The Hardest Part of Collecting Is Beginning, Part 2
by John M. Hotchner
In the previous installment, this column looked at what it takes to get started as a stamp collector; and choosing what to collect. The third leg of the beginning collector’s footrest is getting stamps to add to your collection, which will be the subject of this column. Here goes.
If you begin as a collector of U.S. stamps, you eventually have to decide whether you will collect mint (with its unobstructed view of the design), used (which carries evidence in the form of the cancellation that the stamp has done the job it was created for), or both.
The best place to buy current mint stamps is your local post office, or from what has come to be called “The Caves:” Stamp Fulfillment Services, 8300 NE Underground Dr., Pillar 210, Kansas City, MO 64144-0001. The reason is that you can purchase current stamps at face value instead of paying more than face value from a dealer, who buys them at face, but must add an additional charge to cover his overhead, and make a profit.
You can call The Caves at 1-800-782-6724 to be put on the list to receive USA Philatelic, the quarterly magazine showing what stamps and other philatelic products are available. You can also go on the Internet to www.usps.com/store.
Some foreign postal administrations sell used examples of current stamps—called “Cancelled-to-Order”—but not the USPS. So you will need to find other ways to gather the current stamps. Among the ways are the following:
- Ask friends and relatives to save stamps for you from their mail. It is best if they can save the entire envelope. In addition to the stamps, you may find that you are interested in the cancellations, the instructional (“auxiliary”) markings that explain delays in the mail, and even the combinations of stamps used. If not, you can clip the stamps off neatly for your collection.
- You or others may be able to convince the mail room at your place of employment to save the mailed envelopes they would otherwise toss in the garbage.
- You can buy mint stamps, and put them on envelopes that you send to yourself. A variant is to put stamps you want used on envelopes/post cards you give to your children away at school or located away from home base to make it easy for them to write.
- Via local stamp clubs where you will meet others like yourself who are looking to add to their collections. Clubs usually have several ways to help:
- They facilitate trading with other members
- Club auctions
- Club members-only buy/sell books
- Putting an ad in the club newsletter
- Writing a brief article telling what you collect and what you are looking for in the newsletter.
- Attending club-sponsored events (shows, bourses, open houses, etc.) where there will be dealers, a USPS sales booth, a table with stamps to encourage youth.
- Clubs often have circulating American Philatelic Society, or other federation sales books.
- Other members will have a variety of philatelic publications with advertising by dealers looking to buy and sell, and collectors looking to sell or trade with other collectors. They will also list what U.S. stamps are coming out shortly, the date of issue and where the first day ceremony will be held. If you are within a reasonable drive, these are always fun.
- When you travel for work, family visits, or vacations, make it a point to visit nearby clubs. You can look up clubs in the city/town/area where you will be visiting on the APS website, www.stamps.org. [Click through here to the specific page for looking up clubs.]
- To the extent that you can time your travel to coincide with one of the hundreds of stamp shows held around the nation, that may be a rewarding source.
- Check your telephone Yellow Pages under “Stamps for Collectors” to find active dealers in your area, ether stamp/hobby stores, or dealers who do business by mail or internet.
- Look at the lists of dealers on the American Stamp Dealers Association website www.americanstampdealer.com presented by state, for dealers who may be near you.
- There are national firms that specialize in “Approvals” sent by mail; often to new collectors. They will advertise in some general circulation magazines like the AARP periodicals, and often in philatelic periodicals.
If you have enjoyed collecting current stamps, you may well decide to go backwards to get stamps previously issued by your country(ies) of interest. Or you may decide to broaden your collecting to other countries, or pursue a theme such as space travel on stamps, the story of tennis, or national costumes on stamps.
To go after such stamps, #s 4 to 9 above can be helpful. In addition,
- Friends or relatives in other countries can be helpful.
- Specialty societies based in the U.S. and abroad can provide several of the methods noted in #4 above with regard to foreign stamps.
- Use eBay, APS StampStore, and other on-line resources to locate material that fits into your collection.
- Commercial auctions are a good source of material. They advertise in, and are covered by, philatelic publications.
