Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Stamp Collecting Works

Transcript

How Stamp Collecting Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry just laughed. So it's just
0:16
Speaker 1: me and Chuck being bad boys going through our stamp collection.
0:20
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, the purposefully silent Jerry. By the way, Yeah,
0:27
Speaker 1: it's her own choice. Yeah, she's a real, live human being,
0:32
Speaker 1: Jerry said. Plenty of chances we've asked her, and she
0:34
Speaker 1: loves being in the background and not being on the show.
0:38
Speaker 1: I just want to make that clear. She's a wallflower.
0:41
Speaker 1: M a lazy, semi useless wall flower that we love
0:48
Speaker 1: like a sister, that's right, and who keeps us in line,
0:52
Speaker 1: an who may or may not even exist. That's right.
0:55
Speaker 1: Let's talk about stamps, baby, So I already said we're
0:58
Speaker 1: talking about stamp collect thing. Oh and by the way,
1:01
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know. I think that it's
1:04
Speaker 1: not an official episode until I say that. What do
1:07
Speaker 1: you think that's our watermark? Okay, yeah, nice reference, Chucks.
1:12
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about those there. Wow, you have been
1:14
Speaker 1: doing this for a while, haven't you a couple of years? So, um,
1:18
Speaker 1: we're talking stamp collecting. I don't collect stamps. I never
1:21
Speaker 1: have collected stamps. Um, I've never been friends with somebody
1:25
Speaker 1: who collected stamps. As far as I know, no relatives
1:28
Speaker 1: of collected stamps. Do you ever collect anything? I collected
1:32
Speaker 1: baseball cards, the usual, you know, But it turns out
1:36
Speaker 1: I would I would posit that stamp collecting is vastly
1:40
Speaker 1: more popular than baseball card collecting. As as popular as
1:44
Speaker 1: baseball card collecting is, I think, if you're talking worldwide,
1:47
Speaker 1: probably so, yeah, for sure, because I mean over in
1:50
Speaker 1: some countries they don't even care about baseball. They're like,
1:53
Speaker 1: I don't even know who Freddie Freeman is. I like
1:55
Speaker 1: the alliteration, but I don't know who he is. They should,
1:58
Speaker 1: he's great. I remember when he was a rookie. Do
2:03
Speaker 1: you have a rookie card? No? I stopped collecting baseball
2:06
Speaker 1: cards when I aged out of the well baseball card age. Yea,
2:13
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was long before Freddie Freeman. No, I
2:16
Speaker 1: don't have one of his cards, do you. No? I
2:18
Speaker 1: don't collect baseball cards. I collected banks. I think I've
2:20
Speaker 1: talked about that before. Uh No, I don't know why
2:25
Speaker 1: it's weird. I think I just had more than one
2:28
Speaker 1: of them and then said, well, this is a start
2:30
Speaker 1: to something. And I collected, Like, I mean, technically there
2:34
Speaker 1: were piggy banks, but none of them were big, So
2:37
Speaker 1: you know, I think I had like thirty or forty
2:40
Speaker 1: banks at one point when I was a kid, little banks.
2:42
Speaker 1: I suspected you were talking about banks, banks like you'd
2:45
Speaker 1: walk around and like slap your hand on like a
2:48
Speaker 1: fifth third and been like, I just collected this bank
2:52
Speaker 1: something like that. So piggy banks that weren't pigs yeah,
2:57
Speaker 1: you know, it was like a just bank. Little banks. Yeah,
3:01
Speaker 1: what was the coolest one you had? I got one
3:05
Speaker 1: from like a NAPA Auto Parts that was a car
3:08
Speaker 1: battery bank, and that was that was kind of cool.
3:11
Speaker 1: I remember that stands out in my memory for some
3:13
Speaker 1: reason I can imagine, but cool, I don't know is
3:16
Speaker 1: the right word for it. But okay, that's the only
3:19
Speaker 1: one who can really remember. I had a Mickey Mouse bank,
3:21
Speaker 1: but who does think it went too I had a
3:23
Speaker 1: Spiderman piggy bank the bust of you know, myteen seventies
3:28
Speaker 1: spider Man and I broke it open with a hammer
3:32
Speaker 1: and used all the money inside to buy candy and
3:35
Speaker 1: two lunches at school for a stretch. It was like
3:38
Speaker 1: I was walking around like I was the King of
3:40
Speaker 1: England in the cafeteria. I thought you gonna be like
3:42
Speaker 1: my first pack of cigarettes. There was just a few
3:46
Speaker 1: short years before then. But yeah, stamp collecting, I've never
3:50
Speaker 1: known anyone who's done it, but it is hugely popular
3:54
Speaker 1: and it seems like a really kind of lovely pleasant
3:57
Speaker 1: thing because, as is pointed out here in this uh article,
4:01
Speaker 1: who was this was this ed grabstr Uh, it's like,
4:05
Speaker 1: you know, collecting little pieces of art, little tiny works
4:07
Speaker 1: of art exactly. But even more than that, stamps have
4:12
Speaker 1: a very deep, detailed, intricate, arcane history, and I mean
4:18
Speaker 1: stamps in general, but also every single individual stamp and
4:23
Speaker 1: the stamp collecting community really loves to dig into that
4:27
Speaker 1: history and you know, all about all the different stuff
4:31
Speaker 1: about every single stamp um and so there's a lot
4:34
Speaker 1: of information to absorb while you're collecting, which I think
4:37
Speaker 1: is one of the big draws of collecting anything, is
4:40
Speaker 1: the background information to it. To definitely, like look at
4:43
Speaker 1: you can enjoy a stamp just on its face, pretty
4:46
Speaker 1: its neat is really well done usually, or at least
4:49
Speaker 1: the ones that are worth collecting. But the idea sure
4:52
Speaker 1: that too, but the idea and it has you know,
4:55
Speaker 1: a history just from sometimes being old, but then also
4:58
Speaker 1: the idea that it has a backstory to Um, it's
5:02
Speaker 1: just about as as well rounded a hobby as as
5:05
Speaker 1: you could find. So another term for stamp collecting is
5:09
Speaker 1: called hi lately p h i l a t e
5:14
Speaker 1: l y. It's not the easiest word to spell until
5:18
Speaker 1: you stop and think about it, but it's derived from
5:21
Speaker 1: the words philo or love of like philosophy, love of knowledge.
5:25
Speaker 1: But this is love of atalia, and that is exemption
5:30
Speaker 1: from payment. So you would use a stamp to show
5:33
Speaker 1: that whatever you were sending or whatever is exempt from payment.
5:36
Speaker 1: You already paid. So really hi lately means love of
5:41
Speaker 1: stamps in a really round about way. To see, I
5:44
Speaker 1: heard it pronounced philately. Really we'll go with that one then,
5:50
Speaker 1: because I've just been pronouncing that that way in my
5:52
Speaker 1: head for a very long time. There you have it.
