In philately, as in most hobbies, the most valuable tool one can possess is information. One essential source of information for stamp collectors is a good stamp catalogue. By “good,” I mean a major comprehensive catalogue such as published by Scott, Stanley Gibbons, Michel, Yvert et Tellier, and a few others. In the past, one could (and still can) also subscribe to a variety of philatelic periodicals: Linn’s Stamp News, Scott Stamp Monthly, Gibbons Stamp Monthly, Stamp Collector, among a few. And, of course, there have been many books published covering the gamut of collector interest, from basic philatelic encyclopedias to highly specialized volumes covering particular countries or even specific stamp issues.

The problem for collectors, though, is that many do not have the financial wherewithal to subscribe to more than a couple of magazine titles. And since the advent of the internet age, and the attendant explosion of content freely available on the worldwide web, most collectors are not even inclined to divert any of their stamp money to traditional printed material. From philatelic blogs to stamp forums, to stamp society websites, to social sites like Threads and Bluesky, to YouTube videos, there is now more philatelic information freely available to collectors than anyone might have imagined just 2 decades ago.

Yet, even with all that, it can be frustrating to try to find specific information you need, especially with the declining usefullness of search engines which are now wont to prioritize sponsored search results over useful ones. Also, it’s hard to search for information you may not even know exists. Sometimes it’s nice to just browse a list of available articles and see what catches your interest. To that end, I have created a board on the Ted Talks Stamps forum on free philatelic resources available on the internet.

Fig. 1, above, shows a portion of the Home Page of the Ted Talks Stamps forum. The last board listed is the one for Free Philatelic Resources. Click on it, and you will see

(Fig. 2) all of the topics added to this board. They take up 4 pages. So, instead of scrolling through all the thread titles, simply click on the top, pinned thread, which will take you to an alphabetical index of all of the topics available (Fig. 3, below).

If you’re an avid collector of Austria, click on that country to take you to a page listing all of the articles I have found pertaining to Austria (Fig. 4, below).

As you can see, the Austrian Philatelic Society has many free articles available to read. Each entry is a link to that particular article on their web page.

Several major philatelic societies have back issues of most of their journal issues freely available for downloading. For example the British Air Mail Society has all of their back issues of “Air Mail News” from 1958 to 2019 available to read online or to download.

Similarly, the U. S. Philatelic Classics Society has all of the back issues (less the last 5 years) of their journal, “The Chronicle,” available for download or online reading.

While MEPSI, the Mexico Elmhurst Philatelic Society, does not make their journal available for free, they do offer a plethora of free articles on the stamps of Mexico. Click here to see that index of articles.

Many more diverse publications are available, including classic works such as the Serrane Guide and highly technical works, such as Analytical Methods in Philately, 5th Int'l Symposium - 4-Hour Video of Day 1.

I will continue to add more resources as I come across them. I invite everyone to join the forum and, if you know of a resource that should be included but isn’t, please post it in a new thread and I will add it to the index.

Thanks for reading.