Monthly Archives: August 2019

A successful religion, besides having appealing theological answers, needs to have a broad psychological umbrella in order to achieve popularity. People come in all psychic shapes and sizes and a successful religion needs to have an attraction to each. To name just three types (and of course most people are a mixture of types), there are good and kind people, scholarly and erudite people, and angry and hostile people. In religion, the first group finds love in their religion, the second studies its transcendental mysteries and the third tends to form the fire and brimstone crowd lurking at the edges. And these are just three of the many types of personalities that a religion needs to find room for if it is going to have more than a fringe or cult interest. Similarly, hobbies, if they are successful, need to provide different psychological spaces for their adherents.

There were two main stamp issuing models in the mid nineteenth century- one based on the model espoused by Great Britain and the other on the model in place in the United States. Postage stamps were a form of money and were seen as a prepaid government obligation- sort of a bearer bond coupon. So they needed to be printed in an uncounterfeitable manor and distributed securely. The two models for stamp design helped in this goal. Great Britain used a series of simple portraits of their monarch. Indeed no nineteenth century Great Britain postage stamp portrayed anything but Queen Victoria. The United States model was far more democratic but still held to the stamps as money design meme that was in place at the time. American stamps portrayed a variety of different important historical figures not always Presidents. Canada showed its position between American and British influence. Originally, Canadian stamps were designed on the British model and nearly all showed the Queen. But in 1898,

Stamps not only exist to facilitate postal communication, but also have political purposes. The French and Portuguese Colonial administrations used postal issues to enforce political claims in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and this is why there are so many small colony issues. A political entity that issues postage stamps is presumed to have more international gravitas. Few people today remember the fierce enmity between Russia and the United States that played out over Berlin after WWII. Berlin was divided into east and west after the defeat of Germany with the Soviets occupying the east of Berlin as they did with east of Germany. The stamps of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) could have been used in Berlin and probably would have been if the Soviets hadn't tried to force the Allies out of Berlin by placing an embargo on the city. Truman ordered an Airlift to supply West Berlin and keep it part of West Germany (to which it stayed aligned until reunification).

The classic stamps of Finland are unlike any of the other stamps of Europe. The first issues are very simple in design and have a crudeness that is only matched by the Cotton Reels of British Guiana or Indian Native States. The second issues are stamps picturing the Finnish Coat of Arms and have the most interesting roulettes of any philatelic issues ever. Roulettes are cuts in the paper to facilitate stamp separating and are used instead of perforations. The technology never caught on because it was hard to keep the cutting knives sharp and the rouletting process made it difficult to separate the stamps without tearing them. The Finnish roultettes are among the most striking with deep circular ridges and are collected by the depth and gauge of the roulette which is something that is done on no other philatelic issues. Finland has always had a small population and until the 1950's the economy was largely agrarian. Since then, Finland has industrialized rapidly and today has one of the most

Despite the unpopularity of its first commemorative set, the Columbian Exposition issue of 1893, the United States Post Office commemorated the 1898 Trans Mississippi Exposition with their own set of commemorative stamps in 1898.(And Expositions, which were precursors of World Fairs, were very popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, happening every few years from 1876 to about 1915). But the post office learned at least one main lesson. The total face value of the Columbus set was $16.34 and the pubic had howled that this was too expensive. For the Trans Mississippis the face value was $3.80 a far more affordable amount. The issue has always been one of the most popular with collectors with the $1 consistently winning the most popular stamp competitions over the last one hundred years. The numbers sold are estimated to be in the neighborhood of 25,000 complete sets.

The Columbian Exposition set of 1893 (Scott #230-245) was the world's first commemorative set and it has become one of the most popular sets not only in United States philately but in the world. But this was not always so. Stamp collectors tend to be a conservative group (at least in their philatelic tastes) and early reaction to the stamps was harsh. Philatelic writers of the 1890's found the designs fussy and being unused to pictorial issues they questioned the artistic merit of the designs. Up until then, all American stamp designs had pictured dead white men gazing at the collector from a portrait type of background. Scenes of Indians, ships and even women were new to early collectors and it took some time to get used to.

 Hobbies connect to our inner ten year old and on some level when we collect we attempt to recreate that world. This is one of the reasons why collectors of every generation