Stamp Column Archives

Glassine Surfer October 2003

This year October will see a new governor in California, a miracle in the World Series, and the kid's will be up to their usual tricks and treats on the thirty-first. We'll probably hear more about Columbus Day (Discovery or Conquest Day, depending), Sputnik, and the Great Chicago Fire. And local TV news will cover "National (dinosaur, stamp collecting, crime prevention, popcorn) Month," and "(AIDS, liver, breast cancer) Awareness Month."

But, no triad of monthly events deserves more attention and is more congruous than the commemoration of Edison's invention of the light bulb on October eighth, the observance of the end of daylight savings time on the 26th, and the celebration of National Stamp Collecting Month for thirty-one days. How convenient was it that when darkness fell, lights went on so we could use our tongs and hinges.

Our USPS will mark National Stamp Collecting Month with the release of five new "Reptiles and Amphibians" on the seventh, all of which look like likely ingredients for a healthy witches brew.

No doubt these stamps were made with kids in mind, so why don't they consider creating more designs for the pane of twenty and then lowering the sticker price from thirty-seven to, say, five cents? They'd be affordable, and those kids who catch the bug would then be able to afford to collect all twenty of them. For a buck USPS might make friends with an entire swath of people heretofore neglected.

It's not like anyone uses commemoratives on their mail nowadays anyway. Make it an annual gesture, and teachers will be pre-ordering.

Stamp Sites

Bureau of Engraving and Printing employees initialed the selvage of the Washington Franklin series from 1906 through 1928. The siderographers and plate finishers were artisans, not anonymous journeymen, and now there's a website that opens the window on their identities and work. This small site is a great addition to the Web's encyclopedia of stamp knowledge and lore.

Initials on Washington Franklins
http://home.earthlink.net/~davinod/Initials.htm

Colombia Back-of-Book covers the railroad (or railway) issues of Santander and Cucuta in Columbia and is nicely illustrated with big scans of stamps and plate layouts. It's a one-page article, part of a railway thematics site from the UK.

Colombia Back-of-Book
http://www3.mistral.co.uk/paper.heritage/Cucuta.html

Over at Keräilijä.net you'll find a new online stamp catalogue of Finland (and Alands), tracing the issues from 1852 to 1964. There's enough English text to allow non-Finns to navigate to the issues, but to get use the information, you're going to have to consult a Finn-English dictionary. It's a very well done catalog that's just a part of a larger Finnish stamp collecting site.

Finland Online stamp catalogue
http://www.kerailija.net/postimerkkiluettelo.php

Sticking with Scandinavia for a moment, click on over to the
"Postal Stationery of Denmark 1871-1905," which offers details about Danish and Greenlander postal history, with emphasis on the varieties of the bi-colored postal stationery.

You'll find easy-to-read sections on the bi-colored (imprinted stamps, essays, cliches), a catalog (postal cards, reply cards, etc.) and a lot of postal history.

Postal Stationery of Denmark 1871-1905
http://www.postalstationery.dk

The Philatelist Exchange is a stamp traders site that lists swappers by country or topic. This is a simple, straightforward site, where interested parties click on a country and read the notices. If someone's trade offer catches your eye, e-mail them and see what you can arrange, and if you want to add your own exchange, e-mail the webmaster.

The Philatelist Exchange
http://www.thephilatelistexchange.org/

Five exhibitions of thematics related to things Canadian can be found online at the Canadian Postal Archives at Canada's National Archives. Recently on site were exhibits of French Canada, Prime Ministers, the Postal Service, Aquatic Wildlife, and National Parks.

Naturally, because they have such amazing philatelic treasures in their vaults, the exhibits are a real treat, but their online work only enhances the exhibit material. Besides exhibits, you'll find games for the kids, links to sites, and sections on heritage, production, and preservation.

Canadian Postal Archives
http://www.archives.ca/08/080608_e.html

Before we take our leave, the Canadian Definitive Stamps website has a new URL. Covering Canada and British North America, this has become the definitive site for the definitives so mark it down.

Canadian Definitive Stamps
http://members.shaw.ca/candef

Web Watch

Your friendly federal government will put you on the "National Do Not Call Registry" if you'll just fill out the online form. Most telemarketers cannot call your telephone number if it is in the National Do Not Call Registry.

Do Not Call
http://www.donotcall.gov/

If you don't get a confirming e-mail, then something went wrong, so keep your eyes open.

And sticking with our lovable feds for a moment, be sure to keep "Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids" in mind. This exercise in civics and government explains the US system of government and is meant for your basic K-12 groups.

Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids
http://bensguide.gpo.gov/

As October is stamp collecting month, and the USPS is part of the federal establishment, this site fits in well with any outreach projects you or your club has in mind.