Once you are a fairly experienced collector with definite interests, there are two additional methods of seeking out stamps for your collection: writing about your collection in specialty society journals, and becoming a philatelic exhibitor. By “publicizing” your interest in these ways, you are inviting readers and viewers to contact you with stamps, covers and other philatelic material that will fit into your collection; and often of equal importance, information about the stamps you collect that can broaden your understanding of their history and use.
Somewhere in this journey, you will be introduced to stamp catalogs. The most often used in the United States, even for collectors of foreign stamps, is the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, which is updated yearly.
In the next column, I will discuss how stamp catalogs can be used to help you understand and improve your stamp collection.
Part 1 of John’s series “Getting Started” is here.
Should you wish to comment on this editorial, or have questions or ideas you would like to have explored in a future column, please write to John Hotchner, VSC Contribu-tor, P.O. Box 1125, Falls Church, VA 22041-0125, or email, putting “VSC” in the subject line.
Or comment right here.
now expanding into space but was once inside a star, much like our own Sun. As the nuclear reactions that generate energy in its core were coming to an end, the uneven outflow of energy pushed the outer layers of the star off into space. The nebula was discovered by William Herschel ñ the first president of the RAS. In 1864, William Huggins used the pioneering technique of optical spectroscopy, in which light is split into an artificial rainbow and analysed, to prove that the Cat’s Eye Nebula was a tenuous gas, rather than a solid object. Huggins was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1867.
Enceladus is a small, icy moon of Saturn with a system of geysers that spray water and vapour into space. The geysers were found after the British-built magnetometer instrument on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft began sending back puzzling results indicating that Enceladus possessed a thin atmosphere. Michele Dougherty of Imperial College persuaded NASA to skim the space probe over the moon’s surface to take a closer look. In the process, the cameras revealed the geysers. Subsequent investigations have found that the geysers are fed by a subsurface ocean in which the water contains the molecular building blocks of life.
beam radiation across space like a lighthouse, sometimes many times a second. Every neutron star was once the energy-generating core of a massive star, but after exhausting its nuclear fuel supply it collapsed into an ultra-dense object, triggering the explosion of the star.
philosopher John Michell, and their behaviour was mathematically described in 1916 by the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild. Yet they seemed so unorthodox that astronomers were initially reluctant to believe they could truly exist. Only in the 1960s were black holes accepted, which led to a flurry of theoretical investigations.
produced when charged particles accelerate into the atmosphere, giving off light as they collide with the gas atoms there. Earth’s auroras come in visible wavelengths of red and green, but at Jupiter they shine in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum and as X-rays. On Earth, powerful voltages in our magnetic field power the auroras, but this does not seem to be the case at Jupiter, where the source of power remains a mystery. A team of astronomers at the University of Leicester continues to study this phenomenon.
sources to form distorted and multiple images. The phenomenon was a prediction of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. It was confirmed in 1979 when an Anglo-American team of astronomers that included Dennis Walsh and Bob Carswell discovered two distorted galaxies side by side that on closer inspection appeared to be identical. Astronomers can ‘weigh’ the amount of matter forming the gravitational lens by the appearance of the distorted images. This has shown that clusters of galaxies contain a lot more matter than can be seen. Astronomers call this invisible material ‘dark matter’.
the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission. UK industry and universities worked on the mission’s lander and instruments. We now know that 67P is an ancient object that formed before the planets, more than 4.5 billion years ago. Rosetta’s lander instruments revealed carbon-rich molecules in the ice. Such molecules could have been important in ‘seeding’ the early Earth and helping to get life started on our planet. Rosetta also showed that the comet’s two distinct lobes were once separate bodies that collided and stuck together.
significant amount of energy within it. In the early 1950s, the Jodrell Bank radio observatory in Cheshire found that radio emission was not coming directly from Cygnus A but from a pair of radio lobes, one on either side of the visible galaxy. It is thought that energetic jets of particles are being accelerated away from the centre of the galaxy by strong magnetic fields. These particles collide with the extremely rarefied atoms in the space surrounding the galaxy, powering the radio lobes.