5:58
Speaker 1: Who is that with you? Her name is uh mispronunciation,
6:03
Speaker 1: Emma says mispronunciation, Yeah, ms, mispronunciation. We're not going to
6:10
Speaker 1: assume anything, you know. One of the things very good.
6:12
Speaker 1: One of the things that that I've noticed in queuing
6:16
Speaker 1: episodes is how many jokes of your slide right past
6:19
Speaker 1: me while you're saying them, and I don't catch him
6:22
Speaker 1: until I'm queueing an episode later on. So so many
6:25
Speaker 1: hats off for all those jokes that I've missed. If
6:28
Speaker 1: you're gonna get into philateli or be a philatelist, then
6:33
Speaker 1: you should know that it's not like a get rich
6:35
Speaker 1: quick thing. You do it sort of for the love
6:37
Speaker 1: of the hobby itself, and as you go along over
6:41
Speaker 1: the years, you may eventually acquire some stamps that maybe
6:44
Speaker 1: worth some money, but it's not the kind of thing where,
6:48
Speaker 1: um just get into it with the the intentions that
6:52
Speaker 1: you should have, which is you're not gonna make a
6:55
Speaker 1: ton of money doing this kind of thing. Yeah, get
6:57
Speaker 1: into it for the love of collecting stamps. Yeah, way
7:00
Speaker 1: to do it. Yeah, that's kind of eye opening and surprising,
7:02
Speaker 1: I think, to most of us on the outside of
7:05
Speaker 1: the Philadeli world looking in, because you know, we hear
7:09
Speaker 1: about these auctions where stamps go for millions of dollars,
7:13
Speaker 1: and every once in a while they'll pop up as
7:15
Speaker 1: like a mcguffin in a movie or something like that. Um,
7:20
Speaker 1: so the idea that almost all stamps are the wildly
7:24
Speaker 1: vast majority of stamps are really not worth much at all.
7:28
Speaker 1: Is is kind of surprising, or it was to me
7:30
Speaker 1: at least, But also it just makes me love stamp
7:33
Speaker 1: collectors that much more, you know. Yeah, And I think
7:36
Speaker 1: one thing I really love about stamp collecting, which is
7:39
Speaker 1: sort of towards the end of this research, but I'll
7:42
Speaker 1: go ahead and say it now, is that it seems
7:44
Speaker 1: like the stamp collecting purists only collect stamps that are
7:49
Speaker 1: actually used to mail things like get out of here
7:53
Speaker 1: with your special edition collector thing that is just printed
7:57
Speaker 1: up for some certain you know, to give to a dignitary,
8:00
Speaker 1: like they want stamps like mail in letter stamps. That's right.
8:06
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, there's a kind of
8:08
Speaker 1: considered one of the big authorities on stamps, the Scott Catalog.
8:13
Speaker 1: They apparently don't even recognize stamps that aren't released by
8:17
Speaker 1: governments for the purposes of mailing postage to the general public.
8:22
Speaker 1: If it if it's not released like that by those authorities,
8:26
Speaker 1: then it doesn't exist as far as that's concerned. Yeah,
8:29
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like part of the fund is
8:30
Speaker 1: finding these things on an old letter like a cool discovery,
8:35
Speaker 1: and uh, I just I like the idea of it.
8:37
Speaker 1: I'm probably not going to get into it just because
8:39
Speaker 1: I don't have the time for this kind of thing,
8:40
Speaker 1: but I can certainly appreciate it. And then there's one
8:43
Speaker 1: other aspect of it too that I kind of turned
8:46
Speaker 1: up from this, and I'm sure it's not entirely correct
8:49
Speaker 1: across the board, but it seems like a person stamp
8:52
Speaker 1: collection is a very personal thing. It says like I
8:56
Speaker 1: am interested in this, so I went through the trouble
8:59
Speaker 1: of ending these things. And in that sense, it almost
9:02
Speaker 1: bears a resemblance to that super adorable coin collection that
9:07
Speaker 1: Owen had throw Mama from the train. Remember when he
9:11
Speaker 1: pulls out his coin collection and instead of some rare coins,
9:14
Speaker 1: it's like a quarter that he had he got changed
9:16
Speaker 1: for when he was at Coney Island with his dad
9:18
Speaker 1: when he was twelve. It's it's kind of like that,
9:21
Speaker 1: you know, it's a really endearing hobby. I think, yeah,
9:25
Speaker 1: because it's not like you're like, all right, I'm gonna
9:27
Speaker 1: get into stamp collecting, and you know, what are the
9:30
Speaker 1: best stamps to collect for? You know, the best stamps
9:33
Speaker 1: to collect are the ones that speak to you. So
9:36
Speaker 1: if you get into it for a little while and
9:37
Speaker 1: you're like, boy, the stamps from the Roaring twenties really
9:42
Speaker 1: are are pretty cool looking to me, or stamps with
9:46
Speaker 1: dogs on them, or you could collect many, many kinds
9:49
Speaker 1: of stamps. But a lot of people sort of get
9:51
Speaker 1: into stamp collecting and realize, I like these kinds of stamps.
9:54
Speaker 1: So that's what my collection is going to reflect exactly.
9:57
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, very cool. So that's am collecting everybody.
10:02
Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Should we already? Sure, let's
10:05
Speaker 1: do it, chuck, Let's throw caution to the wind like
10:07
Speaker 1: every average stamp collector does. Okay, we're back, and um
10:37
Speaker 1: we should say chuck. I think if this seems a
10:39
Speaker 1: little weird, if the tone seems a little weird today
10:42
Speaker 1: this is one of our less than usual Thursday recording sessions.
10:47
Speaker 1: So it's it's always a little like more foot loose,
10:50
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Sure, my feet are very loose.
10:55
Speaker 1: So we should probably give some terms here if you're
10:58
Speaker 1: interested in getting a stamp collector, if you just want
11:01
Speaker 1: to know a little more about it. There is a
11:03
Speaker 1: lot of arcane jargon in slang in the world of
11:08
Speaker 1: stamp collecting, and one of the reasons why it's been
11:10
Speaker 1: around for almost a couple of hundred years now, and
11:13
Speaker 1: over that time there's just kind of been successive generations
11:17
Speaker 1: who have kind of added and refined and contributed to it.
11:20
Speaker 1: But they all have to know what they're talking about
11:22
Speaker 1: to one another, so they've kind of come up with
11:24
Speaker 1: a bunch of different terms to describe things. Yeah, like
11:27
Speaker 1: in true stuff, he'sho know, fashion. This is a broad overview.
11:30
Speaker 1: Their entire podcast dedicated to this kind of thing, right, Uh,
11:34
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go over some of those broad definitions.