Related to your .gov, The "Government Information Awareness" site at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., was set up to let people communicate what they know about aspects of the federal government, with GIA site serving as a single, comprehensive data source on individuals, organizations, and corporations related to the US government.

President Madison serves as the inspiration for GIA, and this quote of his is proudly displayed: "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."

Government Information Awareness
http://opengov.media.mit.edu

In Hawaiian "wiki" means "quick," and thus Wikipedia is a little different than the usual encyclopedia. It's an online project to create an open content encyclopedia that strives to be up-to-date and comprehensive, but the articles and listings are also revisable by users, like you or me.

Wikipedia
http://www.wikipedia.org

The stamp collecting material therein is fairly good, but maybe you could add to it.

Wikipedia: Stamp Collecting
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_Stamp

The Web does spawn large projects such as this, and one of the first was the Open Directory Project, which is the ODP whose URL is dmoz.org.

This online directory of websites has been growing and growing like a forest over the years. The recent criticism is that certain areas of the forest have grown tall and mighty, while some seem to suffer from some blight and drought, but this must be due to the volunteer aspect of the hands at the keyboard.

Open Directory Project
http://www.dmoz.org

It's dmoz because it was related to the folks who made Mozilla, the creators of Netscape and then part and parcel of AOL. I'm certain Web genealogy will soon become a full-fledged science.

There is "surfing" and then there is "presurfing," that random and aimless Web clicking that gives us our daily dose of serendipity and surprise. There's a blog that even specializes in such non-productive behavior, and I include it here at your peril.

The Presurfer
http://presurfer.meepzorp.com/

As of this writing, front page offerings listed were Guinness World Records, a revised State of the Union address, Betty Boop, guitar faces, and mullet wigs. I'm sure you'll find something to tweak your brother-in-law's sense of humor.

Tools

The wide, wide world of Google is evidence of an expanding universe within the expectations of a finite world. I had bookmarked their second version of their toolbar for inclusion herein, but to that I have to add their newer debut of the Google News Alert.

The Google News Alert is an e-mail sent to you with breaking news articles that Google has found in its database of news stories. The user selects the keywords to watch, and when they bubble up, you get the e-mail. In beta there were no ads or frilly wastes of bandwidth, only the news links with a thirty- or so-word slug.

Google News Alerts
http://www.google.com/newsalerts

Yes, other services exists, but knowing Google's reputation for scouring the Web as fully and efficiently as it does, this news alert service soon might be the standard to which all are compared.

Now, the toolbar at Google has been around for a while, and is a helpful tool. The new version has a few tweaks that might make your virtual life easier, or maybe just funner, if that's a word.

You've probably noticed that if you leave the toolbar "highlight" on, those search words are colored on all the web pages you visit. Well, it must have come to Google's attention, as they now call it "Word Find," an indication that they are paying attention to their users.

But the more interesting additions to the toolbar, are the popup blocker, the AutoFill, and the BlogThis. We all know popup blocking is needed, so Google has bundled it up in the toolbar for you. AutoFill completes online forms with data, so rather than typing big, long e-mail addy's, it'll complete the entry after you type in the first one or two letters.

BlogThis is a little something extra. Google bought Pyra, which ran Blogger.com, so now Google is integrating blogs and the toolbar. BlogThis allows someone with a blog run from the Blogger site, to create a post in their weblog that links back to the page in their browser when they clicked on the button. It enhances spontaneity and probably blog size.

Google Toolbar
http://toolbar.google.com/index-beta

Be advised that all popup blockers are not created with the same goals in mind. Apparently, some would rather use your surfing information to enhance their advertising.

The Pulpit
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030206.html

And in case you didn't catch it, Google found a better use for the tilde on your keyboard. In Google keyword searches the "~" means "synonym."

We all know how useful currency exchange calculators are, and there are a few good ones online. Another sort of calculator is the historical values calculator, and there's an easy to use one at the Federal Reserve in Minneapolis. But what if you want to see what a US dollar was worth in London back in 1939? There's a site you can visit that will help you out. Now, you can make some sense of those historical stamp sales figures, where it says someone paid 8000 pounds in 1952 for that rare cover.

What was the exchange rate then?
http://eh.net/hmit/exchangerates/

Universal Currency Converter
http://www.xe.com/ucc/

Inflation Calculater 1913-2003
http://minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc/

Glassine Surfer

The Glassine Surfer archive is online along with other stories, help, and links to stamp collecting sites. We also host the Sociable Stamp Society chats online on Sunday evenings at eight o’clock eastern. Just click on “chat.”

When e-mailing me for the first time, please put "GS" in the subject line along with your topic. I bulk filter my incoming mail for spam because I have to and don't want to mistakenly delete your message.

The Glassine Surfer
http://www.glassinesurfer.com

Thanks for reading the “Glassine Surfer” and support your local club. See you online.