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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

October 2001

Stamp Web sites are labors of love, cultivated with months of work and requiring many, many more hours of care, not to mention continuing education. If you're running a Web site, you're checking Web sites, newsgroups, and newsletters to read about changes, modifications, scams, viruses, and new stamp sites everyday.

Philatelic Webmasters are a new and different philatelic species, merging stamp knowledge, technical ability, and interconnectivity with the panache of an mcee, so if you want to ramp up your own site, be forewarned you're about to dive into some wondrous, but uncharted depths.

See you on the way down.

Il Postino

I love e-mail. I never know what the mail will bring, and every now and then someone writes and enriches my day. That's how I heard about two excellent Italian stamp sites.

The first, "Italian Stamps 1862-1945," is a beautiful, in depth site about the stamps of Italy. They are grouped by their series with each stamp in a series shown in a crisp, enlarged scan, explained with an annotation. It's a very easy to use site that's not only detailed but comprehensive.

The second site I visited that day was "The Italian Center for Resistance Philately," which recounts Italy's resistance movement during World War II, as depicted on Italian stamps. Luckily, there's also an English version.

I didn't find these sites. After I visited them, I tried to locate them through some search engines, and as I expected, I didn't find them. Or if they were there, they were so far down the list, as to be virtually invisible.  

It was Robert Bowling of Virginia who sent them to me, proving that "word of mouth" is still how the world works. Bowling collects Trieste "A", Italy and colonies, and if you run into him, tell him thanks.  

I also have to echo Bowling's comment to me that anyone putting together a philatelic Web site might want to check the format of these sites. They work well. And thanks for sharing them with all of us, Robert.

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

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

Stamp Tags

Jim Bryden's "Stamp Tags" program has been around for a long time, and it's an extremely useful program that prints small identifying tags that can be slipped alongside stamps in stockbooks and glassines.

To print a tag for a glassine of common used Presidentials just select the glassine size and then type in your descriptions. You can hit "print" or save the file to be used again.

If you have a stockbook collection with gaps for stamps you still need, you can print out a set of stamp tags and slip them into the empty places. I have many of these.

Bryden started Stamp Tags back in the early '80's, and the first version was coded on a Commodore 64. (I said it was around for a long time, didn't I?) It was Jim's solution to a problem he encountered with his precancel collection.

He switched to maintaining his stamps in stockbooks to avoid remounting them as his collection grew. To maintain order he wanted write-ups with PSS numbers and the like, and being a computer person, Stamp Tags was born.

There's a trail version available on site that prints stamp tags. It'll show you what the basic program does, but if you get hooked, there's a much beefier version available at an affordable price.

The new version is loaded with easy-to-use menus that automatically format tags for different stamp sizes and glassine envelopes.

Stamp Tags is a one-of-a-kind program. It's a pre-programmed word processor just for stamp collectors, and you could use it to print album pages. Stamp Tags runs on Windows 98, Windows 95, or Windows NT.

Stamp Tags
http://www.stamptags.com

Take it one at a time.

The term multitasking came into vogue in the computer age and simply means a computer that can do two or more things at one, such as download a file while running spreadsheet calculations.  Given today's enhanced computing power and software, all computers and business systems are expected to juggle multiple tasks.

Likewise, a person writing e-mail, talking with office staff while compiling a report is multitasking, and so is someone driving zipping off the Interstate off ramp while talking on the phone.

But now we're finding out that people weren't wired to switch back and forth between tasks. Not only are studies claiming that the switching, itself, wastes time, but the quality of the tasks is less than that turned out from a non-multitasked environment.

The newest research seems to say that multitasking also leads to technostress, and that sometimes leads to what people are calling "desk rage," basically angry frustration brought about by too much technology, too much work, and too little time.

The computer was supposed to make work simpler, but the scientists didn't account for the accountants, who immediately saw the financial benefits of having fewer people perform more work, so now fewer, more highly stressed workers do more more and more work by multitasking.

Myself, I find that it takes too much time to ramp up to performance speed when I go back to another task after I've had to stop and move onto another. Whatever else management calls it, I call it interruption, and it's like a symphony grinding to a halt to go outside to move their cars.

I've taken a simple strategy. I check e-mail once every two hours. I close my browser when I write and I let the answering machine answer the phone, though I listen to the message in case it's something critical.

The benefit of my no multitasking outlook is fewer errors, more coherence within tasks, and a whole lot less stress, which makes for enhanced productivity and satisfaction.

To learn more go to Google.com and search for "multitasking studies" or "counterproductive multitasking."  Below are some sources, and I'm sorry there's nothing I can do about those long URL's.