11:37
Speaker 1: And the first one we have to talk about is
11:38
Speaker 1: the gum, which is that sticky stuff that killed George
11:43
Speaker 1: Costanza's wife or fiance. Well, here's just from looking envelopes,
11:47
Speaker 1: right or was it stamps? I guess it was envelopes,
11:50
Speaker 1: wasn't it? But it's still gum exactly. I forgot about
11:54
Speaker 1: that because he got the cheap the cheap stuff he
11:57
Speaker 1: cheaped out um. So this is what's used to stick
12:02
Speaker 1: the stamp on. If the stamp has never been used
12:04
Speaker 1: at all, it's like this pristine little thing. It's it's
12:08
Speaker 1: called full original gum, and then it's called new gum
12:12
Speaker 1: if you have a stamp and you want to add
12:14
Speaker 1: a little uh gum to it to stick it into
12:17
Speaker 1: your collection, which we'll get to as well. Yeah, so
12:21
Speaker 1: the sticky stuff equals gum. Right, pretty simple. Let's get
12:25
Speaker 1: a little more complex, Chuck, what's a block? A block
12:29
Speaker 1: is a group of stamps that are still connected to
12:32
Speaker 1: their little friends. But it's got to be at least
12:36
Speaker 1: four and a and they can't be four in a
12:38
Speaker 1: row either. For my research, it's two and two. It's
12:42
Speaker 1: got to be a square block. Yeah, I saw that there,
12:46
Speaker 1: as long as therefore it can be irregular shapes, because
12:50
Speaker 1: sometimes blocks of stamps get added to, or messed with
12:54
Speaker 1: or just changed over the decades or the century. So
12:57
Speaker 1: I've seen that more than at but in a less
13:01
Speaker 1: regular shape is still considered a block. But what about
13:04
Speaker 1: four in a row in a strip? Does that count
13:05
Speaker 1: as a block? I believe so. I think as long
13:09
Speaker 1: as it's at least four and that there is although
13:12
Speaker 1: I guarantee there's another arcane term for what you just said, um,
13:17
Speaker 1: But as long as it's not all of the ones
13:19
Speaker 1: that were originally attached together, that would be a sheet. Okay,
13:24
Speaker 1: al right, okay, alright, nowhere are Um. One other thing
13:28
Speaker 1: about stamps that you have to realize is, you know,
13:31
Speaker 1: you tend to think if you collect things, when you
13:33
Speaker 1: collect things that are not quite right, like a slightly
13:38
Speaker 1: off version of what it's supposed to be, that it
13:40
Speaker 1: would be much more expensive and collectible. And in some
13:44
Speaker 1: cases that's true, Like there there's a um, there's somebody
13:48
Speaker 1: in the stamp collecting world, uh that is collecting stuff
13:53
Speaker 1: that nobody else is. Like, there's always going to be
13:56
Speaker 1: somebody out there who wants something. But in the standp world,
13:59
Speaker 1: you want something as precise and pristine and centered and
14:02
Speaker 1: perfectly done as possible. That that usually tends to be
14:05
Speaker 1: the higher valued stamp. The other kind that are just
14:09
Speaker 1: kind of off the printing was slightly off center, that
14:13
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Those are called errors, freaks and oddities
14:16
Speaker 1: e fos in the stamp collecting world. Yeah, it's it's like, uh,
14:22
Speaker 1: you're talking about if like there's an obi wan Kenobi
14:24
Speaker 1: figure that the first thousand that they made he was
14:29
Speaker 1: missing a left ear. Uh, in that world, that would
14:33
Speaker 1: be the most valuable thing probably ever made exactly in
14:37
Speaker 1: the history of the world. But yeah, like you're saying,
14:39
Speaker 1: with stamps, they generally they want as far as value goes,
14:43
Speaker 1: they want them that are nice and tidy, right. But
14:47
Speaker 1: so I mean with with those terms error free, errors,
14:50
Speaker 1: freaks and oddities, those are just kind of wildly overstating
14:54
Speaker 1: what they describe. Like we're talking about a stamp that's
14:56
Speaker 1: just the printing is slightly off center for the perforation
15:00
Speaker 1: are just a little bit off or whatever maybe kind
15:02
Speaker 1: of half got through there. That would be considered a freak,
15:05
Speaker 1: you know, like that's how precise stamp printing is meant
15:08
Speaker 1: to be. So um, some people do collect that, but
15:11
Speaker 1: for the most part, yeah, you want as as close
15:13
Speaker 1: to perfect to stamp as possible. It sounds like a
15:15
Speaker 1: record album title, Air's Freaks and oddities, like the best
15:21
Speaker 1: of Guided by Voices or something that's a good one
15:25
Speaker 1: or just a you know, off brand Discovery Network Channel's
15:29
Speaker 1: new show, you know. So um, there's cancelations too. That's
15:37
Speaker 1: another good term to learn if you're getting into stamp collecting,
15:40
Speaker 1: and everybody knows a canceled stamp. It's where they take
15:43
Speaker 1: a like a ink stamp stamp over the postage stamp
15:49
Speaker 1: and it's canceled. You can't reuse it. It's meant to
15:51
Speaker 1: say this has been used, it's okay, let it through
15:54
Speaker 1: the mail, but don't try to reuse it again. And
15:57
Speaker 1: that's a canceled stamp. And still you can still collect
16:01
Speaker 1: those stamps. In fact, you know, most stamps I think
16:05
Speaker 1: that people collect have been used and found on these letters,
16:08
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about that are called covers. But sometimes
16:12
Speaker 1: that postmark is on the stamp itself, and sometimes it
16:15
Speaker 1: is off to the side, you know, because it's not
16:19
Speaker 1: those people at the post office they're just stamping those things.
16:22
Speaker 1: They got a lot of work to do. So sometimes
16:25
Speaker 1: you'll just barely get a little bit of cancelation on
16:27
Speaker 1: the stamp, and the rest of the goodness, including the
16:30
Speaker 1: date and where it was mailed from, might be just
16:32
Speaker 1: on the envelope itself. Yeah, and there's a lot of
16:35
Speaker 1: information that can be contained in just a plain old
16:38
Speaker 1: cancelation stamp. Um some you know, like some people collect
16:43
Speaker 1: disaster stamp. So like if you had a letter that
16:48
Speaker 1: was postmarked, or an envelope and a stamp that was
16:50
Speaker 1: postmarked on September eleven, two one in New York, somebody's
16:55
Speaker 1: probably collecting, you know, canceled canceled stamps and covers like
16:59
Speaker 1: that interest s thing. I never really thought about that.
17:01
Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense. Also, while we're talking about the
17:04
Speaker 1: people working at the post office, I feel we would
17:06
Speaker 1: be remiss if we did this whole episode without doing
17:09
Speaker 1: a shout out to our favorite postal worker, Van Nostrin.
17:12
Speaker 1: That's in a great state of Washington. And I don't
17:15
Speaker 1: know where the ads fall, but if there's a stamps
17:18
Speaker 1: dot Com ad on this total total coincidence, that's right.
