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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

April 2000

Spring is here to invigorate and renew hopes and desires.  For us Stampfans it's time once again to clean out the album weeds, trade off duplicates, update want lists and get to the nearest stamp show to see what we can find.  And if hope does spring eternal, then there's bound to be a block of lightly canceled #613's waiting to be found in a $1 cover bin, though I'd be happy just for a loose Zep or two.

Trends

In three days after winning the February New Hampshire presidential primary, John McCain's website raised more than $1.4 million, almost as much as he'd raised the old fashioned way in the previous nine months, proving that the marriage of politics and the 'Net has been consummated.  

Another trend worth watching is online billing and payment.  A growing number of credit card companies, stock e-traders and a steadily increasing number of phone, cable and utility companies are billing and taking payments online, cutting down on their costs.  

Both trends have to raise eyebrows at our postal service. Millions of people only buy 33c stamps to mail in their bills, and the USPS will probably see a drop in mass mailings by all sorts of charitable and non-profit fund raisers, as more services migrate to the Web.

But the USPS's silver lining is, of course, that someone has to deliver all those millions of e-commerce purchases everyday.  But unfortunately for us stamp collectors, the USPS is stuck on metered postage.  

To think that we could be entering the era of the highly collectable legitimate usage high denomination commemorative postage stamp.  

Billing Online
http://www.derivion.com/media/white_paper.html

CSA Stamps and Postal History

John L. Kimbrough is a life-long collector, exhibitor, sometime philatelic writer and dealer, living in Texas, who has merged his passion for CSA philately with the Web at this site.

It's a good introduction to the wonders of Confederate philately.  
There is a lot of information about CSA stamps and covers in the Introduction and Stamp Facts sections, and visitors can view a major exhibit of patriotic covers in its entirety.  A helpful area is Kimbrough's section on fake and phony CSA postal history.  

There's also a large section devoted to the activities of the Confederate Stamp Alliance, the major philatelic organization for CSA collectors, but most importantly, according to Kimbrough, collectors can also ask him CSA philatelic questions, either via E-mail or through the message board, and they will always receive an answer.

Kimbrough is a full-time dealer, and the site was awarded a silver medal in the APS Philatelic Literature Competition at Stamp Show '99 held in Cleveland last August.

CSA Stamps and Postal History
http://members.aol.com/jlkcsa/index.htm

CSA, Grenada, Mississippi

William S. Parks began collecting Mississippi Confederate postal history back in 1972 and he was an active philatelic writer at the time. However his career forced a hiatus until '98, and now Parks is devoting his philatelic efforts to his web site for and about the Confederate postal history of Grenada, Mississippi.

The site is a well written exhibit of history, usage or stamps, postmarks and soldier's dues, which will be updated with new information as it becomes available.

Parks originally set up the site to share with members of the Confederate Stamp Alliance, of which he's a member, and some of the material was published in "The Confederate Philatelist," the journal of the CSA in 1999.

Parks asks anyone with any Confederate covers postmarked at Grenada to contact him and help with this ongoing public philatelic research site.    

Confederate Postal History of Grenada, Mississippi
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/wsparks/