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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

July 2001

Some of the treasures you can read and educate yourself about are: the Brattleboro, Vermont Postmaster's Provisional; 1845 New York Postmaster's Provisional; the 1847 Issue, the 1851 Twelve-Cent Washington; 1911, 25c Black, Rodgers "Vin Fiz" Semi-Official Air Post Census; 10c Green, Z. Grill Census (Scott No. 85D); 15c Black, Z. Grill Census (Scott No. 85F); Z Grill Introduction, 1c Blue, Z. Grill Census (Scott No. 85A); 1879-93 American Bank Note Company Issues; 1893 Columbian Issue; 1898 Trans-Mississippi Issue; 1908-15 Washington-Franklin Series; Introduction to the Orangeburg Coil (Scott 389); and the Confederate States.

Siegel also has census information on many of these classic issues, and of course you can search the entire Web site for realized price information.  So far the only foreign study online is the New Brunswick 1860 5-Cent Connell Issue, but I gather that more will become available as time and opportunity permits.

Encyclopedia of Stamps
http://www.siegelauctions.com/enc/enc.htm

Freedom

Your modem turns your little PC into a part of the Internet, allowing you to view sites and files, get e-mail and chat online.  It also lets nefarious hackers and predators access your PC through your computer's ports.

I've brought this up in the past and mentioned ZoneAlarm, Black Ice Defender, and Ports Up.  There's another we can add to this list of efficient freeware personal firewalls.  It's Freedom, which bills itself as a flexible suite of features and services to protect and secure your privacy online.

It's free for personal use, though they charge for office use and for some more sophisticated features.  If you're not satisfied with the others previously mentioned or just want to stay ahead of the curve, check out their Web site.

Freedom is a personal firewall to block your ports from hackers that also has a cookie manager to help prevent some 'Net marketing people from tracking your browsing, a form filler to speed up online registrations that's also secure, and it has a nice ad manager to help you block ads from downloading.

Freedom
http://www.freedom.net/

If you're new to the "AP," or if you can't find your January issue, here are the links to those other 'Net personal firewall Web sites.

ZoneAlarm
http://www.zonealarm.com/

Black Ice Defender
http://www.networkice.com/

Sygate Personal Firewall
http://www.sygate.com/products/shield_ov.htm

Net Security
http://netsecurity.about.com

Machins Cubed

Queen Victoria may have ruled longer,over an empire larger than there ever had been, and been the first person to grace a postage stamp, but Queen Elizabeth must hold the Guinness record for the person shown on the most postage stamps for both the quantity and individual issue records.

I like to think of QEII's Machins as the Rubic 3 [ed note: put '3' in supra script to show as mathematically cubed] of stamps and admire the efforts to present the issues in some sort of organized way, so I'm always fascinated by a new Machin site.  And this time it's a site simply called "GB Machin Definitives" that says it has something for everyone on Machins.

Among the many areas covered on the Web site are; the Machin design, head and value types, type of paper and gum, printers of the Machin, perfs and ellipses, the Deegam specialize Machin catalogue, phosphor bands, coil strips, cylinder blocks, self-adhesives, redrawn values, regionals, and NVI's.

There's also a Web interactive area for swamps and wants, questions and answers, and an add your own URL page.

GB Machin Definitives
http://website.lineone.net/~gbmachins/