WJohn Alexander Agnew was a New Zealand mining engineer who worked with future United States president Herbert Hoover and later became chairman of Consolidated Gold Fields, the first chairman of the firm to be from a mining engineering background. In his spare time he was a noted philatelist whose collection of Chinese stamps and postal history was regarded as one of the finest of his era.
WAsian philately, or Far-Eastern philately, is a specialized area of philately which focuses on the stamps of China, Japan, Hong Kong and neighboring countries. Stamp collectors and stamp dealers often specialize in a particular aspect of Asian philately, and many stamp auctions are devoted to this area of interest. Hong Kong is a major center for Asian philately with Chinese collectors and investors some of the biggest buyers.
WThe British post offices in China were a system of post offices set up by the United Kingdom in various treaty ports of China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
WThe China National Philatelic Corporation is the primary agency authorized by China Post Group Corporation of the PRC to sell national stamps, other philatelic items, and provide other philatelic services to the public. It is a state-owned corporation.
WThe China Philatelic Society of London (CPSL) is a philatelic organisation devoted to the study of all aspects of Chinese philately from the Municipal Posts of the Treaty Ports to the People's Republic and Taiwan.
WPostal romanization was a system of transliterating Chinese place names developed by postal authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many cities, the postal romanization was the most common English-language form of the city's name from the 1890s until the 1980s, when it was replaced by pinyin.
WSir Percival Victor David Ezekiel David, 2nd Baronet was a Bombay-born British financier who is best known as a scholar and collector of Chinese ceramics. He also formed a collection of Chinese stamps and postal history that has been evaluated as one of the greatest ever assembled.
WThe French post offices in China were among the post offices maintained by foreign powers in China from the mid-19th century until 1922. The first French Post Office in China opened in 1862. Initially, the French government used ordinary French postage stamps for these offices. These forerunner stamps can be shown to have been sold or used in China only by a postmark. Stamps used at Shanghai prior to 1876, for example, can only be identified by diamond-shaped cancel made of a type referred to as a “losange à gros chiffres” with the numbers "5104" in the center of the cancel.
WLocal postal surcharge labels are a class of labels applied widely to Chinese internal mail between January 1987 and February 1999. They have also been called Additional Charge Labels and Added Charge Labels.
WMa's Illustrated Catalogue of the Stamps of China is a specialized catalogue of earlier Chinese stamps covering the periods from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China. It provides the most comprehensive and systematic record of every stamp from the first Customs issue of 1878 to the Dah Tung print Postage Due stamp in 1947. Ma's Illustrated Catalogue differs from other stamp catalogues as it goes beyond a simple listing of stamps. Ma's catalogue provides a wealth of philately related information of high historical significance that is much needed in the research and study of early Chinese stamps. Today many refer to this catalogue as simply "馬氏圖鑑" or "馬氏國郵圖鑑".
WMeiso Mizuhara was a Japanese philatelist who was known for his award-winning collections of the stamps and postal history of the countries of Asia and his books on those subjects. His collection of Chinese stamps and postal history was exceeded in importance only by that of Sir Percival David.
WThe history of the postage stamps and postal history of China is complicated by the gradual decay of Imperial China and the years of civil war and Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 1940s.
WRevenue stamps of China were first prepared for issue by the Qing dynasty in the late 19th century, but the first revenue stamps which were in general use were issued by the Republic of China after the 1911 revolution. A wide variety of revenue stamps have since been issued, including numerous provincial and local issues.
WThe Leased Territory of Weihaiwei used revenue stamps from 1921 to 1930. The only issue consisted of British King George V keytypes overprinted WEIHAIWEI and a value in cents or dollars. Five values were issued: 1c, 2c, 10c, 50c and $1. The 10c on 3d also exists with additional handstamped surcharges of 1c and 2c. These revenues were withdrawn in 1930 when the leased territory was handed back to China. All of Weihaiwei's revenues are scarce or rare and are highly sought after by collectors.
WThe Russian post offices in China were a collection of post offices established by Imperial Russia in various cities of China beginning in 1870.
WNumerous Chinese stamps depict Sun Yat-sen, and a representative collection can be acquired with little trouble. These may conveniently be divided as the definitives, provincial issues, overprints, and commemoratives, but there is much crossover between these categories.