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Arrived today from PSE. U.S. Scott 279A. This is an important stamp to send in. There are only two used Scott 279A to date none others Used or not used. And there are only one on cover certified by APS the only one according to the expert. These stamps are Rare

At last night’s meeting, Roy asked if I had ever seen the video Gary Burghoff - who played Radar O’Reilly in the wonderful TV show MASH - had made to promote stamp collecting. It was news to me, and very curious was I. Here are the preliminary results of my search for answers:

Gary Burghoff made the video in 1988. Apparently he visited several major stamp shows to promote the video.

He really was a collector. He was also a supporter of the Duck Stamp program in the US, and a duck stamp contest judge. 

You can buy the VHS tape on eBay for about $40 USC, but with Canada Post on strike, that doesn’t seem like a good option. I have found a free recording on YouTube. I have only watched the first three minutes, because I felt compelled to share the link with a wider audience. It is funny and kooky and a wonderful artifact of the 1980’s. As I mentally curate my “stuff”, I see this tape sharing a shelf with the 1970’s Stamp Album I was recently gifted - with Fonzie from Happy Days on the cover - and the VHS Guide to Windows 95 made by actors from Friends. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/YaCE3uaBxWA?si=KZG5MAJWNjetim6e

It sounded so easy when Roy said “take home these pages of stamps, look up the catalogue value, pay me 30% of that”.

You send a request for a catalogue to the upstairs study. You receive a massive book that gives a new definition to “kiloware”. You discover the print is too small to read. You submit a request for help and a large magnifying glass is delivered. You look at the stamp. Its face is hidden by the postmark. You move on to the next stamp. You are able to sort of identify it. You put down the magnifying glass and pick up your phone. In order to take the picture, you need two hands. You put down the page of stamps, take a photo, and edit the photo into 5 strips of stamps. You ask Google Lens what it thinks of a stamp. The AI says “This is a stamp from Queensland. It is green.” It links an eBay listing for a completely different stamp. You show Google another stamp. It says “This stamp is Scott 101. Or Scott 120. It is similar to 101b.” You can’t use the Israeli sourced superior stamp identifier app because you are taking a stand against the government of Israel. Netanyahu hasn’t noticed yet …

You put down the phone, place the catalogue on your lap and notice it is now twice as heavy. You look for Scott 101. You hold the magnifying glass over the page and notice the slight tremor in your hand is making it difficult to focus on the print. You hold a ruler in your other hand to help you read. Of course you are now unable to make notes. You put down the magnifying glass and can no longer read the catalogue. You put down the ruler. You reach for your phone and take a picture of the catalogue. 

You now have a picture of the catalogue listings for 101 and 120. The stamp you are looking at doesn’t seem to be related to either listing. But there are variations that seem dependent on watermarks and perforations. You know from past attempts that you can’t see watermarks, even with the magic fluid. You begin to curse. You attract the polydactyl cat, followed by the occupant of the upstairs study. You are given a perforation gauge because you have no idea what happened to the ones you were given previously. You interrupt your toils long enough to say “No, another damned perforation gauge would not be a good Christmas stocking stuffer!”

You announce that you are too stupid to do this and you won’t buy any of the stamps. Another catalogue makes its way to you.

“Australia is hard” says the bearer. “Start with Iceland.”

An hour later you still can’t read the catalogue without taking a photo to enlarge the print, but you have found all the stamps on one page, even the stamp that Scott has insisted on sticking at the back of the book like an orphan instead of listing it with its siblings.

You realize that the people of Iceland were very sensible designers of stamps and you decide to search for a list of other sensible countries. You vow to devote your time to the sensible. As you begin to Google, you realize that the AI is mocking you. You decide to give up on philately for now, and soothe your troubled mind with a sudoku. You knock off the easy and medium puzzles, and are feeling much smarter. But half way through the difficult puzzle you realize they are the New York Times puzzles, and you have vowed to avoid US purchases. “But they are free and you cancelled your subscription” you argue. “It’s a slippery slope” says the little voice in your head. You decide to read before bed. “Don’t even think about saying anything right now” you tell the little voice as you pick up your Kindle. At least the book was purchased from a publisher in the UK.

So you copied some text from another post, or from Word or somewhere else and all of a sudden your post ends up looking like this, with embedded formatting tags:

   

How do you get rid of this?

Here's how:

Click the "Edit" button lower right corner of your post.

In the Edit screen, the formatting tags won't show up. But highlight the text anyway, that you want to remove the formatting tags from:

   

Now just click the "Remove Formatting" icon indicated in this picture. Preview your post again and the formatting tags should be gone.

Don't forget to save your changes.

