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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.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 2003

AskPhil
http://www.askphil.org/

Rarest of the Rarities
http://www.askphil.org/Monaco/Mon-index.htm


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Italian Social Republic

Allied forces were hammering Italy in 1943, and after he was ousted by the King, Il Duce set up a fascist government called the Italian Social Republic in northern Italy with a capital in Salo. Naturally, they had their own postal system and stamps that first began with six cities overprinting their old stock of Italian stamps, as well as two separate overprints for various specialty issues, such as airmail and parcel post.

To complicate matters there are proofs and essays, some private overprints, and of course bogus ones too. There are also mis-aligned and inverted overprints, as during the war, as the printing of stamps must not have been high on the list or quality control.

We probably all have a handful of these "G.N.R." stamps in our glassines, and if you want to know the story behind them, check out the "Stamps of the Italian Social Republic" site. There's a wealth of annotation and explanation, as well as illustration to start one on the long gray road of WW II philately, when things really weren't black and white.

Stamps of the Italian Social Republic
http://giorgiobifani.cjb.net/

To compliment that site, you may want to re-visit two excellent Italian philatelic sites first mentioned here in 2001.

Italian Stamps 1862-1945
http://www.hist.uib.no/antikk/stamps

The Italian Center for Resistance Philately
http://www.cifr.it

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Japanese Exhibits

As with AskPhil, the Japan-Japan site is another example of Newton's first law of motion: things at rest tend to remain at rest, and things in motion always seem to be moving forward. It's a philatelic principal.

Since last reviewed last fall, Japan-Japan has added "The Yigal Nathanial International Grand Prix Exhibit of Japan Hand Etched Stamps 1871-1876," which includes all 129 pages.

From the navigation list on the left-hand side of the page, click on "Philatelic Resources," then follow the link in the list of "Online Philatelic Exhibits."

From that page, you'll also find eight other Japanese online stamp exhibits worth studying, such as "Japan In World War II" by Ken Clark, and Alfred Kugel's "The  Rising Sun."  Japanese Expansion From 1894 to 1925. Favorite pages from

Japan-Japan
http://www.japan-japan.com

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More is Less

Back in its heyday, broadcast TV believed in "least objectionable programming," after they found out that people would watch anything on TV and tuned to whatever they found least objectionable. Since they'd just watch anything, TV's drive was not to lure people to a show but not to drive anyone away.  And now the Web has the same trouble.

There's one thing that drives people away from websites, and there's one thing that pays for websites. Intrusive ads. And in March a Roper poll said that 43 percent of Americans claim Net ads are a nuisance because they interfere with Internet usage.

What used to be as benign as an ad in "Newsweek," has become ten seconds of full-page animated graphics before you get to the news story. It's like being barraged at the door of your friend's house by a 6'6" screaming fool for twenty minutes. You won't go back, but you just might buy some of the baubles you heard about while you were there. You and your friend suffer and the fool prospers.

As things stand now, every Net ad business is touting more, bigger, and fancier ads everywhere, thinking that, after all, what else are people other than customers, but sites, big and small, are losing viewers because of the ads. That same Roper poll says that 75 percent of Americans say advertising is shown in "far too many places."