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For many collectors, a rewarding part of the fish and game hobby is collecting pre stamp (pre-1934) hunting and fishing licenses. These are seen as historically and contextually important forerunners to the stamps themselves and in the case of the beautiful California pictorial licenses, they are known to have actually inspired the first federal waterfowl stamp. Early hunting…

After becoming married to Jeanette, Gilbert first worked for a railroad and then as a carpenter. Gilbert went to work for his father, helping to build and remodel houses. He was a carpenter for much of his life until he was forced to retire due to problems with his eyesight. Prior to the war, fishing was more…

Last month, before leaving for New York, I was looking through some albums for interesting items to write about. I came upon a group of licenses from Maryland that I had acquired from an advanced collector in the mid 1990’s. Each of the licenses was made out to Gilbert D. Cooper of Brunswick, MD and affixed to each…

The highly anticipated World Stamp Show NY 2016 has come and gone and it was an exhilarating experience! The show was held in the Jacob K. Javits Center and the scale of the event was mind boggling (see Figures 1, 2 and 3). I don’t know if the expected 250,000 showed up, but attendance was strong on…

One of the more intriguing ways of collecting federal waterfowl stamps is to acquire stamps signed by the artist who designed the original artwork. In this way, the miniature piece of art is signed like a larger painting or print. Some advanced collectors attempt to acquire the larger signed original sketches and paintings and a much greater number collect…

One of the most popular methods of collecting federal waterfowl stamp usages is to collect stamps affixed to Form 3333. By far and away the most readily available are from 1934-35, as this was the only year the card was actually required to be used. I would estimate there are more 1934-35 Form 3333 usages in collections today…

One of the biggest trends over the last twenty years is to collect federal waterfowl stamps used on license. The motivation behind this method of collecting is the desire to document the role the stamps have played in the license and stamp system. Federal waterfowl stamps fall under the umbrella of revenue stamps. Their primary purpose is…

While archival material and stamps affixed to documents from August can be difficult to acquire, there are many other options for collecting the 1934-35 federal waterfowl stamp. This is due to the law prohibiting the sale of unused stamps being changed. For a two week period prior to the stamps being withdrawn from sale and destroyed, June 30,…

On March 16, 1934 President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act into law. The primary purpose of this Act was to generate badly needed funding for waterfowl restoration and conservation purposes. The main feature of the Act produced colorful historical artifacts directly tied to waterfowl conservation (the stamps themselves) and provided the origin for the hobby that…

    Welcome to the new website/blog/forum, Waterfowl Stamps and More. This website is the culmination of nine months of work on the part of myself and many talented people, especially my son, Eric and my website developer, Kaiya Kramer. In a broader sense, it it the culmination of over 50 years of stamp collecting,…