Webmaster Roy

The participants really enjoyed Paul Fleet’s presentation on topical collecting yesterday! He explained how to get started picking a subject, how to find and research stamps, where to buy stamps, and how to organize them, and how to transform them into a custom album. His handout was very detailed and he brought lots of show and tell items - everything from an accumulation of stamps in an envelope to copies of his custom albums.

One participant has attended the program three times, not because she is a stamp collector, but because she loves the stories. She doesn’t own a computer. She doesn’t have internet at home. She goes to the library three or four times a week to read her email. After Paul’s presentation, she announced she was going to get a computer, and home internet, because then she could do research too. 

Paul’s presentation reminded me of the first philatelic presentation I saw during the pandemic. Michele Bresso from the American Topical Association did a presentation on topical collecting for a Women’s Institute virtual group in Hampshire, UK. I had never heard of topical collecting and was captivated. Michele was working on an exhibit on the history of typewriters. She offered to send anyone interested in collecting topicals a gift of stamps from the ATA. I was astonished by the generous size of the envelope of stamps I received. Through Paul I experienced that excitement again yesterday.

Jim Gould brought in a one page topical exhibit on the History of Kingston, and yes, the exhibit included US pre-cancels! Jim succeeded in signing up a new member, and collecting the fee.

Guy Monette told the tale of the 1898 Canadian map stamp, and brought - and demonstrated - his stamp pillow.

The Kingston Stamp Club is putting on quite a show at St Andrew’s by the Lake!

Stamps and Their Stories Week 2 was attended by all of the registered participants. Bob Gardner’s multi-part presentation had them making many notes. In addition to showing examples of Canadian provinces, Airmail, and Tax stamps, Bob provided detailed information on options for disposing of collections, including KSC’s consignment program - which was news to me! 

Bob also brought a topical display prepared by his grand daughter, which was a perfect promotion for Week 3, when Paul Fleet will speak about Topical Collecting.

As a first time coordinator for this program, I am extremely grateful to the club members who have volunteered their time and expertise to make my job both easy and highly entertaining!

I got this recently in one of Roy's online auctions, one of a lot of six such covers. 

...

Here's a commercial cover from October 29, 1813.

   

It is addressed to:

Monsieur
Monsieur p re
Castres St Martin
Par Limoux
A Chalabre

That would appear to be Father [père] Castres St. Marin. And, it would also appear that the cover was sent to Chalabre a small town near Limoux. In 1806, Limoux had a population of 5,723. Both are in the Languedoc Region in southern France

The linear hand-stamp on the cover indicates that it was mailed from Prades in Département 65. This is supported by the letter inside which indicates that it was written by a gentleman named Mulló in Jujols (near Prades) on October 29, 1813.

Chalabre is just over 100km north of Jujols which would explain the manuscript 4 on the cover. The postage in 1813 would have been 4 décimes for a single letter weighing less than 6g traveling between 100 and 200km.

As far as I can tell, M. Mulló writes in a French with a non-standard orthography and, perhaps, a bit of Occitan influence thrown in.

Jajols Le 29. 8bre 1813
Monsieur p.re Castres jaj Reseu da l’atre
Du 21. Courant mois, et je vous Dire pour
Seffinir; De faire Venir a checher ma laine
de plus prait posible que l’ous pouvrai, par le
Voiturier, quil vous plairà, en portant une d’aitre
de Votre nom; Et celà ma bien instruiti
pour une otre foi Soit qui Se Soit
je Vous Salüe
Mulló

There is also a margin note on the left side that reads:

Montant
de pois. á
laine,
a ppe [ = à apposer]
6 . q.t [ = 6 quintats]

Which is to say, “Father Castres, I have received the letter of the 21st of this month, and I write to tell you, so as to settle the matter, to have my wool collected as soon as possible, by whichever carrier you think best, presenting my letter in your name. And this has taught me well for another time, whoever it may concern. I salute you, Mulló”

And, the margin note is “Amount of weight to be entered: 6 quintals [~ 600 kg]. Which is a lot of wool!

   

It was written on good quality laid paper and has a watermark. It looks like an L and M with a papermaker mallet in between. I'm still working on identifying it. I'm assuming it's a local paper.

   

Cheers, Hugh

PS: Meanwhile, following the debacle in Russia, Napoleon is struggling in his war with the Sixth Coalition.

Here is an interesting commercial First Flight cover prepared for Lufthansa's inaugural service on April 11, 1974 of LH656 'Frankfurt-Hamburg-Anchorage-Tokio'. Note the privately printed orange Torii Gate cachet printed on the left side of the cover and the blue box hand-stamp on the right. 

   

There is a pictorial CDS, in black, tied to a 40Pf Deutsche Bundespost 'Environmental Protection' 1973 stamp (Mi.Nr. 776) and a 1972 Berlin 10Pf 'Grunewaldsee' (Mi.Nr. 423).

