Beautiful stamps are a serious business for Bermuda Post Office. The Island’s colourful stamps not only serve as payment for postage, they generate extra revenue thanks to legions of collectors around the world.It is a feather in the cap for Bermuda Post Office that its stamps are so eagerly anticipated and collected by people around the world.Part of the magic is striking the right balance between issuing a number of pleasing, new designs each year and not ‘overkilling’ collectors with a constant barrage of releases.Some 700 to 800 committed collectors of Bermuda stamps have standing orders with the post office that guarantee an automatic payment is made as soon as a new stamp issue is released. This ensures the latest designs are immediately forwarded to them to add to their collections.Stanley Taylor has been at the heart of the philately operation in Bermuda for the past 12 years.“The bulk of our collectors are in the US, mostly on the East Coast. We have some in Australia, Hong Kong, Eastern Europe, England and Canada,” said Mr Taylor, Bermuda Post Office’s philatelic coordinator.“We will get people from the cruise ships or tourists staying at hotels coming in to buy stamps as they are collectors.”For a number of reasons the quantity of Bermuda stamps sold has fallen by between a third and a half in the past decade or so. One factor is the increasing use of e-mail and other forms of electronic messaging replacing traditional mail and letter writing. Less tourists in Bermuda has resulted in less postcards being sent, and therefore less stamps bought, and many businesses now use franking machines, doing away with the need for physical stamps.Even so, many hundreds of thousands of Bermuda stamps are produced each year in four separate design issues. The first new issue of 2013, released last month, was a set of stamps commemorating the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. The stamps come in a variety of face values, each with a different design. The biggest quantity produced is the 35 cents version for local postage, of which 150,000 were made.A lot of care is taken to ensure Bermuda stamps are interesting and lively. They tend to be bigger in size than other jurisdictions, allowing more detail to be included. Each stamp design is discussed and agreed on by committee then sent off for Royal approval before it can be issued.Many stamp collectors focus on a particular subject, era or country. Those that collect Bermuda’s stamps appreciate there being only four new issues each year, said Mr Taylor.“We spend a lot of time on the stamps so that we have a quality product,” he explained.Sheets of stamps and first-day covers are highly collectable. Some Bermuda stamps from the earliest days, such as the Perot stamp of the 1840s, can trade for as much as $250,000.Sometimes an unexpected event can increase the demand for a particular stamp. The 2009 tall ships issue included one stamp featuring the Canadian ship SV Concordia, which visited Bermuda that year. When it sank a year later, near Brazil, many people sought out the Bermuda stamp as a collector’s item.From birds to beaches, ships to landmarks, the variety of stamp designs is almost endless. Many people have their own favourites. Mr Taylor particularly likes those with a nautical theme, and points out that the stamps themselves can be educational. As an example he cites a set that featured the Battle of Trafalgar, a subject that would not appear to have any link to Bermuda. However, a Bermuda-built ship featured in the famous 19th century naval battle and was used to carry news of Admiral Nelson’s victory back to Britain.Although the general demand for stamps has waned, the collectability of Bermuda-issued designs appears safe. Mr Taylor said: “If we had no collectors we would cut back on the size of the issues, but I would not want to see a cutback in the number of issues that we make. Collectors like the size of our programme.”Bermuda’s next commemorative set of stamps is scheduled for May and will feature local beaches. The Bermuda Philatelic Bureau can be found in the main Bermuda Post Office building on Church Street.