The sixth Bond (Daniel Craig) joined the series in 2006 as the producers turn to Ian Fleming’s first novel to re-imagine a harder-edged 007. Having just earned his 00 status and his licence to kill, Bond foils ruthless Le Chiffre, who uses terror attacks to manipulate the stock market. A jaw-dropping finale ends with the tragic demise of, Vesper Lynd.
Although remaining involved, Cubby Broccoli passes on main producing responsibilities to his son and daughter, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, who debuts in the producer’s chair. A new Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and a female M (Judi Dench) take the stage as a former agent, 006, threatens the world with a terrifying space weapon, GoldenEye.
Timothy Dalton takes on the Bond mantle in this thrilling, lightning-paced adventure. The story draws inspiration from real-life East–West defections and Soviet-Afghan war in Afghanistan, as Bond defeats the ambitious Soviet General Georgi Koskov and a rogue US arms dealer called Whitaker.
In Roger Moore’s first film as James Bond, 007 travels to Harlem, New Orleans and the Caribbean to investigate the mysterious Dr Kananga, known as Mr Big. Bond saves the day during a voodoo ritual and the stunt team sets a world record for a speedboat jump.
The film-makers unveil a new Bond (George Lazenby) and the adventurous Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) in a story that sees Bond marry. SPECTRE is bidding to blackmail world powers via biological warfare. Bond defeats Blofeld but is left devastated when his bride, Tracy, is gunned down on their wedding day.
The third film starring Sean Connery introduces the iconic Aston Martin DB5, which combines ingenious gadgetry with understated elegance. The story sees Bond track gold smuggler, Auric Goldfinger, dodging death in the form of Oddjob, as well as a terrifying laser beam. Bond, with the help of Pussy Galore, foils a bid to render Fort Knox worthless.
Lotus Esprit Submarine – The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Little Nellie – You Only Live Twice (1967)
Bell-Textron Jet Pack – Thunderball (1965)
Aston Martin DB5 – Skyfall (2012)
Royal Mail will celebrate London 2020 with a selection of special items that recall the worldís first adhesive postage stamps, the Penny Black, Twopenny Blue and Penny Red.
Ahead of the exhibition opening, a retail stamp booklet will be issued on 10 March. Containing two each of the Penny Black, Twopenny Blue and Penny Red designs, the inside of the booklet includes the official London 2020 logo. The stamps in this booklet are self-adhesive.
can be experienced as part of the attractions at The Postal Museum in London.
stamp design that appeared on the first postcard, while the sheet itself will carry an ëanniversaryí text. This sheet will be available in a numbered edition of 7,500.
The consequence of this for the farmland birds is far-reaching, says Resi Becker, director of Mail NL at PostNL. “In half a century, 60% of these birds have disappeared in our country. The Netherlands currently has around 70 species of farmland birds. We must handle this with care. That is why PostNL is supporting the efforts of Bird Protection Netherlands to protect all wild birds and their habitats as well as possible by issuing these stamps.”
partridge, lapwing, little owl, redshank and skylark. Of the 10 farmland birds on the stamps, only the 2 bellowing godwits and the skylark can be seen in the sky. The other birds are depicted standing, sitting or swimming. Janse: “That has to do with the fact that farmland birds are generally somewhat smaller and therefore more difficult to recognize when they fly. More importantly, I wanted to create a nice balance. With birds that takes different positions and look at different sides. ”
and orange. “The latter especially comes back nicely in the long legs of redshank, in the partridge’s part, the belly of the shoveler, and the necks of the two bald-tailed godwits. That was also a consideration to make the title orange this time. ”
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The Republic of Srpska – Bosnia and Herzegovina is issuing a stamp January 29th to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. According to the Enterprise of Postal Traffic, the eight stamps on a sheet have a denomination of 1,95 KM or 1 euro. There is also an official FDC.
In the new Typisch Nederlands stamp series, PostNL issued stamps on 2 January, on which the popular smoked sausage plays the leading role. In our country we eliminate tens of millions of smoked sausages every year. Hand-made or with typical Dutch dishes, such as pea soup or kale stew or sauerkraut.
