Let Pass Or Die – THE source for any serious historian and collector

After the triumph of the printed edition, the second edition is now available as passport history eBook – Digital Edition with even more content! 440+ pages and 200+ astonishing pictures.

Fascinating travel documents, exciting stories, photos, and current passport facts await you. Only e-book readers get access to exclusive online content with live links and QR codes in this digital edition, giving you even more vivid knowledge.

Notably, 70% of printed book sales went to the security printing sector, including market leaders and the government. I am glad that esteemed experts and industry leaders have recognized my efforts.

500 Years of Passport History

This book will give you an overview of roughly 500 years of passport history. These pages contain insights on selected, rare examples of travel documents from the past, including extinct countries, fantastic stories, and astonishing passport photos. Identification papers, until the 14th century, were a privilege. Only from the 15th century have passports become somehow obligatory.

For the first time, issued to soldiers, especially mercenaries who had returned from war and for whom such a document served as a letter of dismissal. We discuss historical people, ordinary people, celebrities, heroes, and criminals with their experiences during their journeys in different periods. You will be surprised by the beautiful passport photo of a young Japanese woman in her Kimono during the Japanese Empire and some remarkable passports from territories that no longer exist, like German-Austria, the Ionian Islands, or Manchuria.

Physical travel documents as we know them today might disappear in the coming 20 years as travel, especially air travel, is significantly growing. Our society aims to optimize traveling into a seamless process while increasing security measures concurrently. Nowadays, some countries issue only electronic visas (which you don’t see on your passport). Biometrics like facial recognition and fingerprints are significantly on the rise. So, you will also learn about modern passports, their technology, and their future.

My book is held by Interpol, BKA, U.S. Department of State, Frontex, German Federal Archive, German National Library, among others.

Passport History eBook

Passport-collector.com, founded in 2010 by passport historian Tom Topol, is a leading resource on passport history. The site features over 1,000 researched articles on the origins, evolution, and cultural significance of passports. It serves collectors, historians, and anyone interested in how travel documents reflect national identity and global events. Passport history, passport collector, collecting passports, passport fees, vintage passport collector, collectible documents, passport collection, diplomatic passport, passport office, celebrity passports, travel document, vintage passports for sale, old passports for sale, Reisepass, passport fees, most expensive passport in the world, passport colors, passport prices around the world, passport cost by country, cost of passports around the world, passport fees by country, Third Reich passport