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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

March 2001

Dodots

The World Wide Web is based on pages, like a magazine, but the Internet has other systems of information transfer such as the personal digital devices for stocks.  And these days Web sites can sell or lease their content more easily than their web pages, such as when a flower site rents their large academic flower database to a large commercial garden site, and one of the places where you can see this in practice is Dodots.com.

Dodots is a web applet that you download, install and customize in tandem with their Website.  The outcome is a small desktop "dodot," a tiny browser windows containing just the data you asked for from some Web page far away.  When you start Dodots the info you want is simply fetched to your desktop without you having to search for it or go to the source Website.

This is the same notion that Octopus works under, but while that source works from a browser web page, Dodots is just little windows you can open and close on your desktop at will.

Currently there are Dodots for business, games and the usual entertainment and health topics, and I haven't seen one for stamps.  But whether or not Dodots becomes pandemic, depends on us, the user, and I'm hoping that there'll soon be a eBay auction lot tracking Dodot, though I have nothing to base my hope upon.

Dodots
http://www.dodots.com/

Easy Does It

I've run into a new stamp site that's specifically just for beginners.  It's a small site run by Shoban Sen, and if you need to direct a youngster to an easy-to-understand Website for beginning stamp information, you might use this URL.

There are two pages of basic material along with a few others about Sen's collection, which would seem to be ideally suited to stimulate interest among curious kids and newcomers.

Stamp Collecting
http://members.aol.com/shobansen/

Perfin Place

What can you say about philatelists who display their stamps gum-side-up?  But I'll have to confess that I like perfins.  They're an acquired taste like caviar and proof positive that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

It's perf-in for perforated initials or insignia, and the site in question is the "Perfin Place" run by Joe Coulbourne, whose declared intention is that the site will "serve to promote the specialty field of perfin collecting, including security underprints, overprints and perfinned precancels (termed 'prepers')."

You'll find links to other perfin sites as well as some helpful perfin information such as their specialized lexicon and a mailing list for perfin'ers.

The Perfin Place
http://members.aol.com/perfins/

Timing is Everything...

An auction snipe is a buyer who submits a bid in the very last moments of an auction with the hopes of getting the lot without giving anyone else the chance to counterbid and up and the ante, and sniping on the 'Net is very common, so it was only fitting for the winning bidder for the Website esnipe.com to snipe it, which he did.

The site's concept is simple.  Registered users register their eBay user name and password and then when they want to snipe an auction lot, they go to Esnipe at any time they want and enter the required information.  Esnipe will then enter the sniping bid at the requested time for the bidder.

If that eBay closing time is three AM in your time zone and you don't want to attract any attention to a particular lot before closing, then this might be helpful.

Esnipe.com
http://www.esnipe.com/

AgentProxy is in the same vein as esnipe.  It's a free bid automation service for bidders on eBay, Yahoo, Amazon and Ubid.  Register, enter the information on the lots you're bidding on and AgentProxy will watch the clock while you sleep, eat or make merry.

AgentProxy.com
http://www.agentproxy.com

The VP's Nickle

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it's important to get the attribution right, so I apologize to the former Vice President of the United States Thomas R. Marshall, who once said during a debate in the US Senate "What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar."

After years of watching George Burns and Gracie Allen in TV re-runs, I simply assumed those pearls of wisdom were hatched in vaudeville, but it was Paul Schumacher who set me straight.

But here's something else to mull over: according to the consumer price index, five-cents in 1919 is now worth 50 cents, and no matter what, I doubt Paul nor I would want to smoke a 50 cent cigar no matter how good.

Thanks Paul, but we'll have to keep our eyes open, and hopefully USPS is reading.