Good Non-Philatelic Youtube Video About Hitler Head Stamps

I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of the YouTubers I follow - historian Mark Felton - posted a video today about Hitler head stamps and their continued usage after the end of WWII. His normal day to day videos are generally about WWII and pretty well done, and this one is no exception. The cool part is that many of his videos get over a million views, a couple orders of magnitude more than typical YouTube videos targeted at stamp collectors. I'm guessing anyone selling Hitler heads on eBay will be seeing a large uptick in sales for at least the next few days.

Anyway, the gist of the video is that images of Hitler and other Nazi symbols were eradicated by the Allies from public life as quickly as possible after they took over an area and that stamps were one of the only exceptions to that. He doesn't go into excruciating details (the video is only about 7 minutes long) but the info presented is accurate, as far as my (middling) knowledge goes. He does touch on the postwar obliteration of Hitler's image on stamps and shows some examples, which I thought was pretty good for a historical video not aimed at collectors.




*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Interesting. A well done, concise video. Thanks for posting this.

Nice job putting together this video , there is a lot more about these stamps in the years after the war .

Thanks for posting this Art- was very enjoyable. Wish there was more material like this that ties postage stamps to history. Makes me also wonder if more teens and 20-somethings might be drawn to philately if a discussion of postage stamps tied out to something this demo group finds interesting.

It is interesting that many of these stamps are still affordable most likely due to the large quantities printed. This surprises non-stamp collectors who sometimes come across these stamps and think that they might be worth a fortune just like some WWII non-stamp items may be pricey.

APS take note.

And of course Hitler's image was on many other stamps besides the "Hitler Heads". Often in the occupied countries as well.

Sheets of Hitler Head stamps sold in 1968 for $1.00 each sheet of 100 stamp . I ran out of money {$20.00} at the stamp show in Denver ,but the dealers had a lot more sheets for sale .

Around 1973 ,at a stamp bourse around Chicago ,we had the Illinois State Police Dept. come around to the dealers tables asking each dealer not to sell Hitler Head stamps to people we did not know and not sell any large quanity to anybody . The Illinois Bureau of Prisons ask the I.S.P. to make that visit .

It seems "skinheads " in prison were using those type of postage stamps on mail to people who had Jewish sounding names from the phone book . So that is why the State Police came around our sales tables , I had no problem because I had sold most of mine previous as part of a mixture lots thru Linn's ads .

Actually there IS an angle here for the APS, and one I'm not sure they've ever considered. They might want to try contacting owners of history-oriented YouTube channels about doing something on stamps related to a historical topic. A lot of YouTubers do guest appearances and/or joint videos with similar channels, so this wouldn't be out of the ordinary at all. It would be a way to get people outside the hobby to view videos about stamps.

God bless Graham Beck at Exploring Stamps - his videos are excellent and the production values top-notch - but 30K views is just about the upper end of his reach. Given that the topic is aimed at collectors to the exclusion of just about everyone else, that probably won't increase much. If they can get some channels with greater reach to talk about stamps, that might actually be a good recruiting tool.

I'm also going to mention "The History Guy" channel briefly. He's never done a video strictly about stamps to my knowledge, but he uses close-up images of stamps in every (or just about every) video he makes, to the point where I figure he almost has to be a collector. His videos are interesting and well done, if anyone wants to check him out.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheHistoryGuyChannel

APS Take Note?????

Meaning what?

Meaning: Here's a good idea for outreach to new populations of potential stamp collectors - a suggestion I agree with.

Mainer - Exactly. Think and GO outside of the box. Given that the APS membership has been static at around 25,000 members forever they might want to contemplate different approaches when it comes to bringing attention to the hobby. If some attempts are a flop, so what. It actually just costs time to reach out and participate. One million views for Mr. Felton's videos? That got my attention. And what could tie-in better to history than postage stamps and postal history. The APS should find somebody young, maybe an intern, and task them solely with reaching out and coordinating with social media content producers etc. in all types of categories. Entertainment, politics, sports, history in so many forms, transportation, gardening (God knows how many flower stamps there are). Reach out to minority and female content providers. The possibilities are endless.

It is great to have chats and magazine articles for the faithful that want more depth, but those people are already engaged.

Of course, if you would truly like APS to do something in that direction, it's likely best to tell them instead of just us... :)