This week sees another huge group of value covers and stamps with:

WWI including a large number of POWs out of a specialized collection by an Austrian man, from different Russian/Siberian camps in WWI, mostly sent home to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Also patriotic postcards, German POWs, and Feldpost.

WWII-era items with ephemera, postcards, Feldpost, POWs, Sudetenland, etc.

And what else? Lots of 1936 Olympics, a little Danzig, and a little USA.

Trying something different... I have so,so many stamps now, I'm going to start offering collections. Most of these won't be up long because this is a short stop on the way to a floor auction, so take a look now. I have a great collection of German se-tenants (more or less complete 1932-45), a great MNH postwar Austria with the Renner sheets, a WWII Kriegsmarine collection with FP to Bismarck (and much nore), Italian volunteer group, WWII ephemera, etc.

In addition, in singles this week I have:

Feldpost WWI-WWII.

Propaganda and Patriotic postcards.

Lots and lights of WWI or earlier flight/patriotic vignettes/cinderellas.

Plus -- POWs, Zeppelin postcards, Weimar covers, airplane photos, Sudetenland... anything and everything German+Austrian.

This section contains categories (and sub-categories) for every item currently available on our website, sorted by country.

I started collecting stamps and coins very young, like many of the kids of my era, with my first purchase being around the age of 5. I made extra money in high school by buying/selling coins and building a collection of German stamps because that's where the majority of my ancestors came from in the 1800's --aus Bayern und Wuerttemberg. I still have distant relatives in Boeblingen, near Stuttgart.

Computers seemed like a much more lucrative endeavor than collectibles dealing, so I became a software developer in the '80s. I started a side business of maps, rare books and autographs -- pre-1700 items + 1st edition Science Fiction, all while building a stock of European-area stamps with aneye to dealing in an early retirement.

By 2000 the mind-numbing stupidity of Fortune 500 companies became too much to bear, and I also had my first child on the way, so in 2000 I quit my 50-weeks-a-year consulting business.

I had discovered that the book business, while fascinating, presented huge challenges in both in acquisition and distribution. Especially shipping internationally. So I changed the name to Gothic Stamps and started my website, as well as attending US shows.

My wife and I have been in continuous business since then. We started with GothicStamps.com, then switched to www.GermanPostalHistory.com, and as of August 2020 have now re-started GothicStamps ere as a standalone website for all those items that just don't quite fit on GermanPostalHistory.com, aggregating our more affordable German-area covers and stamps, while GermanPostalHistory continues to house much more expensive items for investment, museum acquisitions, Gold-medal exhibits, etc. You might want to bookmark both sites, as they tend to complement each other in their offerings.