National Postal Museum

The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum (NPM) is dedicated to the preservation, study and presentation of postal history and philately. The museum showcases the largest and most comprehensive collection of stamps and philatelic material in the world—including postal stationery, vehicles used to transport the mail, mailboxes, meters, cards and letters, and postal materials that predate the use of stamps—and makes this rich history available to scholars, philatelists, collectors, and visitors from around the world.

With more than 40,000 volumes and manuscript holdings, the National Postal Museum’s Library Research Center—a branch of Smithsonian Libraries—is among the world’s largest philatelic and postal history research facilities. The library is open to the public by appointment only.