Sociable Stamp Society :: Glassine Surfer

Late Deliveries Accepted

2008-01-28T15:31:00.000-05:00

For a fleeting moment I thought about re-naming this blog the 'Dead Letter Office' due to lapses in service, but I have to realize that even the Pony Express had troubles getting their messages across the Great American Desert. Even so my only defense is that I've been so busy mulling over the messages in the back of the post office that I haven't had time to deliver them. It's a matter of

All Work and Play

2007-10-01T06:36:00.000-04:00

SG, Ltd. Stanley Gibbons in London has vacancies in their Stand offices, and how many collectors have drempt of a life where you're paid to handle stamps? Looks like they want a Commonwealth and a GB person as well as a buyer/valuer/describer for auction work. Nice work if you can get it. For more: Gibbons P&J Philatelic Another stamp outfit is making noise in New York. The offices of P&J

They're all Quacks

2007-09-27T08:41:00.000-04:00

For all my talk yesterday about the nature of "what's new" here's a tidbit that I overlooked. Ducks The Federal Duck Stamp turns 75 with the 2008/09 issue and to mark the event they are holding the judging of entries for the 75th anniversary issue down in Florida, at the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island during "Ding" Darling Days, Oct. 8-14. (Jay Norwood "Ding"

W/ Da Buzzz

2007-09-26T08:56:00.000-04:00

Buzzzing StampUniverse This is the day of the week known as hump-day and a time to look back and plan ahead. And ask the question "So, what's new?" And the answer, in the universe of stamps is "not much, and you?" because the stamp universe has defined and closed in on itself, like the world of antiques. They don't make them like they used to anymore and they stopped making collectible stamps

Short & Sweet

2007-09-25T06:49:00.000-04:00

St. Rowlands School of Hinge Sticking The answer to yesterday's stamp question: Q: What part of the "Inverted Jenny" is upside-down? The frame or the vignette? A: The central blue vignette. The red frame was printed first on the white paper, so that the sheets were turned around and incorrectly fed into the press for the second printing of the blue Jenny biplane. Today's New Stamp Question

Mitä kuuluu?

2007-09-24T07:36:00.000-04:00

Mitä kuuluu? The weekend was sunny, blue, breezy, and warm in Vermont, but it's just a last tease before the cold, wet days of stick season. I spent much of the evenings watching DVD's from Netflix, and yes, one of them has a stamp collecting angle, if you'll just follow my drift. The movie was "Mother of Mine," a 2005 telling of a Finnish boy evacuated from Suomi to Sweden during World War Two

Silent Stamp Swap

2007-09-20T06:46:00.000-04:00

Construction Zone The roar of 'dozers and the smell of dirt is upon me as I scrape away the old website and install something new. Bear with me. I started this week by taking stock and drawing up some ideas. (I wound up with more questions than solutions.) Then I began culling away some old files and streamlining the all-important but here to fore hidden inner workings. (I'll admit that at

A Sort of Stamps

2007-09-19T07:25:00.000-04:00

Strange but true. Yesterday I was thinking about sorting. What's the most efficient way to separate a pile of stamps into its constituent parts? It's something we all do, and most of us enjoy it because it's somewhat like panning for gold. But there are techniques because no two bags of stamps are the same. It's an art without any hard and fast rules, and like art the time needed for sorting

The Primitive Quest

2007-09-18T06:32:00.000-04:00

Stamp collectors are a primitive lot. We haven't changed in a million years. We are non-conformist, individualists, in the best hunter-gatherer tradition. Each philatelist seeks his own grail, where stamps and postal history are but sign posts on the road to complete his quest. (Is it the same with other collectors?) Wikipedia says: "Individualists promote the exercise of individual goals and

Apocryphal or Not?

2007-09-16T10:35:00.000-04:00

Many years ago, around 1840 or so, a learned and stout gentleman was walking in the morning air outside of London. As usual he was lost in his thoughts, preoccupied with his troubles. He was headmaster of his own public school in the country, a known up-and-comer. He turned the bend and saw a young woman standing at her front door awaiting the morning mail. The postman turned onto her path,

The Best Stamp City?

2007-09-14T08:27:00.000-04:00

Food 4 Thght - The Best Stamp City? My internal clock, could use a stamp show about every two weeks. I appreciate browsing and seeing what other collectors are looking for, but one of the disadvantages of living in an unpopulated area, like I do, is that there aren't a lot of nearby stamp shows to take advantage of. Yea, there's Web auctions, e-mail for philatelic friends, and the post office

Th/ Maybe so

2007-08-23T11:44:00.000-04:00

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

All-Web APS

2007-08-22T14:09:00.000-04:00

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

The Fourteen Per Cent Solution

2007-08-21T11:15:00.000-04:00

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

Public Arcana

2007-08-20T20:41:00.000-04:00

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

GS Day

2007-08-16T12:29:00.000-04:00

Thursday is the end of the week here and a day to cleanup and look ahead in the belief that there really is no time like the present to start. Let’s start with in house topics at Glassine Surfer. I) GS Meta a) Stamp Questions. Even a small website like this runs gets stacks of questions. Most of them are about the value of stamps, which I have answered online. But I answer other questions all

The Practical Philatelist

2007-08-15T12:11:00.000-04:00

One of my many changes in the last couple of years has been my switch from packrat to practical traveler. I used to save everything that may have been useful sometime in the future. It was handy to have lots of things around to use in a pinch. Things like old bookcases, old margarine containers, or stacks of books on curious topics.