CNN: Multitasking is counterproductive
http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/08/05/multitasking.study/index.html

Center for Quality of Management Journal
http://cqmextra.cqm.org/cqmjournal.nsf/reprints/rp10000

TechnoStress
http://207.244.125.118/y2k/y2kfeat.htm

'Desk rage' brews as work pressures build
http://www.s-t.com/daily/01-01/01-07-01/d01bu107.htm

Humorous Multitasking Office
http://homerepair.about.com/library/extra/bloffice.htm

Memorable Enjoyment

Poor James Chalmers. He printed 12 proofs of a round adhesive stamp in 1834. He ran a newspaper in Scotland, and with a businessman's keen eye for opportunity, he foresaw that the stamps could be used to frank the newspaper tax. When the time came, Chalmers would get his scheme approved and make a fortune.  

But Chalmers stamps came to naught, and the proofs followed suit. Though he competed in the first postage stamp design, his uninspired, utilitarian design also came to naught.

An unknown designed the Penny Black featuring Queen Victoria's profile. The elegant, patriotic, and inspirational design was difficult to counterfeit, and Rowland Hill's stamp set the standard for over 100 years, proving function without style is quickly forgotten because people remember best what they enjoy most.

And this digression also applies to Web sites.

COPPA-setic

The Web's the wild wild west, and true to form there's a new sheriff in town out to protect kids online. COPPA was made US law in '98, and went into effect in April 2000.

Basically, it's a children's privacy law that covers Web sites aimed at kids and sites that collect information from kids under 13.  

As stamp collecting is seen as a good activity for children, and many stamp Web sites have kid-friendly information, it's important that US-based Web sites get familiar with COPPA.

If you're a online dealer or a webmaster for a club, and kids under 13 are either customers or members, you have to have a stated privacy policy, as well as information on how to resolve situations that may arise on your site.

Your first stop ought to be the FTC, and after you've availed yourself of their online resources, you should visit the Scouts on Stamps Web site and see how one large Web site has handled the implementation of the rules.

Federal Trade Commission - COPPA
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/kidsprivacy.htm

Scouts on Stamps - Privacy Policy
http://www.sossi.org/privacy.htm

Two Irelands

In 1991 Dr. Charles Wolf donated his Ireland collection to the University Libraries of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and they've begun posting an exhibition about Irish philately on the Web utilizing their holdings.

Part one is "The Forerunners," followed by "The Overprints" in part two.  The forerunners of Irish philately are stamp-like, patriotic labels and items of political interest that appeared around 1922 when the modern Irish state was born. Though not for pre-payment of postage, the labels reflect the beliefs and struggles of the times.

From 1908 through 1916 there were Sinn Féin propaganda labels, a 1916 "Manchester Martyrs" label, and many others.  The Wold collection shows many others, and the Notre Dame exhibition presents each with technical details and historical background.

The exhibition of overprints ranges from the many types of 1922 through to the 1935 "Saorstát" 3-line overprint in black on the Waterlow "Re-engraved".

Notre Dame's "Charles Wolf Collection of Irish Stamps" Exhibition
http://www.rarebooks.nd.edu/stamps/irish/index/index.html

Dovetailing nicely with the Notre Dame site is Arwel Parry's site covering the effects of Irish partition on the postal service, 1920-1922.

The presentation explains the background of the partition of Ireland in 1922, along with a synopsis of the ensuing Civil War. Parry exhibits the stamp issues of the Provisional Government, the Seahorse overprints, and those produced at the time by the Irish Republican Army of the era.

Effects of the Partition of Ireland on the postal service (1920-1922).  
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/eng/stamps/eire01.htm

Exhibition Workshop

Stamp exhibiting is the art of telling a story through stamps and postal history and one that relies not only on telling a good story, but also on telling a good story well. Exhibitors are something like movie directors, but their actors are stamps and covers.

Out in San Diego there's an philatelic exhibitor's workshop whose Web site will show you some of the in's and out's of the craft. There are tips and online examples of exhibitions, rules and forms, links to related societies, exhibition articles, and information about competitions.

San Diego Exhibiting Workshop
http://www.franadams.com/default.html

Machin CC

What can you say about Machins that hasn't already been said. It's flyspec philately on a grand scale with more varieties of more elements than grains of sand throughout Hawaii's beaches.

I shudder to think of the complexity of Machins collected by cancellation and usage, but should you be suffering Machin mania, there's a club in Britain where you can find someone who talks the same syncopated and coded language.

MCC started just over five years ago, and numbers 1,000 members, which incidentally is the same number of shades of orange catalogued for the 21p issue.

The Machin Collectors Club is online now with its own home URL.

Machin Collectors Club
http://www.machins.org

For anyone desperately needing to understand Machin mania there's a terrific Web site called "Machin Nuts" that will reveal all.

Machin Nuts
http://www.adminware.ca/machin.htm

Electric City Meets

The Northeast Pennsylvania Philatelic Society is for any stamp collector in the northeast corner of PA.  They meet twice a month, have auctions, member-to-member sales, and sponsor an annual stamp show in the Scranton and Wyoming Valley area.

For more details, visit their Web site.

The Northeast Pennsylvania Philatelic Society
http://scrantonstampclub.tripod.com