17:22
Speaker 1: Some people I saw um collect machined um stamps meter
17:27
Speaker 1: postage too. And like you said, there's probably a subset
17:31
Speaker 1: out there for kind of anything. There definitely is every
17:34
Speaker 1: rule you see, there's some rebel group out there breaking it.
17:37
Speaker 1: In the Philadeli world, the covers what I mentioned, don't
17:42
Speaker 1: you dare call it an envelope? Yeah, you'd really reveal
17:46
Speaker 1: yourself to be uneducated rube if you did that, which
17:50
Speaker 1: there's probably a word for that too. Yeah, like in
17:53
Speaker 1: a beginning beginner philadelist is probably come licker. That's good.
18:01
Speaker 1: Uh So the cover, like I said, as the envelope, Um,
18:06
Speaker 1: sometimes you will keep that whole envelope at least for
18:09
Speaker 1: a little while. Sometimes it's a little you know, they're
18:11
Speaker 1: easier to hang onto than a tiny stamp sometimes, so
18:15
Speaker 1: you might not want to cut it out right away,
18:17
Speaker 1: and you can keep up with those envelopes until you
18:20
Speaker 1: want to get that stamp off. Or like we said,
18:22
Speaker 1: if it's got some of the really valuable information that
18:26
Speaker 1: makes that stamp special is on the cover itself, you
18:30
Speaker 1: may want to keep the whole thing forever and just
18:33
Speaker 1: have it on the envelope. Right. And again, these are
18:36
Speaker 1: things that people pay attention to in the stamp world
18:39
Speaker 1: or collect. And then there's another thing that that you know,
18:42
Speaker 1: most of us who just use stamps as like normal
18:45
Speaker 1: human beings UM have noticed but don't really pay much
18:48
Speaker 1: attention to our the perforations that we used to separate stamps.
18:51
Speaker 1: Like way back in the day, stamps came in sheets
18:54
Speaker 1: and you colonial person or you know, UM second Industrial
19:00
Speaker 1: age inhabitant, we're expected to pull out your scissors and
19:03
Speaker 1: cut the stamps into you know, little individual singles. Then finally, UM,
19:09
Speaker 1: an irishman named um Henry Archer from Dublin came up
19:14
Speaker 1: with a perforation tool. And all you're doing is making
19:18
Speaker 1: the paper at certain points thinner so that it's easily
19:22
Speaker 1: torn at those points. And so the first perforated stamp
19:26
Speaker 1: that came out was the eighteen fifty British Penny Red,
19:29
Speaker 1: which is pretty pretty quickly after stamps were first invented
19:32
Speaker 1: postal stamps um. And with that Henry Archer created this
19:38
Speaker 1: whole sub category of stamp I guess some categorization, a
19:46
Speaker 1: subcategory of categorization that is categorical. But stamp collecting people philatilists. Um.
19:55
Speaker 1: I'm i'd like it the way I say it, more philatelists.
19:59
Speaker 1: Now I should probably loud um. So philatilists um, really
20:05
Speaker 1: pay attention to perforations. It's like a really important part
20:09
Speaker 1: of stamp collecting. Yeah, because it can be a big clue.
20:13
Speaker 1: I mean, it can be a clue as to where
20:14
Speaker 1: it actually came from, because these people know how they
20:18
Speaker 1: have perforated things with different machines and different parts of
20:22
Speaker 1: the world in different eras. So it can be a
20:25
Speaker 1: very big clue as to the age of the stamp
20:27
Speaker 1: and where it came from. If they don't have those perforations,
20:30
Speaker 1: they're called imperforate imperforate, and then you know, I talked
20:34
Speaker 1: about the little strips of stamps, the coils those obviously
20:38
Speaker 1: you're just gonna have the perforations on the sides and
20:40
Speaker 1: not the top or the top, just not both. Uh.
20:44
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I've never really. I guess it depends on
20:47
Speaker 1: which way the art is oriented, right. Uh. And then
20:50
Speaker 1: you've got the sheets or the pain, and if it's
20:54
Speaker 1: on the outer edges of that sheet or pain, it
20:57
Speaker 1: probably won't have those perforations either. And uh, it is
21:01
Speaker 1: a big deal. You'd be surprised. Yeah. And those outer
21:04
Speaker 1: margins even have their own word, chuck, salvage, which also
21:08
Speaker 1: applies to like, you know, the the hem of like
21:11
Speaker 1: your shirt or something that's that's sewn in a certain
21:13
Speaker 1: way to keep it from unraveling. That's called salvage too.
21:16
Speaker 1: But in the stamp collecting, it's basically the margins, the
21:18
Speaker 1: sheets um and sometimes they have you know, um registration
21:23
Speaker 1: marks or dates or you know, the number of the
21:25
Speaker 1: print run printed in there. Some people collect that of
21:29
Speaker 1: course as well, salvage stamps. I love learning new words salvage.
21:34
Speaker 1: I learned one yesterday. Parapet mm hmm, you know what
21:40
Speaker 1: that is? No, I mean, I've seen it before. I
21:44
Speaker 1: just cannot bring to mind what it means. It's like
21:46
Speaker 1: the little And I learned this because uh oh, and
21:50
Speaker 1: it was gonna tell you this anyway. I had our
21:51
Speaker 1: buddy Wyatt Sinek on movie Crush yesterday. Oh cool, what
21:55
Speaker 1: do you talk about Blazing Saddles? And there's a scene
22:00
Speaker 1: where and I've seen Blazing Saddles probably three dozen times.
22:04
Speaker 1: It's up there with spinal tap as far as comedies
22:07
Speaker 1: that I've seen, and I know it basically by heart.
22:10
Speaker 1: And there's a scene where mel Brooks's Governor Lepetta Maine
22:13
Speaker 1: comes into the room and he said, sorry, gentlemen, I
22:16
Speaker 1: was just out walking the parapet and I never bothered
22:19
Speaker 1: to look up what that meant until yesterday. And it's
22:22
Speaker 1: the little if you're on top of the building, it's
22:24
Speaker 1: the little half wall that goes around the top of
22:27
Speaker 1: the building to keep you from falling off off you
22:30
Speaker 1: know more interesting. Yeah, right, really banks up maschins on
22:35
Speaker 1: your way down. So I never knew that before walking
22:38
Speaker 1: the parapet. Yeah, okay, So he was saying like he
22:41
Speaker 1: was basically walking on the edge of a high wall.
22:44
Speaker 1: I guess a low wall, Yeah, low wall, high up
22:48
Speaker 1: with his selvage. I got you. Oh boy, so um,
22:53
Speaker 1: let's say Chuck that you said I care about perforations.
22:57
Speaker 1: I want to know more about these registration marks on salvage.
23:01
Speaker 1: How do I get into this filati um as a hobby, Chuck?
23:05
Speaker 1: What would what would you recommend people do to start?
