Monthly Archives: August 2012
- Posted August 08, 2012Read more »Souvenir sheets are one of the more interesting philatelic evolutions. Originally, they were issued for philatelic exhibitions, usually given away, sometimes sold at a small premium. The first souvenir sheets were usually just single sheet stamps with borders around them. Later, souvenir sheets became mini-sheets of stamps. Only in about 1930 did marginal markings on souvenir sheets indicate to collectors that they shouldn't break them up for singles and by 1940 the format for souvenir sheets that we know today had evolved-souvenir sheets in which the stamps and the borders markings were designed to be kept intact.Above we illustrate the evolution of the souvenir sheet from the Mt. Fuji sheet of Japan with no border markings and only the format (a sheet of 20, whereas the sheet of the regular stamp was 100) to indicate its special souvenir sheet status. The White Plains sheet was the next evolution, again
- Posted August 07, 2012Read more »
Considering their rarity and value, Stradivarius violins seem to be the most carelessly handled items in the world. There are about 600 of them and in the last three years, one was left in a cab, and two on trains (the latest story of lost and found is here ). The stories follow a pattern-someone who has borrowed a Stradivarius from the real owner carelessly leaves it and it is found by a good Samaritan who turns it in to the Lost and Found. Given the loss rate of Stradivari, it appears that people take better care of their Ipads than they do their $20 million violins.
I have a bit of experience in tracing and finding higher end stamps that go missing and here is what I think is really happening. The violins aren't lost; they are stolen. But stolen by amateurs who quickly realize that the violins are impossible to sell and who, not wanting - Posted August 06, 2012Read more »In the 1950
- Posted August 05, 2012Read more »Tom and Ray Magliozzi are the brother mechanics who have run the radio talk show "Car Talk" for the last twenty-five years. The show is broadcast weekly on NPR and has a listenership of about three million each week. The Magliozzi brothers intersperse car advice and solving callers car repair problems with wit and charm. The show works because the brothers really know what they are talking about and can diagnose car problems from some pretty sketchy evidence. One caller I remember complained that after her work, when she drove home, her car would always stall over and over again and often not restart. Numerous trips to different mechanics meant only large repair bills and no solution. One of the brothers asked her if she was a teacher and left her car during the day in an unattended lot. Sure enough she was and it was determined that students were putting foreign substances in her gas tank as a kind of practical joke.
- Posted August 03, 2012Read more »Every country has sub specialties that are avidly collected by internal collectors but which foreign specialist collectors of those countries never really warm too. As an auctioneer you can see this in bidding patterns and where certain stamps eventually sell to. Ordinary Great Britain stamps in our auctions sell to Americans, Canadians, Britons and Europeans. Plate numbers and cancellations of GB are similarly collected worldwide. But specialized phosphors or graphite lines on QE II and Machins always seem to go back to Great Britain. France has a world following but the precancels, which are so popular in France itself, are relatively uncollected elsewhere. And the Germans? Well no one else enjoys counting perforation holes or measuring paper thickness or booklet combinations the way they do.US philately's big national skew is plate blocks. US stamps are either the second or third most popularly
- Posted August 02, 2012Read more »
August 1 marked the day that the United States Postal service was technically in default on its pension liabilities. If it were a private company, it could be taken into court and liquidated. Numerous proposals have been made on how to reconfigure the USPS so that it could be either a profitable private business or a well run Public Service. But the problem is an economic one only because of a lack of political will. Like our national budget, the Postal Service needs to provide more goods and services than people are willing to pay for. Technology has dried up the enormous profits that first class mail produced from intracity routes and routes between major population centers where delivery costs are relatively low. The profits from these routes were used to subsidize rural delivery and newspaper mail. Any proposal to change
- Posted August 01, 2012Read more »
We are so used to enormous technological change impacting our lives that we have become quite casual about it. But major technological change was more unusual a century ago and no technology ever seemed as liberating as the first manned flight. Soaring like the birds has been the aspiration since Icarus and the Wright's feat was hugely important. Early on, philately cashed in on the popular fascination with air flight, with the early Airmail flights really just publicity stunts, serving no real postal purpose.
It was only a few years though before the speed that Airmail allowed made a major difference in the efficacy of communications. Early Airmail was expensive, but it was worth it and special stamps were issued by most countries for the more costly airmail service. Judging by the ornateness and technical printing prowess in the designs and executions of these early Airmail stamps I have always felt that they were meant to be philatelic souvenirs as much as legitimate