As I wrote recently in Linn’s, ya gotta be careful with Artificial Intelligence-generated images! I created this image using Microsoft Designer’s Image Creator. I had started to format it for a Dragon Card when I stopped and counted the candles: Four on the left, five on the right and presumably the “shamas” or leader candle used to light the others in the center, hidden by the window partition. In my description, I specified “Hanukkah menorah,” which would be eight plus one. (There are other menorahs, not for Hanukkah, with fewer candles. I’ve seen 4 and 6/7.)

In fact, none of that day’s designs had the right number. I went back this morning, and one of the 3 created had 11. So far, though, two of them seem acceptable. But I’m looking carefully for mistletoe and mangers.

of inattention or distraction to destroy a potential Dragon Card first day cover. There were going to be 12 for the Willie O’Ree Canadian stamp. Make that !!.* (A song from “Hello Dolly.”)

The cards are printed two to a page. The printer’s fee to cut them is too much for such a small quantity, and I have a big cutting board. An occasional mistake like still make sense.

I’ve been thinking of an exhibit, “Dragon Cards Mistakes” and now I have another item for it.

The question was posed in the American Topical Association’s Facebook group about a favorites sports/philatelic memory. This is mine:

In 1979, I was a freelance radio sports reporter, covering the Baltimore Orioles, who won the American League Pennant and went to the baseball World Series. I discovered the Baltimore post office had a station in Memorial Stadium with a pictorial postmark, and purchased a stamp and had it serviced. (Appropriately, the stamp is the Fort McHenry Flag, and Fort McHenry is in Baltimore Harbor.)

Now, freelance reporters don’t travel with teams, except on rare occasions or at their own expense. I did not go to Pittsburgh for Games 3, 4 and 5, but when the Series came back to Baltimore, I was ready: I obtained a few more credentials envelopes from my friends in the public relations office and had topically-related stamps ready, to produce another cover.

I also obtained a few Baltimore Orioles No. 10 business envelopes.

Sidebar: UPI Audio sent its White House reporter Tom Foty, who is still working in 2023 for CBS News, Radio, on weekends, to do the reports during the American League Championship Series. UPI’s competitor, AP Radio, asked me to do its voicework during the ALCS — but UPI wouldn’t let me use my own name! “‘Lloyd de Vries’ belongs to us!”

I was doing two reports an hour for APR as “Dave Archer” (“Archer” is my middle name, “Dave” was a corruption of one of the many mispronunciations of “de Vries”), one an hour for Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Radio as “Lloyd de Vries,” and various stations and regional networks at different points, also under my own name. We secondary press were displaced from the press box and put in the stands, where I had had my own telephone installed, and I had cards in front of me to make sure I got the names, times, and everything else right.

I used to hang out at the office in Washington with the APR guys, though, so every time “Dave Archer” called in, we all started laughing. “OK, Dave or Lloyd or whatever your name is….”

Sadly, the O’s lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 7 games. And to this day, I cannot stand to hear the Bucs’ anthem, “We Are Family,” which was played ad nauseam by Pittsburgh. Still, this is my favorite memory combining sports and philately, and maybe even combining my career and philately.

Artificial Intelligence? I think the phenomenon is not only very much overblown and it is also not new. What is new is the “Everybody Knows” fear-mongering that AI is taking over.

All computers can do is choose from among the choices a human or group of humans have provided. They may do so more quickly, sorting and choosing from a large number of options, but they don’t create, except under our direction.

Two quick examples: Does your car have an automatic transmission? It switches gears so the vehicle can speed up or slow down, climb hills or descend. You could do it yourself but possibly not as quickly or as smoothy. I think that’s an example of “artificial intelligence,” but it’s not new. Automatics began to appear in mass-produced automobiles in 1939.

How many minutes has it been since you cursed out the spellchecker on your phone or computer? These programs think they know what you meant to write or should have written and change your text, often resulting in embarrassment or gibberish.

Can AI create artwork of a pastoral day in the country? Yes, if someone programmed it that the sky should be blue, the grass and other vegetation green, and so on. Can it write text? Again, yes, if someone programmed it properly. Otherwise you might end up with a sterling endorsement, like the one that runs regularly on my Kindle: “Try to enjoy reading the poems.” Sorry, if I have to try to enjoy reading something that is for recreation, I’m going to skip it.

When “AI” beats you at chess, that isn’t artificial intelligence, it is good programming: Someone put in all the possible moves for all situations and the chances that the human opponent would do such-and-such as a result of a given move. College papers written by AI? Most professors probably would welcome the improvement! And what’s the difference between a heavily “photo-shopped” photograph and one created from scratch using an AI program? Where is the line?