23:08
Speaker 1: Get a bank loand no, you know, it is really
23:14
Speaker 1: one of the cool things about stamp collecting is it's
23:16
Speaker 1: a very low barrier to entry. You need to get
23:19
Speaker 1: these little special tongs, these little baby tweezers with rounded tips,
23:25
Speaker 1: and you know, if your your skin oils can mark
23:28
Speaker 1: a stampa, you want to try and handle them with
23:31
Speaker 1: these little little tweezers so you don't ruin them. That's
23:34
Speaker 1: a good little tool to have. Uh, you're gonna want
23:37
Speaker 1: to get an album or a binder, and they make
23:40
Speaker 1: them especially you know, don't get on one for like photographs.
23:42
Speaker 1: They make them specially for stamps. And sometimes they have
23:46
Speaker 1: little pockets that you can slip them in that are adorable.
23:49
Speaker 1: And sometimes they have hinges, which are little strips of
23:52
Speaker 1: paper with a little bit of gum on them to
23:54
Speaker 1: put the stamps on. You might want to magnifying glass
23:58
Speaker 1: or a Jeweler's loop, but you don't need a microscope
24:02
Speaker 1: or anything. I think about a ten X is probably
24:05
Speaker 1: the most kind of magnification you'll need. Yes, um eventually too,
24:10
Speaker 1: you're going to find that you have perforation fever, and
24:13
Speaker 1: you're going to get yourself a perf gage, which is
24:16
Speaker 1: basically a specialized transparent ruler that that you line up
24:21
Speaker 1: the lines to the perforation marks. And uh, the gauge
24:26
Speaker 1: of a perforation is how many perforation holes there are
24:31
Speaker 1: per two centimeters. And this is important because you know,
24:35
Speaker 1: some stamps are exactly the same as other stamps. The
24:38
Speaker 1: only difference is is like they were printed on they
24:42
Speaker 1: were perforated with slightly different machines or something like that.
24:45
Speaker 1: Or you know, like the stamp collecting community knows when
24:49
Speaker 1: a perforating machines pin brakes. They know about that machine,
24:53
Speaker 1: and it's then so they can tell you where that
24:56
Speaker 1: thing was printed and when and what run it will
25:00
Speaker 1: is out of how many just because there's a a
25:03
Speaker 1: what's called a blind perforation where the hole wasn't punched
25:06
Speaker 1: through where it should have been in the one position
25:10
Speaker 1: on this one stamp, Like that's how intensely known stamps
25:15
Speaker 1: are by the filate pilately community. It's it's really cool.
25:19
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing I like about it is
25:21
Speaker 1: how my opic it can get and how specific it
25:24
Speaker 1: can get. It's just, you know, it's it's time well spent.
25:28
Speaker 1: And I bet it's very calming. Yes, yeah, just just
25:32
Speaker 1: researching it is calming. You know, I fell asleep a
25:35
Speaker 1: few times. Stuff. Stuff like that really comes through. When
25:37
Speaker 1: you're researching something, you find you're relaxed. The thing you're
25:40
Speaker 1: doing would be even more relaxing. I think like making flies,
25:46
Speaker 1: or painting like duck Decoy, Yeah, yeah, I love that,
25:50
Speaker 1: or or painting stamps like and Fargo Margie's husband. It's
25:56
Speaker 1: just the two cent norm norm was great. I love it. Uh.
26:02
Speaker 1: So you might want a internet connection. Um, you will
26:06
Speaker 1: probably want to get a stamp catalog and we'll talk
26:08
Speaker 1: about this sort of the big books that are out there,
26:11
Speaker 1: uh in a bit. But all of this stuff is
26:14
Speaker 1: basically online now. But you also might like having a book.
26:17
Speaker 1: If you're into stamps. I bet you dollars to donuts
26:21
Speaker 1: you might rather hold a book in your hand every
26:23
Speaker 1: time you say that. You said that on Tuesday two
26:25
Speaker 1: in one of the episodes. And yeah, every time you
26:27
Speaker 1: say that, I think of this when Simpsons where Homer
26:30
Speaker 1: goes deal and puts his dollar down. It's weird because
26:35
Speaker 1: I don't really say that expression much, but I've said
26:37
Speaker 1: it twice in a week. Yeah, you definitely did, because
26:40
Speaker 1: I thought about it the other day too. Also did
26:42
Speaker 1: my that dumb what we do in the Shadows guy
26:46
Speaker 1: in like two episodes in a row. Yeah, and another
26:49
Speaker 1: point too. It's so funny because I think it's a
26:51
Speaker 1: mild transgression when we kind of cop one another's words.
26:57
Speaker 1: You use droll. Um. I can't remember what episode, but
27:01
Speaker 1: you said droll, and then I used it recently too
27:05
Speaker 1: after that, and as I was saying it, I was like, yeah,
27:10
Speaker 1: and I just use it. It's okay if I use
27:12
Speaker 1: that word, So it's fine. I'll lend you droll. Thank you, buddy.
27:16
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Uh, you might want watermark detector fluid.
27:20
Speaker 1: Actually that's a pretty good album name too. Um. Sometimes
27:25
Speaker 1: stamps will have an anti counterfeiting measure put in place
27:29
Speaker 1: with a water mark, and sometimes you can hold up
27:34
Speaker 1: stamp to the light and see the water mark. And
27:36
Speaker 1: sometimes you will need to dive a bit deeper and
27:39
Speaker 1: put that water mark detector fluid on there, and uh,
27:44
Speaker 1: it's not that much money, but it's not necessarily. The
27:46
Speaker 1: first thing you need in your kit is a is
27:49
Speaker 1: a beginning gum liquor, right, I mean, you're you're gonna
27:52
Speaker 1: basically just be be looking at well, that's a neat picture.
27:57
Speaker 1: I like that picture, like, that's that's a cool stamp.
28:00
Speaker 1: And then eventually you'll be like, what's on the back,
28:02
Speaker 1: what's the secret hidden message that I'm missing on this?
