Stamp Column Archives

The Glassine Surfer Column Archive

This column originally appeared in the American Philatelic Society's monthly magazine, "The American Philatelist." Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

January 2003

Let’s begin the new year with a clean slate and with the firm belief that the best is yet to come. And with that in mind, let’s not lose sight of the truth that the Web, though useful and enjoyed by many, was made for you and I to find stamps. If we remember these simple facts, 2003 will be a tremendous philatelic year.

Good stamp sites debut every month so let’s start off with “Officially Sealed,” a new site with big graphics and many nice touches.

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Officially Sealed

Every country has a history of official seals, those cancelled labels proving that the post office closed the sealed mailer, and the USA’s small catalog of official seals falls into the back-of-the-book category.

This site is very easy to use. Each country is listed in the right-hand column, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, which leads to large scans of their seals along with dates of issue, EKU’s, and other descriptive material.

Most countries are covered with a few simple pages, though China has listings for Imperial, Foreign Offices, Republic, and People's Republic and the USA encompasses Registry, Dead Letter Office, regular and typeset issues.

Todd Hirn has done a good job at presenting a lot of informative detail with a minimum of fuss. If you have a cigar box of seals you may want to drag them out, visit Hirn’s site and see what you have.

Officially Sealed
http://www.poseal.com

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IPDA

The Web’s ability to bring stamps and people together is one of its strengths, and today many new collectors’ first stamp experiences are coming via the modem. They’re either seeing sites, using chat rooms, or buying online before they meet a real flesh and blood stamp collector.

And now, online dealers are congregating together via the Web discussing shows, sales, issues, and the like. Recently a few dealers, busy at their keyboards, began working on the IPDA, “Internet Philatelic Dealers Association,” which will serve as a round table for information and discussion about philatelic matters that affect stamp dealers on the Web.

An online dealers knowledge base is long overdue, and if you want to know more about the IPDA, go to their website, read about them, and then get in touch.

Take a trip to their site and read the details, and while you’re there get a copy of their newsletter, “The Philatelic Exporter,” which contains a stories on the Inverted Jenny, grading, and advice to newbies.

Internet Philatelic Dealers Association
http://www.ipdaonline.com

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Opera

Sometime in the past, in a previous issue, I mentioned an alternative Web browser called Opera, whose claim to fame was that it was faster, didn't hog memory, and could be customized by the user to fit his or her way of surfing. That’s still all true, but now even more so.

And now I must confess that my browser of choice, my default eyes on the Web, is Opera. The big lure for me was Opera being able to show many separate browser windows at once as individual panes, so that I could see several sites at a glance.

That was the eye candy that hooked me, and then I began to learn some of Opera's other wonderful tricks and shortcuts such as mouse gestures.

I have a lot of trouble moving from keyboard to mouse to accomplish a single task, and Opera lets users to do keyboard shortcuts by holding down the right-click button and then moving the mouse in certain directions.

This is in addition to the extensive use of keyboard shortcuts that I generally use to go from mutli-pane to single window view, refresh, and the like.

Part I :: Part II :: Part III