Sociable Stamp Society

This is our blog for current stamp news and views of interest to the philatelist and beginner. Daily updates provide items on shows, new issues, events, what's selling, and timely facts.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Th/ Maybe so

GS Housecleaning

I) GS Meta Thursday is the end of the week and a day to look ahead. Let’s start with in house topics at Glassine Surfer.

This GS has drifted away from philatelic research stories. After mulling it all over, I don't know if I'm up to digesting philatelic research and recasting the stories. I’m more passionate about the people and stories of stamps. I'll leave the facts and figures of stamps to the specialists and dealers. (I’m just a fan and they’re better at calling balls-and-strikes.) GS stamp writing will have to evolve from this journal of notions that you're reading right here.

a) Questions.

The outbound links on GS have to be edited and recast. It’s a large undertaking. It will take me a bit to work up the enthusiasm for it, but I am working on a plan and the process. If you're a Web-naut and have some insights, write me.

b) Stamp Links.

Hans Kruse has a good site you should be aware of: “Numeral Cancels of the Dutch East Indies 1874 – 1893 ... is about the numeral cancels used in the Dutch East Indies from 1874 through 1893.” Numeral Cancels

(Isn’t it true that sites like his are what the Web is really all about? Clear and honest information in context without guile.)

II) A Stamp Story: Maybe.

There is an old story of an stamp collector who had tended his albums for many years. One day he lost his new magnifying glass. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors said, “Such bad luck.”

“Maybe,” the stamp collector replied.

The next morning he found the magnifier behind a cupboard that had not been moved in a generation. There he also found a rare stamp. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe,” replied the stamp collector.

The following month, he was duped into trading the rarity for a box of common covers. The neighbors lamented his bad luck. "How sad it is," they said.

“Maybe,” answered the stamp collector.

The day after a traveler came and asked for some water. The traveler feared his family had died for he had had no news from them in years. "Then this is for you," and the collector gave the traveler a stack letters from the man's family that the post office had lost. In gratitude, the traveler gave the collector a sheet of stamps he'd won gambling. The collector broke up the sheet, sold several singles and two blocks, and became a prosperous, renown dealer. "What great luck," exclaimed his neighbors and friends.

"Maybe," said the stamp collector, as he eyed the tax collector walking towards his house.

Alright, I’ve got to get work done before the weekend kicks in! Enjoy it all.

the lanai guy | 11:44 AM | 1 comments |

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

All-Web APS

I'm starting to feel like a desert wanderer coming back home. What I see seems familiar. What I see seems new. It's the same, but my point-of-view is not. And it looks like the frogs in the pan are gently simmering on low heat.

APS had to raise annual dues to forty-five dollars. As membership dwindles, the cost of operation refuses to improve and demand for member benefits isn't attracting the millions of stamp collectors swarming over the Web.

When I first joined APS in '80, I was schooled by their magazine and was on the sales book circuits. I have to say I learned a lot from APS. I can't overstate how valuable the American Philatelic Research Library is. But I have to confess that I overlooked sending in my renewal for the first time in over 20 years. (Did that sux? Yea, it did, but it was about affordability for me.)

APS needs new-thinking or a surgical re-organization of the flow chart. The APS doesn't need any officers from the Greek chorus of simmering frogs who won't push for systemic change. Sea changes in organization and business are good. Otherwise, we'd still be paying $1.20 a minute to make a 'long distance' phone call. It's time for old-timey brick-and-morter groups to embrace the sea change. We need our own version of the 'Google-boys'.

Stamp collecting goes on and gets better and better, despite wallpaper issues from the USPS and organization shrinkage, but that doesn't mean that APS can't 'reinvent' itself. It just needs a plan, and as we all know that in philately dreams can never be too small only the stamps are.

How does this sound for a talking point? "The All-Web American Philatelic Society."

the lanai guy | 2:09 PM | 0 comments |

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

The Fourteen Per Cent Solution

OK stampers listen up. Today we’re going to talk about something you’d rather not: clutter and chaos.

It’s a well known fact that each of you has a closet or attic stuffed with envelopes, and boxes of god-knows-what. You haven’t opened them in the last four years so it’s a toss up as to what’s exactly in those boxes. But it is high time that we understood the nature of the beast and dealt with clutter and chaos.

It’s a fine line between controlled clutter and chaos, and in this case the beauty of controlled clutter is definitely in the eye of the beholder because the difference between the two is that the contents of controlled clutter are known, mentally inventoried, and appreciated, while chaos is a messy frenzy of unknowns.

This accounts for the stamp collector’s passion for lists, inventories, Excel, and catalogs. With list in hand we can bask in the glow of towering boxes of clutter and pick out those Solomon Island issues we got last year at the Cleveland show blindfolded. Clutter is essentially the backroom of our collections, our inner sanctum, where collectors go to play.

On the other hand, chaos is a swamp of squandered stamps perhaps ready for liquidation. They are homeless ephemera, postal history, maxim cards, curios, and stamp show impulses, and we all have a certain amount of chaos mixed among the controlled clutter of our stamp collections.

It’s this ratio that is important. A certain amount of personal collection chaos is healthy, without it there is no serendipity or synchronicity. A totally controlled collection is boring, but if it gets out of hand, chaos renders everything incomprehensible.

An environment that is stable and controlled allows collections and studies to grow, but without a little dose of the chaos that comes from random causes, the pursuit turns stale and the result dull and ‘academic’. (Is this why topical/thematic collectors are so excited: their ‘collection’ extends beyond emissions to the entire topic they collect on stamps, which is packed with discovery.)

The prime ratio of clutter to chaos to incubate a collection is 7:1 (clutter:chaos). That’s eight-six percent clutter to fourteen percent chaos.

Now go look at your closet of boxes, catalogues, envelopes, and drawers of stamps and assess your ratio.

If you are woefully over target, sort and sell. Then tackle a new collection. That’s what it’s all about. Give those forlorn items a new home and treat yourself to a new journey and collection.

Sometime soon we will tackle the penetrating question of “Why are stamp collectors so different from the rest of the world?”

the lanai guy | 11:15 AM | 0 comments |

Monday, August 20, 2007

Public Arcana

Over the weekend I was downtown enjoying the sun and the breeze. I met someone for lunch and in the course of the next four hours stamp collecting never came up.

That's not surprising because 99% of the breathing public hasn't a clue what we do and every year fewer and fewer people actually use stamps. I thought it over and it seems to me that the topic never came up because it's almost arcana.

It's a conversation stopper. It isn't 'exciting' to the unbaptized, and touting philately might just prompt your re-evaluation as a functional member of the 21^st century.

But after we said good-bye I was on my own kicking around the area when lo and behold I saw a family of tourists wandering the pavement. And one of them had a stamp t-shirt.

It was a enlarged printing of an Icelandic pony complete with perfs, #311 in your catalogues. And I started thinking I had to find myself a suitable stamp t-shirt to wear.

Even on a day when I wasn’t thinking ‘stamps’ I wound up with two long trains of thought and one quest, which I will get to if I can ever stop messing with the stamps at home.

I’m now in the midst of turning old collection items into new ones courtesy of online auctions. I will of course buy a suitable stamp t-shirt somewhere (or make my own) and the next time I’m kicking around on the weekend, I may show up wearing... gosh, I don’t know what stamp I’d wear.

The Inverted Jenny or the Penny Black seems old hat. And I’d like to stay with the USA, but what makes a good t-shirt and what makes a good stamp design are two different things.

A Pony Express might be great? But wait! The answer for me is a Hawaiian issue: plain and simple.

the lanai guy | 8:41 PM | 0 comments |