28:05
Speaker 1: That's right. I also saw there's machines that you can
28:07
Speaker 1: get for about two fifty dollars that are basically like
28:10
Speaker 1: those you know, those old timey projector things that they
28:14
Speaker 1: use in class, like an overhead projector. Yes, yeah, but
28:19
Speaker 1: this is a this is one that projects into some
28:22
Speaker 1: sort of magnifier that you lean over and look into. Um,
28:25
Speaker 1: there's like a light bulb and you don't have to
28:28
Speaker 1: use any fluid. It doesn't have any impact on your
28:30
Speaker 1: stamp whatsoever. It's just just shows you the watermark. It's
28:34
Speaker 1: pretty neat, all right. I mean that's for the well
28:36
Speaker 1: healed philatilists. I'm out. So there's another thing you need
28:42
Speaker 1: that's really really important. It's a basic part of stamp collecting,
28:45
Speaker 1: that is stamps, That's right. And if you're just getting started, Uh,
28:50
Speaker 1: one thing you can do is go online and you
28:53
Speaker 1: can buy just a lot or a collection of stamps,
28:57
Speaker 1: a sort of a grab bag that you have no
28:59
Speaker 1: idea what's in there are And that can be a
29:01
Speaker 1: really fun way to get started, because, like I mentioned earlier,
29:04
Speaker 1: that's where you might poke through and get inspired and say,
29:08
Speaker 1: you know what, it turns out I really like this
29:11
Speaker 1: particular kind of stamp or two, and I think that
29:14
Speaker 1: might be what my focus should be. And that's a
29:16
Speaker 1: good way to find that out. Yeah, I mean, getting
29:19
Speaker 1: a grab bag of anything. It's a good way to
29:21
Speaker 1: really find out who you who you really are? You
29:24
Speaker 1: know so, and that is something you can do. You
29:27
Speaker 1: can order it online. If you live in a big
29:29
Speaker 1: enough city there's probably a stamp collecting store. Um. You
29:34
Speaker 1: can also like I read this pamphlet by I think
29:37
Speaker 1: the American philatli Association or Society APS. I believe they
29:43
Speaker 1: wrote the pamphlet um and they yeah philatltic, philatlic damn
29:51
Speaker 1: that word, Okay, philadelic. I think I got it right. Yeah, okay. Um.
29:57
Speaker 1: The American Philadelic is so Man had a pamphlet and
30:03
Speaker 1: they basically said, if you're a little kid and you
30:05
Speaker 1: don't have any money because your parents don't give you
30:07
Speaker 1: an allowance or anything, you could still get into stamp collecting.
30:10
Speaker 1: And they give all these ideas of how to get
30:13
Speaker 1: free stamps. Go to like offices and be like, hey,
30:17
Speaker 1: you got any mail, you guys get a lot of mail,
30:19
Speaker 1: You got any envelopes you don't want anymore? Or start
30:23
Speaker 1: find a pen pal in another country because they'll have
30:25
Speaker 1: stamps that are a diamond dozen to them, but to
30:29
Speaker 1: you it's a foreign stamp, and you can just start
30:31
Speaker 1: sending each other letters with you know, cool stamps or
30:35
Speaker 1: even stamps inside the envelope. Who knows. Um. There's a
30:38
Speaker 1: lot of ways to get into stamp collecting, basically for
30:41
Speaker 1: free or for the cost maybe of a stamp. Um
30:45
Speaker 1: that that which is again one of the one of
30:47
Speaker 1: the reasons why stamp collecting is just so accessible. It
30:50
Speaker 1: costs noct next to nothing to to get into to
30:53
Speaker 1: get started with, and even when you really get into it,
30:55
Speaker 1: it's not an expensive hobby. No. And if you know,
30:59
Speaker 1: if you get a bunch of stamps, or you get
31:01
Speaker 1: a bunch of covers with stamps and you're just beginning
31:04
Speaker 1: your your journey. Um, you're gonna get them all lamb
31:09
Speaker 1: out in a room, look at him. Decide what you like.
31:12
Speaker 1: And you don't want to just remove all. I mean,
31:15
Speaker 1: you can do whatever you want, but uh, I would
31:18
Speaker 1: advise that you decide what you wanna um separate from
31:23
Speaker 1: the cover because there is a process involved that we're
31:27
Speaker 1: gonna go over now. And it's not the hardest thing
31:30
Speaker 1: in the world. But you don't want to do that
31:32
Speaker 1: to twenty or thirty stamps that you're like, no, actually
31:34
Speaker 1: don't like these after all, it's a waste of time. Yeah,
31:37
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like that next level of preservation. Um.
31:41
Speaker 1: And once you pick those out, what you do is
31:43
Speaker 1: you get a bowl with warm water, warm tap water.
31:48
Speaker 1: You lose control of your bladder. Then you start the
31:53
Speaker 1: stamp sorting process. That's right. You go pp just a
31:56
Speaker 1: little bit, and then you float that stamp if you
31:59
Speaker 1: have cut it away for in the cover. If you
32:00
Speaker 1: decided to do that, leave yourself a few centimeters around
32:04
Speaker 1: the stamp, you know, don't get too close. Yeah, but
32:06
Speaker 1: you make a good point you you want to go
32:08
Speaker 1: through everything first and be like, are there any cool
32:11
Speaker 1: um you know, cancelations on? Here? Is this envelope just
32:15
Speaker 1: need you? You don't necessarily want to separate all stamps
32:18
Speaker 1: from envelopes or exactly, So you you want to make
32:24
Speaker 1: that decision first, and then once you decide that you
32:26
Speaker 1: want just the stamp, then you start cutting out and
32:29
Speaker 1: leave a little envelope around it. Right, So you float
32:32
Speaker 1: that little bad boy in some warm tap water. Yeah,
32:36
Speaker 1: you gotta float it stamp up, and you can do
32:39
Speaker 1: a few at a time. But I wouldn't get too
32:40
Speaker 1: crazy if you're just a little gum liquer and I
32:44
Speaker 1: would wade into those warm waters. And if it's from
32:48
Speaker 1: a Christmas envelope or something, if it's like a red envelope, yes,
32:52
Speaker 1: beware because that can very much discolor your stamp. Hopefully
32:57
Speaker 1: it's just like a good old fashioned white envelope. Wait
33:00
Speaker 1: about ten or fifteen minutes and that stamp will start
33:03
Speaker 1: to that gum will just sort of dissolve away, and
33:06
Speaker 1: that stamp will kind of separate and then float off
33:08
Speaker 1: on its own. Get those tongs, those little tweezers out.
33:12
Speaker 1: You don't want to just grab it with your grammy
33:15
Speaker 1: old human fingers and just kind of pat it dry,
33:19
Speaker 1: and you've got yourself a stamp. You want to be
33:22
Speaker 1: really careful though, because a wet stamp is unsurprisingly very fragile.
33:27
Speaker 1: A lot of people put um, there's they're wet stamps
33:31
Speaker 1: on paper towels. You want to make sure you've gotten
33:34
Speaker 1: all the gum off first though. Um. And then they
33:36
Speaker 1: put those paper towels in a heavy book and then
33:39
Speaker 1: let the let it dry like that. That's I mean
33:42
Speaker 1: what we just described as phil atalytic um state of
33:48
Speaker 1: the art. Basically, that's right. So you want to take
33:53
Speaker 1: another break and they come back and talk a little
33:55
Speaker 1: stamp history, famous stamps, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I
33:58
Speaker 1: love this part. Let's do that alright. So you mentioned
34:25
Speaker 1: stamp history. Uh, they've been collecting stamp since the first stamp,
34:30
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. I don't know why someone said,
34:32
Speaker 1: you know, I want to hang onto this, but someone did.
