Monthly". These are now being republished here. Some of the material discussed includes:

• REVENUE STAMPS - Foreign tax stamps of every description and purpose, off and on document; (and returning soon) U.S. taxpaids and state revenues.
• POSTER STAMPS - Classic antique advertising, expositions and fairs, philatelic souvenirs and many thematic areas such as Olympics, political campaigns, and World Wars I & II.
• LOCAL POSTS - Hurt and Willams listed classics, German Stadtposts, Russian Zemstvos, Swiss Hotel Posts, Lundy Island, Rattlesnake Island, British Postal Strike, and post-WW2 DP Camp Posts.
• CHARITY STAMPS - TB/ Christmas seals and collateral material, Red Cross stamps, Jewish National Fund seals and other Judaica, Spanish Civil War and other charities.
• SPECIAL PURPOSE - Railway parcel stamps, telegraph stamps, semi-official airmails, rocket mail, ration stamps, test stamps, air mail etiquettes, and other postal ephemera.
• FANTASIES - Melville phantoms, governments in exile, artistamps, and razorblade rarities.
• BAGGAGE LABELS - Air, rail, ship and hotel.
• POSTAL POTPOURRI - Imperfs, proofs, specimens, essays, facsimiles, forgeries and a wide variety of specialized material often listed only in foreign catalogs.

This page was last updated July 6, 2016.
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