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Crystal Ball Report Card
So how'd we do?
Starting in early July, members of The Virtual Stamp Club began to speculate on what the 2005 U.S. stamp program might include.
Jay Bigalke, Andrew C. "Livitup" Ohnstad and Lloyd de Vries seem to be the big winners.
- Jay picked Arthur Ashe, although he's not the Black Heritage subject. He also, however, picked Sen. Bob LaFollette and Coal Miners as good bets, and neither is on the schedule. Jay also didn't think there would be new wedding or love stamps, and we're getting a new love stamp in 2005.
- Andrew predicted Rosa Parks' bus boycott, which is one of the subjects in the "To Form A More Perfect Union" (civil rights) sheet of 10 and the impetus for issuing the set in 2005.
- Lloyd pointed out that both Greta Garbo and Henry Fonda have centennials in 2005, but pointed out that the Legends of Hollywood series doesn't usually observe centennials. However, he did pick Fonda over Garbo for the Hollywood series; we're getting both subjects, but Fonda is the Hollywood pick.
In addition to LaFollette and Coal Miners, other subjects we thought might happen were Graf Zeppelin Reprints, Mickey Mantle, John Marshall, Nathan Hale, Rotary/Polio, and Gilbert Stuart.
This doesn't count the ones that were known in advance: Reagan, Lunar New Year, more Disney, "contemporary" Christmas, Nature of America (although we didn't know what the exact subjects would be for Christmas, Nature and Disney (Cookies, Northeast Deciduous Forest, and Celebrations, respectively).
Among the biggies we missed were Muppets/Henson, Marines, and Aviation.
For more on the 2005 stamp program, go to http://www.virtualstampclub.com/2005_intro.html