34:35
Speaker 1: And uh. After May one, Great Britain issued the Penny Black,
34:41
Speaker 1: the very first postage stamp. It was supposed to roll
34:44
Speaker 1: out on May six as far as being used, but
34:47
Speaker 1: they sent him out a little bit early to post offices,
34:50
Speaker 1: so they were ready to go on May six, and
34:52
Speaker 1: some post offices said, let's just go ahead and kind
34:55
Speaker 1: of get the ball rolling because I've been feeling we're
34:57
Speaker 1: going to be behind really quickly. And so some of
35:00
Speaker 1: those little penny blacks are dated earlier than May six,
35:04
Speaker 1: and those will be worth a little bit more money,
35:07
Speaker 1: but they are not like there were a bunch of
35:09
Speaker 1: penny black So it's not like the Honus Wagner baseball card.
35:14
Speaker 1: It's not like the penny Black is the most valuable
35:16
Speaker 1: stamp ever made. It's a little counterintuitive, but rarity for
35:20
Speaker 1: any collection is what makes it valuable, and they're just
35:22
Speaker 1: not as rare as you might think, right, But that's
35:25
Speaker 1: a good example of that cancelation that people um will
35:29
Speaker 1: will collect because you wanna canceled penny black that pre
35:33
Speaker 1: dates that May sixty team forty date because it's just
35:37
Speaker 1: unusual and rare totally. That's also I think May one,
35:42
Speaker 1: so May one was the date where they started issuing them,
35:47
Speaker 1: even though that was five days early, so that would
35:49
Speaker 1: be what's called the first day cover. It's an envelope
35:52
Speaker 1: with the stamp that's canceled on the first day of issue.
35:56
Speaker 1: And sometimes there's even a special stamp that they'll use,
35:58
Speaker 1: say first day issue. People collect covers like that too.
36:03
Speaker 1: They even have like ceremonies for these kind of things, especially,
36:06
Speaker 1: I swear to God if they're releasing a commemorative stamp.
36:09
Speaker 1: In particular, there's definitive stamps, which are your everyday, you know,
36:14
Speaker 1: American Flag Forever stamp um that they basically release an
36:18
Speaker 1: unlimited quantities. Then there's commemorative stamps. They usually have a
36:22
Speaker 1: more limited run. They're available for a limited time. They
36:25
Speaker 1: often commemorate a person and events something like that um,
36:29
Speaker 1: And when they release those stamps, they'll have like a
36:32
Speaker 1: ceremony um at a specific post office in a specific
36:36
Speaker 1: city with dignitaries and famous people there. Sometimes they'll print
36:40
Speaker 1: programs and everything. And if you're a stamp collector, you
36:43
Speaker 1: want to be at that first day ceremony or at
36:46
Speaker 1: the very least you're collecting those kind of covers too,
36:48
Speaker 1: if that's the kind of thing you're into, Yeah, I
36:51
Speaker 1: think it's kind of awesome that when you go to
36:54
Speaker 1: the post office still and you go and ask for
36:56
Speaker 1: a book of stamps, if you have no interest at
36:59
Speaker 1: all in stamp collecting, they will present you, usually with
37:03
Speaker 1: a few things, ago what kind of stamps you want?
37:06
Speaker 1: And and anecdotally I can say that most people choose
37:10
Speaker 1: something rather than saying I don't care, I just want something,
37:13
Speaker 1: to mail something, give me questions. I've been plenty of
37:18
Speaker 1: post offices and most people go, oh, those dogs look nice.
37:21
Speaker 1: I'll take those. Yeah, dogs playing poker even better, It's cute.
37:25
Speaker 1: I love it. I pick out my stamps. I don't
37:27
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time on it, but if they
37:29
Speaker 1: present me with a few, I'll kind of give them
37:32
Speaker 1: a quick once over and say, well, I'd like to
37:34
Speaker 1: mail that represents me a little bit, and that's kind
37:37
Speaker 1: of what it is. Give me those Mr Rogers stamps.
37:40
Speaker 1: How are there some? I'm sure there is. Yeah, I'll
37:42
Speaker 1: bring you one. I'll mail you something with one on it. Yeah,
37:47
Speaker 1: I do, Okay, send me something for sure, I will. Uh.
37:52
Speaker 1: You mentioned the first day cover though, they people will
37:55
Speaker 1: collect first day covers of just very regular, commonly issued
38:00
Speaker 1: stamps just because it's the first day cover. Because you
38:04
Speaker 1: never know that thing might be worth something one day. Right,
38:07
Speaker 1: But that's what I'm saying. That's what they have those
38:08
Speaker 1: ceremonies for two sometimes and then if you have, like
38:12
Speaker 1: a something that's designed or a design that's printed on
38:15
Speaker 1: a stamp is called a cache. Yet another arcane jargon
38:18
Speaker 1: term um. And people spend a lot of time, by
38:22
Speaker 1: the way, I looked up into the cache a world,
38:24
Speaker 1: and there are stamp collectors that very much get into
38:29
Speaker 1: making their own caches and uh special made caches, and
38:33
Speaker 1: it's a whole other subset as well. Yeah, it's basically
38:36
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you've ever seen an envelope
38:38
Speaker 1: with a stamp of an angel blowing a trumpet around
38:41
Speaker 1: Christmas time or something like that, that's cache. Well, I
38:45
Speaker 1: mean a cache is an additional like ink stamp put
38:48
Speaker 1: on the envelope. That's what I'm saying, Okay, like a stamps. Yeah,
38:53
Speaker 1: I know that we need another term. I think that's
38:55
Speaker 1: what confused rubber rubber ink stamp, A rubber ink stamp
38:58
Speaker 1: of an angel blowing a horn around Christmas time. I
39:00
Speaker 1: got you, I got you. So um. America got into
39:03
Speaker 1: the stamp releasing act less than a decade after Great Britain,
39:08
Speaker 1: and Great Britain, by the way, being the first nation
39:11
Speaker 1: on the planet to issue postage stamps, didn't bother to
39:16
Speaker 1: put the nation of origin. If you look at every
39:18
Speaker 1: other stamp ever issued by a government authority, it has
39:22
Speaker 1: the nation on it. Somewhere there's some signifier that this
39:26
Speaker 1: came from America or Zimbabwe or something like that. Um,
39:29
Speaker 1: Great Britain still to this day doesn't because they were
39:32
Speaker 1: the first, and so they still don't don't put Great
39:35
Speaker 1: Britain or UK or anything on their stamps. Right, it's
39:38
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yep. So America got into it in eighteen
39:41
Speaker 1: forty seven July first, No less, there was a five
39:44
Speaker 1: cent Benjamin Franklin at ten cent George Washington And what
39:48
Speaker 1: else did we need? You know? Yeah? And this is
39:51
Speaker 1: not you know, we It can get confusing when you
39:55
Speaker 1: think of like the Stamp Act and you know, stamping
39:57
Speaker 1: t and things like that. Those were different kinds of stamps.
