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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.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 1999

[The rest is stamp collecting.]

If all this cyber-talk has you feeling betrayed and seeing double, imagine how scientists greeted Ernest Rutherford's pronouncement that "All science is either physics or stamp collecting."

Mr. Rutherford was no mere academic.  He was a leading physicist, who disected uraniaum radiation and then went on to prove that those alpha particles were merely doubly ionized helium atoms.  He was one of those pioneers on whose shoulders others stood upon.

He knew a lot about physics and, it sounds like he knew stamps too because science topicals are very popular, though probably not doubly ionized.

Mineral Stamps
http://www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/stamps.html  

Rocket Mail Web Site
http://www.ionet.net/~paroales/rocket.htm

The Space Unit
http://stargate.1usa.com/stamps/

Computers on Stamps
http://www.algonet.se/~heikki/stamp.html  

8

[All the news fit to post.]

Philatelic news registers somewhere between United Way quarterly reports and The Jerry Springer Homecoming Weekend, but all stamp collectors want to know who does or says what to whom.

The truth is out there, or so they say, though it's always been a matter of getting a copy to read.  However, now you can check out the Newswire at Stamps.Net to see what may have happened while you were away.

Stamps.Net is the content side of a bigger entity that
hosts commercial offerings and slugs itself as "Philately's Internet Magazine," a good online source for stamps collecting news and commentary.

Stamps.Net
http://www.stamps.net

Linns is synonymous with "stamp news," and their online presence is one of philatley's best.  Ride a wave out to their site and enjoy your stay.

Linns
http://www.linns.com

9

[Gallery Hopping]

The title of this site is its description, so here goes: "Here You Can Identify Your Weird Stamps And At The Same Time Help Other People Out."

People submit oddball stamps, and people have fun trying to figure out what they are.  It's even more fun browsing the galleries to see the stamps and read the lineages.

Here... People Out
http://www.raster.it/stefano/a/galleries.htm

Galleries can be accumulations of stamps, or they can be curated collections designed to tell a bigger story.

The French Marianne Issues are the focal point of David Mills' exhibition and study.  He examines the definitive's design, proofs, etc., through the production stages, and winds up with a philatelic handbook.

Marianne on French stamps at
http://members.unlimited.net/~dmills/marianne/

(I wish we could do this for all the classics!)

Up in Iceland you'll find an interactive map of the country linked with the art of Þröstur Magnússon, a very efficient way of merging philately with education and Iceland's landscape and history.  Plus, the site covers many other Icelandic philatelic topics.

Icelandic Landscapes
http://www.itn.is/~gunnsi/gardar/stamps.htm"

10

[Stamp Icons]

I recently stumbled across an old stamp collector on the web.  I knew Francis Muldoon back in the early '60's.  He was a cop at New York's 5-3 Precinct who used to sit at his mom's kitchen table with his stamp album and cope with the antics of his partner, Gunther Toody.

If you remember, Toody and Muldoon went around NY in "Car 54 Where Are You?" a goofy black-and-white comedy with a time dated theme song: "...Khrushiev's due in Idlewild."  

As an active non-member of the Organization of American Serendipidists, I didn't think about it till much later, but then got to wondering if there were any stamp collecting characters on TV today.

This might be a future venue for APS adventures.  Just as soft drink bottlers get stars to sip their drinks in the movies, the APS can slip in a few tongs and Penny Blacks here and there to enhance philately's image.

Imagine the possibilties:

1) NFL Conference winners sticking stamps on envelopes carrying Super Bowl tickets to defeated opponents using "Overrun Country" issues;

2) Spook-sleuths on the "X-Files" hunting down the "Hinge-sticking Man" following a trail of shelvage;

3) Bart Simpson topically collecting the "World's Deadliest Accidents and Calamities;"

4) Hallmark Cards giving away free "Love" stamps with their Valentine's Day cards and reworking the "Christmas Box" as the "Stamp Album;"

5) George Lucas' "Star Wars" pre-quel featuring an ancient stamp album of Reagan-Clinton definitives and a shrine made of tongs.

11

[Online Price List]

I was browsing some collectible sites on the Net, trinkets like sports cards, action figures and related nonsense.  After a few dozen clicks I kept running into online lists
with high-low prices attached.  

After running into a few of these, I saw that it was geared to making it easy for me to spend my money with confidence.  The Barbi dealers and Topps had taken the initiative to educate consumers and turn them into customers.

Then as if a little dog bit my ear, I started thinking: Barbi - stamps - "open source" - Net - price list.  So I gotta ask, "Is there a free browseable stamp price list on the Net to help novices become better collectors?"

12

[Hey, you lookin' at me?]

You say you surf around the world.  Then you copy some great scans of your favorite stamps to your PC only to have them vanish into a warren of directories seven levels deep, or your image viewer chews up your PC when it loads.

Well, fret no more.  ACDSee32 is a Windows 95 image viewer and browser that might solve your problem.  Just click the directory and view all the images in it.  You might be surprised what you have.  Then click an image for the full-fledged presentation, and the nifty thing is that it's quick and light on your PC's resources.

You can test drive it as shareware and own up if you can't do without.

ACDSee32
http://www.acdsystems.com/pages/acdsee32.htm

13

[A rose is a rose]

Though it's been said many times, many ways: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."  A.D. 2000 is less than a year away so take your PC's temperature now and avoid the panic.  You'll impress your spouse and annoy your friends with your erudite confidence.

You might start here at "Y2K"
http://www.y2k.com

And in a related field maybe the parlance of the next new year will derive from this Y2K trouble, and after 31 Dec 1999 we'll call it "1 Jan 2K," though you pessimists will probably call it "1 Jan 00."