Category: Opinion

I collect stamps out of love. I am often inspired by the art and the design and fascinated by the history. I’m drawn to the romance of used stamps, too. This little rectangle of paper paid the passage of a communication from one person to another and unless it’s still on the envelope with letter enclosed, there’s no way of knowing what it was. It might have been a bill, or a love letter. The only thing we know is that it was important enough to put the expense and effort into sending that letter. How many hands did it pass through before it came to me? Some other collector soaked it off the envelope. If there’s a hinge remenant on the back, we know it was on display in an album. There’s a history there we can see evidence of, but never really know.

Sometimes I’ll scan in a stamp to get a better look at it. There are amazing levels of detail, especially in the older stamps, that can’t be seen without using a scanner or a magnifying glass. I scanned in the stamp from Czechoslovakia the other day:

Then I noticed the writing in the corner:

That’s right, Mucha! This led me to discover a bit of history I didn’t know about. After the First World War ended in 1918, Czechoslovakia gained its independence, they had Alphonse Mucha design their new stamps, banknotes and other government documents.

I also realized something else by looking carefully at this stamp. Czechoslovakia credited the artists who designed their stamps from the day the country began. Here’s one from around the same time as the Mucha stamp by Jacob Obrovsky (please click for a larger view. It’s truly exquisite):

Not every country credits their artists. The USPS still doesn’t. Czechoslovakia’s postage stamps were consistently stunning throughout it’s 75 year history. I wonder if its willingness to credit creators is part of that?

The band played on as the Titanic sank. What did they play? Did they decide to play the best songs they knew how to play to go out with courage and dignity? Or did they play the most popular songs of the day in hopes that people would like them better, turn their boats around and come rescue them?

The USPS seems to be doing the latter. Where once our postage stamps celebrated or best and brightest and our people, places and events of historical, artistic and scientific significance, recent years have seen increasing numbers of stamps that appear to have been issued just to get people to buy them. The Art of Disney stamps, the Star Wars stamps, the multiple Reagan stamps, for example. Which is not to say that there isn’t some merit in all of these subjects, but there comes a point where due diligence has been done in recognizing an achievement and you cross over into pandering.

Actually, I have mixed emotions about this. I really love collecting US postage stamps, and would love for my own kids to be excited about it one day. The USPS has been losing money and really needs to find ways to increase revenue or it won’t survive. Is this the way to do it, though? Will people actually turn the life boats around and come rescue the USPS because they like the new stamps?

Now, the USPS has ended its ban on portraying living people on stamps. Call me a pessimist, but I don’t see anything good coming of this.

This is something we’ve looked down on other countries for doing. The ban on honoring people on US stamps until five years after their death seems very wise to me. Our heroes have let us down so many times in recent years that insurance companies now offer scandal insurance, for when a corporate mascot like Tiger Woods gets involved in a sex scandal. Although there’s always been a certain amount of establishment propaganda inherent in any country’s postage stamps, the USPS has done a good job at being fairly neutral & populist throughout its history. How will it handle honoring the living on stamps, while trying to sell the greatest number of stamps?

There are huge numbers out there who would insist that Sarah Palin deserves to be on a stamp. Many others would say she’s just a corporate whore just playing a part to make money and deserves to be drowned in rancid baby vomit and fermented coyote urine. A decade from now people will most likely be saying, Sarah who? Will the USPS cave to popular demand and put the latest fad on a stamp? If they did, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. They’d be using Internet troll techniques to get attention, but at least it’d get people talking and thinking about the USPS, and that might ultimately be a good thing.

From 1982 to 2007, the average age of the stamp collecting population (at least the subset of collectors belonging to the APS) increased by 19 years. In 2007, the average age of collectors was 63. That increase should be alarming. Very few new collectors are entering the hobby. At the current rate, the hobby will die soon, unless we make a concerted effort to save it.

There’s lots that could be done to make the hobby relevant to a younger generation. This has nothing to do with trying to make philately seem “hip” or “with it” or “cool” because such attempts are always obvious to the target audience and inevitably make one look stupid. Instead, we should be asking what the barriers are that prevent that prevent new philatelists from enjoying the hobby to the fullest.

Such obstacles may be invisible to long-term collectors. Part of the fun of stamp collecting is knowing the value of the stamps in one’s collection, but how do you know what a stamp is worth? In the USA and Canada, the values are set by the Scott Catalog. The current catalogs weighs in at 6 volumes, is over 5000 pages and will set you back $599.94 if you buy it on Amazon. If you want to stay current, you have to buy the new edition every year. How welcoming is that to the new collector? That pretty much excludes everyone but the hardcore collectors and dealers from knowing the current value of their collection. Personally, I’m using a 2005 set that I picked up used. I figure it gives me a ballpark value that’s good enough for now.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. All these values could go online and be made available for a modest subscription fee. It could be so much more than just an online version of the paper catalog, though. Facial recognition software is becoming prevalent, and is affordable enough to include in cheap applications like iPhoto. Faces are far more complex than postage stamps. An application could be written for  whereby one could scan a stamp. The stamp would be instantly identified. The user would find out where and when it was published and the stamp’s current value. It could even link to the Wikipedia entry that relates to the content of the stamp. All this could be put into an app on a smart phone, so the user wouldn’t have to be tied to a computer to use it.

