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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

May 2002

Bad CSA's

In your file for fakes and forgeries, you may want to bookmark Kevin Baker's site "Counterfeits and Fakes of Confederate Stamps."

Baker gets straight to the heart of the issue with a simple interface. The front page has good, clear scans of the genuine items, but when you click on a particular issue you're led to a comparison page, where the real McCoy is shown with its specious cousins.

Counterfeits of CSA #4, for instance, shows a legitimate scan with four fakes or forgeries, along with their perpetrators, if known. Click on the forgery and go one level deeper and an in depth look at the differences between the real and counterfeit stamps.

The characteristics of the CSA #4 Birmingham forgery points out five major differences on a larger scan. It's the way this topic was meant to be taught.

The site loads quick and navigation is intuitive. This site would rank high in anyone's usability study, and it had me thinking more than once about the CSA collection I could start.

Counterfeits and Fakes of Confederate Stamps
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/kr.baker/csa/fakes/

A nice touch is the site's small page of defined terms for reference, whereby postal forgeries, counterfeits, and fakes are clearly differentiated.

ATM World

What's an ATM? To some it's a money machine. To you and me it's a slap in the face to stamp collectors, but to others it's what they collect. Technically, ATM's are something like stamps, though their printed on demand in just about any denomination without a town or date.

But if you want to see how ATM's have proliferated, check out Gregg Ford's "ATM World." It's another easy-to-use, straight-to-the-point, philatelic site that can have you clicking for hours.

The front page is a text index with each link going to a country and showing their ATM designs along with their first use date. If a basic graphic design was used on ATM's with different indicia, then there's a "more" link that lists them.

A handy page of newly issued ATM's keeps you current, and an "update" page shows you what's new on the site. Needless to say, the site is stuffed with good graphics of the issues, and Danny Van den Reeck in Belguim, who runs the site, should be commended for presentation and organization.

I have some ATM's, though I rationalize my small holding because they're old Alands ATM's and I collect Finland, but after seeing the scope and breadth of ATM's, not to mention their generally brilliant graphics, I wonder if we won't be seeing more and more of them in the near future.

ATM World
http://home.tiscalinet.be/ATM-world/

British North America Philatelic Society

BNAPS est omnia divisa in partes tres, but unlike Gallia it isn't in Latin. The British North America Philatelic Society site covers all philatelic things Canadian and pre-Canadian with members ranging from flyspecking specialists to the casual collector.

Their Web site is divided into three parts: About, Activities, and Features. The "About" pages tell you the who's and what you need to know about the group, and the "Activities" section spells out everything you'd need to know about when and where the BNAPS will be seen next.

Under "Features" you'll find a nice starter's tutorial to stamp collecting, commentaries from various club members covering a wide range of BNA topics and developments, and an impressive list of study groups from Admirals and the Map issue to postcards and revenues.

British North America Philatelic Society
http://www.bnaps.org/

Part I :: Part II :: Part III