One of my favorite Science Fiction authors, Glynn Stewart, writes about what he calls “artificial stupids:” Robots or holograms that make choices within severely limited parameters. I don’t think we have progressed beyond that: Humans set up the choices, even for sophisticated AI programs. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

An interesting piece of mail in my box today. At first I wondered who was sending me something that required a customs label. Then I realized it was a U.S. customs declaration! I took another look at the address. (Click on the picture to see a bigger version.)

Still, not too bad: Despite the extra postage (presumably) paid via the Stamps Endicia system (“FCI” is probably “First Class International”), it made the 40-mile trip — 83 miles if it detoured to the JFK Airport Customs facility — in just a day.

Thank goodnes for ZIP codes!

It was an auction catalogue, by the way.

Wow. Just wow.

I didn’t think it would happen, or if it did, I was worried it would be a Hall of Fame award (for deceased members) rather than the Luff (for living members). I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want this honor.

It’s not something you work for: You don’t say, “I want to get the Luff Award for Exceptional Contributions for Philately. What do I need to do?” I also have to admit that my motives were not always altruistic and selfless.

I don’t know if there were any accomplishments specifically that swayed the Luff Committee. I write because that’s what I do. It’s not “Cogito, ergo sum” so much as “Sum, ergo scribo” — I am, therefore I write. I was writing press releases in high school, about everything from band concerts to capacitors.

I think my first philatelic writing was publicity for the 1982 American First Day Cover Society convention. When the editor of Stamps magazine asked First Days editor Sol Koved for a FDC columnist, he recommended me.

I tried dealing in first day covers, starting with just my Dragon Cards and eventually neglecting Dragon Cards because I was so busy with the other stuff. After ten years, I realized I wasn’t cut out to be a successful stamp dealer.^{Note 1}

About that time, 1993, I became involved in the online community GEnie^{Note 2}, mostly to get help and tips for my Apple IIe and IIgs computers. GEnie had a very strong Apple II community, as well as one for Science Fiction and Fantasy, another interest of mine. While on the dial-up system, I discovered it had a Stamp Collecting section in the “Hobby RoundTable.” I felt philately was being neglected and pitched GEnie for a stand-alone Stamp Collecting RoundTable, which I got.

My fellow moderators gave me an award for promotion (shown on the right; above is the First Cachet promoting GEnie: I borrowed an Apple IIe computer for the AFDCS convention, paid to have a telephone line installed, and gave away free FDCs). I had been calling our community “The Virtual Stamp Club” and, as a publicity stunt, I applied to make VSC a chapter of the American Philatelic Society. Chapter #1461 was the first online chapter of any major philatelic organization. (CompuServe’s forum was Chapter #1466.) I still have the GEnie trophy on a shelf in my office (above).

At one point, we had “outposts” of The Virtual Stamp Club on six different online services at the same time. I would write one story and post it in six places. Eventually, only Delphi survived and continued.

Running for the APS board in 1997 was something of a publicity stunt, too. I don’t remember who suggested I run but I saw it as a way to make The Virtual Stamp Club better known. Once elected, though, I took being a Director seriously: I wore the APS lapel pin everywhere, philatelic and not, and read all the briefing books we were given, cover to cover. (No pun intended.)

I doubt the Luff citation will include some of my philatelic failures: Being a dealer (that’s me and my 5-year-old assistant at EMPEX 1990 on the lef). The 2013 debacle where I tried to improve VSC’s resources by selling out to very big philatelic firm. (I didn’t realize which meaning of “selling out” was operative). The fact that neither of my sons collects stamps or covers (yet; hope springs eternal and now there are grandchildren).

I have many people to thank, and my next philatelic failure will be leaving some of them out. My wife Jane, who has tolerated the time spent on my philatelic pursuits. I mentioned above Sol Koved, a mentor; I still think of him and his columns when I write my AFDCS President’s columns. There are the volunteers, supporters and participants of The Virtual Stamp Club in its heyday. Leigh and Steve Ross, who convinced me the World Wide Web was worth a try and made it happen.

My editors at various philatelic publications, including the one who saved me from myself by calling up and saying, “We can’t print this!” The managers at CBS News, Radio who allowed and encouraged me to produce a weekly feature and “spot” reports on stamps.

My colleagues on the APS Board of Directors when I was first elected in 1997. I was one of five first-timers elected that year; the others were Janet Klug, Jeanette Adams, Ann Triggle and Wayne Youngblood. We all did email (not that common yet) and exchanged messages, calling ourselves “The Gang of Five.” We were amazed, maybe aghast, at the vitriol from some quarters after the Pacific 97 debacle.

I also want to thank Peter McCann, then a vice president. The board had a meeting in State College to dal with the image problems of the APS. Now, Peter and I are about as different as can be: He has multiple doctorates, gold-medal exhibits and collects countries whose names I don’t even know. He and I were eating dinner and I confessed I didn’t feel qualified to be on the Board. “You’re as well-qualified as anyone and more so than many,” he replied. It helped quite a bit.