The limitations of such an application could be used as a “teachable moment.” With current technologies, the identification it provided would be a best guess. It would be able to identify the stamp, but not necessarily the condition, perforation, or grille. But when it encountered such things, it could offer guides that would teach the user how to make such distinctions.

Such an app could also be used to create a catalog of one’s collection, to keep track of what you have and to know what it’s current value is. It could alert you when values change, and present you with graphs of your progress. It would get rid of the drudge work of keeping track of all that and make it a dynamic and exciting process.

It could also be a tool for trading. You’d scan in your collection, including multiples. You’d set the status of as many of these multiples to “Offering.” Meanwhile, the application would be able to identify the gaps in your collection, such as the stamps you need to finish a set or complete a year. You’d set these to “Want.” You’d receive an alert when a match occurred and it would be up to you to make the trade. The trade would be tied into the value of the stamps, so both parties would be assured of a fair trade. Starting out you’d be limited to trades of low value. For each trade you made, however, you’d earn “trustworthiness” points. The higher your rating, the higher the value of the trade.

All this would be fairly simple with current technology. It would make philately more approachable and exciting for new collectors while providing valuable tools for more experienced collectors. Subscription fees could be kept low while providing Scott with increased revenue. The expensive part, gathering the data and setting the values, is already done, so it’s a matter of leveraging that data into a new medium. That medium doesn’t have the expense of physically producing a 6-volume set of books. It wouldn’t cannibalize the existing market for the print catalog because the average collector isn’t buying it anyway. It’d be a win for Scott and a win for philately.

Mongolia is the land of the mighty Khans, Genghis  and Kublai. Formerly it was the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world. Elvis is the once, current and future King of Rock and Roll. I love them both honestly and un-ironically. Yet somehow, seeing the two of them together doesn’t sit quite right for me. (Click the pics for larger sizes. It’s totally worth it!)

It could be that the Mongolians truly celebrate cultural diversity and Elvis is an important cultural figure to them. Given that Elvis’ music would have been suppressed by the Communist government until the 90s, I’m not sure how that could be. It seems like the great Mongolian guitarist Enh-Manlai would be a much more fitting subject for such an homage as this series of stamps and souvenir sheets.

Here’s the thing. Mongolia realized a long time ago that they could be making money off stamps. Not from their own people (even today, 20% of the population lives on less than $1.20 a day), but from foreign collectors. So, while Mongolia was a Communist country, closely aligned to the Soviet Union and suppressing Western thought amongst it’s citizens, it was also issuing stamp after stamp celebrating the US Space program (and cats, dinosaurs, and other collector-popular topicals).

So none of these stamps have ever graced the surface of a letter sent by a Mongolian, or have seen the inside of a Mongolian post office. Most likely they were all sold straight to Western collectors.

Of course, I’m probably biased about this. Growing up in the US of A, my philatelic obsession during my grade school years was with US commemoratives. These celebrate our important historic events, our cultural, political and military heroes, and other things that are, or should be, important to us as US citizens. When Edgar Allen Poe is on a US stamp, for example, he’s there because he’s one of the most important literary figures in US history. It’s hard to picture a cabal of postal workers saying, “If we put Poe on a stamp, those Poe fans will buy millions. MILLIONS!”

It just seems to me that putting something on a stamp just to get people to buy it is really tacky. Something only a fallen empire or a country that’s hard up for cash would do.

Oh yeah, right…

Wow. That’s almost as cheesy as the Mongolian Elvis Celebration! It’s a fine line, really. Elvis is a significant figure in musical history who deserves to be commemorated, on the one hand. On the other hand, there’s a difference between commemoration and exploitation in order to sell a product. Star Wars, the original 1977 movie, changed filmmaking forever. It is a significant cultural event. Darth Maul and Princess Amadalla aren’t part of the event. This stamp sheet doesn’t commemorate the historical event. It’s an advertisement for the Star Wars marketing empire, and it exists strictly because Star Wars fans will buy it.

It embarrasses me that my own country is now engaging in such practices. But I guess I’d rather see the postal service survive…

Experts often recommend picking a subject area to focus on when collecting stamps. The logic is that collecting from the totality of all the many hundreds of thousands of stamps ever printed in the world can be too overwhelming. Picking a subject area like “cats” or “World War II” can help you focus and build a satisfying, cohesive collection. Personally, I’m a generalist, preferring to embrace the totality of human experience instead of arbitrarily limiting myself. However, I do focus on certain areas to a degree. The US and Canada, because they’re familiar to me, and easily available. Great Britain because I’m an Anglophile. Hungary and Austria because I love their design aesthetic. Mongolia because they’re so shameless in creating stamps just to get collectors in other countries to buy them (unless Mongolians really do love I Love Lucy, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe) and there are so many over-the-top big and pretty stamps that totally appeal to the kid in me. So I’ve got nothing against specialization per se. I think you need to be careful about getting too overspecialized, however. Case in point:

Still, I guess there would be something kind of fun about collecting something so specific as Jewish chess masters. It’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever have a complete album of every stamp ever published in Hungary. However, the collector of Jewish chess masters on stamps has a reachable goal. Chicks would TOTALLY dig it, too! “Hey baby, come back to my place and check out my collection of Jewish chess master stamps. I’ve got every one ever published…”