It was addressed to Hermann E. Sieger, Anchorage (Alaska) / U.S.A. / Airport poste restante.

Their return address, in Lorch (Germany)  is printed on the back flap of the envelope. 

Auxiliary marking included Air Mail Luftpost Par Avion and Drucksache both printed in black ink on the top of the cover.

The Drucksache (Printed Matter) foreign airmail rate in 1974 would have been 50Pf ... 30Pf was the standard printed matter rate and 20Pf would have been the airmail surcharge. This cover has mixed franking ... FRG and Berlin. My understanding is that this was allowed only if the item was mailed in West Berlin. Based on the CDS, this FFC was mailed in Frankfurt-am-Main. In West Germany, Berlin stamps had no postal validity. They were tolerated as a decorative mixed-franking but postal clerks were supposed to ensure that the rate was covered by the non-Berlin stamps.

So, in theory, this item was under-franked. 

As well, the cover was addressed poste restante, to Anchorage (Airport). This was, I understand, a common 'trick' to try to get an arrival or transit marking at an intermediate stop before the piece was returned. 

In this case, it didn't seem to work. 

What makes the cover interesting is the purple hand-stamp, in English, that was applied when the cover reached Anchorage. 

RETURN TO SENDER
PHILATELIC SERVICE
NOT AUTHORIZED

This is a U.S. postal message used when an airport or station does not provide philatelic holding services [poste restante / general delivery] for souvenir covers. In other words: the Anchorage airport postal unit wasn’t going to hold, back-stamp, or hand-back collectors’ mail. 

Therefore, they used the above hand-stamp and returned the item to Sieger at the return address on the back flap.

Producing large runs of souvenirs covers was a big part of their business. (Sieger was also the firm famous for the Apollo 15 'Sieger Covers'). So, while they didn't get the Anchorage transit cancel they wanted, they did get this NOT AUTHORIZED hand-stamp. Probably a lot of them (smile).

Maybe even a better deal. 

Cheers, Hugh

I was delighted to find an unused stamp album from Captain Tim’s Stamp Collectors Club at the Brockville Vintage Paper Show. Captain Tim hosted a radio show on NBC, sponsored by Ivory Soap. You could send in soap wrappers to get stamps from the H.E. Harris Stamp Company.

       

Captain Tim was inducted into the American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame. This is his entry on the APS website:

Reginald Stafford Healy (Captain Tim Healy)
(1892 - 1947)

Reginald Stafford Healy was born in Sydney, Australia in 1892. He fought through World War I with the Australian Army and was part of the Allied forces at Gallipoli.

Reginald Healy came to the United States to learn the oil business in Texas. There, he met his future wife, Margaret, a schoolteacher, and they moved from Gainesville, Texas to New York Coty, where he ran the financial side of a small oil company.

The business collapsed in 1929, and after that, he did whatever he could to survive, his son recalled, including sweeping streets. For a time, he had a radio show called “Captain Tim's Stamp Club of the Air” on NBC. Healy used his son’s name as his on-air personality.

In the early 1930s, Henry Ellis Harris partnered with the consumer products firm Procter and Gamble to produce a radio show using “Captain Tim” to sell stamps. For a small price (and a couple of box tops from some Ivory Snow detergent), a person could be a stamp collector. Another Harris insight was that collectors not only needed stamps, but they needed a low-priced series of albums to put them in. The radio show that Harris produced and hosted by “Captain Tim” Healy, offered not only stamps but a small album to put them in. Captain Tim’s albums were produced in the millions.

Thanks to Captain Tim’s exciting tales of battle and stamps, thousands, young and old, joined the rank of collector.”

You can hear a sample show from 1939 on YouTube. Content includes a discussion of how the “war in Europe” is affecting stamp prices:

https://youtu.be/aZ1sz-vu4Xg?si=k3YPJAgE9SpWWujR 

The album is about the size of a very thick comic book. What a great find!

This season’s sessions for the Kingston Seniors Association got underway on September 8 at the new location, St. Andrew’s By the Lake United Church, in Reddendale. The guest speaker was Jim Gould, who provided a thorough and informative talk about US Pre-cancels. He illustrated his talk by passing around colourful album pages which displayed a range of stamps with a wide variety of lettering and bar styles. He mentioned some of the alternative uses for the stamps, including revenue.

Thanks to Jim’s presentation, when I saw the back of this postcard at the Eastern Ontario Vintage Paper Sale, I knew better than to pass on it because I already own two copies. I don’t know if it was mailed from Wolfe Island, but there was insufficient postage. When it reached Watertown, New York, a pre-cancel was attached to record payment of the 2 cents postage due.

I am looking forward to showing this to the class!