Most of my colleagues in the AFDCS leadership. They’ve let me bounce ideas off them and done much of the work as I’ve tried to transform the organization from an overgrown club into a leading international stamp society. Some of them drive me nuts at times, but I’m sure I return the favor. 😎

My parents, both of whom collected stamps and encouraged me as a child to do so. More than that, they taught me to volunteer when something needs to be done. My Cub Scout pack was going to fold because it didn’t have a committee chairman. My father rearranged his work schedule to attend the meetings, and began 25 years as a Scouter volunteer. In going through my mother’s things after she died, I discovered a newspaper clipping that said she was the president of The Torbank Community Nursery School that I attended. She also encouraged my writing and let me use one of her typewriters. (That was later, after nursery school.)

Notes:
¹I’ve joked that I come from a long line of retail failures, which really isn’t fair to my father and grandfathers: Chain discount stores, Depression, Holocaust, respectively.

² “GEnie” with two capital letters is correct; it stood for “General Electric” and used GE’s internal communications network during off-peak hours. “IIe” and IIgs” are correct, too.

Opinion by Lloyd A. de Vries
The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and not necessarily those of any other organization, philatelic or otherwise.

In a message on the American Philatelic Society website, executive director Scott English outlines a proposal to “merge” the APS and the American Stamp Dealers Association. I put “merge” in quote marks because it seems more like a takeover, with the ASDA becoming a section of the APS, even more so than an Affiliate. (An independent stamp collecting organization that is recognized, but not managed, by the APS.)

English identifies a number of problems with stamp dealing today, but I don’t see in his proposal how combining the two groups would rectify those problems. For instance, he states that fewer than a quarter of ASDA members are stamp show dealers. (Exclusively selling at shows? Or ever selling at shows?) How would merging the two organizations change that? Does it need to be changed? Or does ASDA need to restructure to address that situation?

Talking about selling on platforms like HipStamp and eBay, “…those bound by a code of ethics are treated the same as bad actors by clumsy policies undermining the 100+ years of knowledge and good practices established by these two organizations.” Given the APS’ new partnership with HipStamp and its on-again/off-again one with eBay, I assume he is referring to eBay’s policies. (He didn’t mention any of the other selling platforms.)

Again, how would a merger fix that? Would a combined APS-ASDA convince eBay to give up its own “clumsy policies?” I don’t think so.

He says this merger would “assert our collective membership value in the digital marketplace.” How? An advertising/promotion campaign saying “look for APS membership” would do much the same. Is eBay or any other selling platform likely to require APS, ASDA or any other membership of its dealers? I don’t think so. As long as they pay and don’t violate those “clumsy policies,” all sorts of people will be allowed to use those services.

A well-known dealer who had been expelled from one or both of these organizations continue to be a very active seller on eBay up until his death a few years ago.

I’m not an ASDA member and not privy to its inner workings, but the problem prompting this proposal may be internal: a lack of money, declining membersihp, poor management and so on.

For many decades, ending around the end of the 20th century, ASDA membership was a requirement for a booth at the top stamp collecting shows in New York City. Collectors from all over the Northeast, and some from further, would come to these shows. Any dealer of any size and importance, mail-order or storefront or both, needed to have a booth at those shows.

That is no longer the case. In fact, the ASDA doesn’t even have a New York City show any longer. The fault is not solely that of internet selling. However, that eliminated a major reason for belonging to ASDA.

English proposes adding “dealer representation on the APS Board of Directors.” When I was first elected to the APS Board (1997), I asked why there was a non-voting dealer represent to the Board but not an actual seat on the Board for dealers. I was told in no uncertain terms that the APS represents collectors, not dealers. Has that changed? And what about representation for other philatelic groups, some of which have more members than the ASDA?

Dealers who are members of the APS have for years been able to get “dealer certification” from the APS, giving them access to booths at the APS-produced shows (such as the Great American Stamp Show), display advertising in the journal American Philatelist, and sometimes newsletters and other benefits. Do they still need the ASDA?

If the ASDA is in danger of going out of business, the solution might not be a takeover, but fixing the ASDA’s problems. Or even letting it die. When the Society of Philatelic Americans, a rival to the APS, encountered significant, perhaps insurmountable, problems, it went out of existence.

The USPS has found a willing partner in Disney for its “affinity” tie-ins. Disney is all about cross-promotion: All of its product lines help promote all of its product lines. I was at ABC News when the “final trilogy” (HA!) of “Star Wars” movies were released. Disney owns ABC. The anchors on several programs wore Star Wars costumes! No Disney event would ever go unmentioned in the newscasts.

Was this ordered From Above? I don’t know. After a while, a smart manager knows what the employers want and often delivers it without being asked. I’m pretty sure renting the costumes didn’t come out of our show’s meager budget.

I caught a promo the other night on ABC-TV for some sort of an “event” involving ABC Sports anchors and the Muppets. I think it was happening at Disneyland or Disney World or Disney Empire. Certainly somewhere in the Disney Empire!

The UPSPS loves announcing and issuing stamps at related events. If a pop-culture icon’s manufacturer offered an opportunity, I’m sure the USPS would jump at it. It’s all about publicity for the Postal Service (what I call “Hey! Look at me! We’re still relevant!” stamps, of which the USPS is not the greatest offender) and selling stamps and “philatelic products” at the event.

“Star Wars” by the way, for which the U.S. issued stamps in 2021 and the U.K. issued stamps in 2017, is part of the Disney empire.

Will the Buzz Lightyear stamps sell well? Yes. Will they sell well to philatelists? Who cares. We are a small part of the market.

With a little extra work, the USPS could use these affinity issues to help create more stamp collectors, who would eventually branch out into other parts of philately. That would pay off down the road. But that payoff might come after the current postal management is gone, so it’s not considered.

Meanwhile, “serious” stamp collectors turn up their noses at Buzz and Droids and Hot Wheels and the Hogwarts crowd, as did our grandparents when the first commemoratives were issued in 1892.

We are being flooded with spam, so much than the spam filtering software is demanding another $100 or more a year. (It had already doubled from 2021 to 2022.) You don’t see the garbage, but it takes time to clear out as many as a dozen messages an hour (and that’s after the ones that have certain words are sent right to the Trash).

Many offer clock parts, metal prefab buildings or family law (divorces, counseling). Overnight in the U.S., most of the incoming spam is in Chinese.

As of a few moments ago, all commenting has been turned off for posts older than two years. Recently, someone posted about a discovery for a 2016 issue. If you need to comment on an older post and can’t, please let me know in email: Lloyd@virtualstampclub.com

We regret the inconvenience.

Call me old-fashioned or even a Grumpy Old Man, but I really object to thinly-veiled commercials in recent U.S. stamps: Issues that celebrate a product or company, without actually admitting it.

Granted, the latest U.S. Postal Service selection criteria, which you can see here, do not rule out commercial commemorations. It just seems wrong and demeaning to stamp issuance.

The latest is Espresso Drinks. It is being issued within a month of the 50th anniversary of Starbucks, in the city (Seattle) where it is founded and still has its headquarters. Also coming up this year: Star Wars Droids. It’s not until the seventh paragraph (of 10) in the announcement that the alleged justification is mentioned: “Lucasfilm, the studio that created the Star Wars franchise, is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2021.”

Last year, it was Bugs Bunny, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the cartoon character’s introduction. Even if I were to concede that the Wascally Wabbit is one of the “extraordinary and enduring contributions to American society, history, culture or environment,” the USPS criteria also states “Events of historical significance shall be considered for commemoration on anniversaries in multiples of 50 years.” That was the reason given why the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II was not honored.

Before that, it was Scooby-Doo (another cartoon character, 49 years old at the time), Sparkling Holidays (using easily recognizable Coca-Cola advertising images), Hot Wheels and all sorts of Disney issues, including 2017’s Disney Villains. “Negative occurrences and disasters will not be commemorated,” but bad guys are all right, huh?

In 2013, the U.S. issued 20 Harry Potter stamps, but none for the 150th anniversary of one of the greatest speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address. (To add insult to injury, the Potter stamps were issued on the Gettysburg Address anniversary date.) Don’t get me wrong: I love the Harry Potter stories, I read all the books when they first were published, saw all the movies, and I marvel at how it got schoolchildren to read books. But no Gettysburg Address stamp?

It’s not just the U.S., either. Royal Mail in Britain must have staffers working full-time on reasons to issue new Harry Potter, Star Wars or Star Trek stamps. Part of the justification for honoring the latter last year was especially laughable: Some of the actors who starred or were featured in Trek were British!

Yes, postal agencies make money on pop culture stamps: It costs a fraction of the face value to print them, not much more to market and sell them. The postal people can also make money from related products, like coffee mugs, sweatshirts and framed prints.

However, I think these stunt stamps are more of a cry for attention: “Hey, look at us! Look at us! Stamps are still relevant! This postal agency is still relevant! Pay attention to us!” People and the press will pay more attention to pop culture subjects than an award-winning playwright (August Wilson, U.S., 2021), a country’s strengths and accomplishments (Britain, 2021), or its medical discoveries (Insulin, Canada, 2021). Getting such attention may be necessary for continued funding or even continued existence. But so is denoting important facets of a country’s heritage.

Of course, I am free not to buy Hot Wheels or Scooby-Doo, and I didn’t. I am free to obtain postmarks commemorating historical events that USPS Stamp Services didn’t. And, now that I am officially an Old Man (retired, collecting pensions) and was always Grumpy, I am free to be a Grumpy Old Man.