40:01
Speaker 1: We used to stamp tax bills and permits and any
40:04
Speaker 1: kind of government sort of thing exchange might be stamped.
40:09
Speaker 1: That is a revenue stamp, and you it's sort of
40:13
Speaker 1: just a different world. Like if you collect postage stamps,
40:17
Speaker 1: you might also collect revenue stamps, but there you keep
40:21
Speaker 1: them separate. You don't put them together. You don't tell
40:24
Speaker 1: your friends who collect postage stamps that you're collecting revenue
40:28
Speaker 1: or fiscal stamps that's your postage. Stamps are kind of
40:32
Speaker 1: where the bread and butter is for stamp collecting. I
40:34
Speaker 1: think so, like we said um before, the kind of
40:38
Speaker 1: like one of the recognized authorities on stamp collecting and
40:41
Speaker 1: stamps in general is the Scott Catalog, which has been
40:44
Speaker 1: produced from a company in Ohio since eighteen sixty eight,
40:49
Speaker 1: and they basically just started tracking stamp after stamp. So
40:53
Speaker 1: the lower the number associated with the stamp that the
40:56
Speaker 1: Scott Catalog has given that stamp, the earlier the stamp
41:00
Speaker 1: is released, and so over time it's grown into I
41:03
Speaker 1: think a twelve volume collection catalog the Scott Catalog has,
41:09
Speaker 1: but it's so widely known and widely used that a
41:13
Speaker 1: lot of stamps are just are discovered or described and
41:16
Speaker 1: talked about by their Scott Catalog number rather than you know,
41:20
Speaker 1: whatever common name they have, right. And there are prefixes
41:24
Speaker 1: and suffixes, uh if there are different special issued stamps
41:28
Speaker 1: or some of those errors you're talking about, or some
41:31
Speaker 1: rad purse Um, the inverted Jenny which we'll talk about
41:35
Speaker 1: in a minute, like that's known as C three A
41:38
Speaker 1: in the stamp world, this C denotes airmail stamps. Yeah,
41:43
Speaker 1: which is great and little counterintuitive, a little bit. Sure
41:48
Speaker 1: it would be an A in my world you would
41:50
Speaker 1: think so, But I think A is for awesome. The
41:54
Speaker 1: most awesome stamps is what the A has reserved for.
41:57
Speaker 1: There's also the Michelle Catalog from Germany, and that is
42:01
Speaker 1: around to fill in the gaps that the Scott Guide
42:04
Speaker 1: does not cover, because the Scott Guide is American and
42:08
Speaker 1: they're like, we don't want Cuban stamps in our book.
42:11
Speaker 1: Can you believe it? Yeah, it's weird. If there were
42:13
Speaker 1: nations that are embargoed or whatever, h sometimes they will
42:17
Speaker 1: not be I think North Korean stamps too, are not
42:19
Speaker 1: in the Scott Catalog. So the Michelle Catalog comes around
42:23
Speaker 1: because they're German and they're like, sure, we'll cover it.
42:25
Speaker 1: It's fine, sure. Um. So it turns out that there's
42:30
Speaker 1: actually been a pretty decent amount of famous people who
42:33
Speaker 1: collect stamps. Um. Just because there's so many people who
42:37
Speaker 1: collect stamps, some of them are bound to be famous. Right.
42:41
Speaker 1: John Lennon, Yeah, I read about his stamp collecting. He
42:45
Speaker 1: seems to have inherited his cousin Stanley's stamp collection basically
42:49
Speaker 1: changed the name on the cover of the album to
42:51
Speaker 1: his name, and then you know, added a few more stamps.
42:54
Speaker 1: He doesn't seem to have been a passionate philatilist by
42:57
Speaker 1: any stretch. From what um Eine Rand was I know. Uh.
43:05
Speaker 1: And then Patrick Dempsey I saw reference here there. Yeah.
43:13
Speaker 1: And then Queen Elizabeth the Second apparently as a stamp
43:16
Speaker 1: collector um. And then Sally Ride was a very famous
43:20
Speaker 1: philadelist as well and ended up on a stamp her self. Yes, sadly. Um.
43:25
Speaker 1: This is something that I think is super cool, the
43:28
Speaker 1: fact that Sally Ride was fine. She didn't die in
43:30
Speaker 1: an act that was Christie mcculloff. That's what I was
43:34
Speaker 1: thinking of. Did you ever see that Challenger documentary yet?
43:37
Speaker 1: I still haven't. It's a man, it is just astounding.
43:41
Speaker 1: You can't believe it. I can't believe the interviews that
43:43
Speaker 1: they got and what they got the people to finally
43:46
Speaker 1: admit to. It's crazy amazing. Amelia Earhart, I think this
43:50
Speaker 1: is super cool. She actually funded some of her aviation expeditions, uh,
43:56
Speaker 1: including some of those transatlantic flights with stamps. She would
44:01
Speaker 1: get covers and she would sometimes their cash cachide and
44:05
Speaker 1: she would get stamps, and she would fly to places
44:08
Speaker 1: and get them postmarked, and it would be obviously super valuable.
44:12
Speaker 1: She might even sign it sometimes and sell them and
44:16
Speaker 1: this would be like, boy, this is a cover and
44:18
Speaker 1: a stamp from Amelia Earhart's flight across the ocean. Uh,
44:24
Speaker 1: stamped here and in like England or something, or stamped
44:28
Speaker 1: in England or canceled. I guess in England. And Uh.
44:32
Speaker 1: When she went down in that plane there were five
44:34
Speaker 1: with along with poor fred Noonan, there were five thousand
44:38
Speaker 1: covers that she had pre sold to fund that flight
44:41
Speaker 1: that were stamped and postmarked for her stops around the world.
44:45
Speaker 1: Very cool fact that brought to mind the mail on
44:48
Speaker 1: the Titanic. Remember we were making fun of people dropping
44:51
Speaker 1: off their mail. Apparently there was a lot of mail
44:53
Speaker 1: on the Titanic and I didn't think about it. But
44:55
Speaker 1: it wasn't just people dropping off their mail. Passengers on
44:59
Speaker 1: the titan and mailing postcards. R MS stands for Royal
45:05
Speaker 1: Male Ship, so the RMS Titanic was a mail carrier too,
45:09
Speaker 1: so it was carrying British and Irish and European mail
45:14
Speaker 1: over to America as well. And from what I could tell,
45:18
Speaker 1: none of it survived. There's a surviving letter that was
45:20
Speaker 1: not mail, that was written on Titanic letterhead, but it
45:23
Speaker 1: was kept in somebody's belongings. But I guess all of
45:26
Speaker 1: the male workers on the Titanic died basically trying to
45:30
Speaker 1: save the mail, but they were unable to and it's
45:33
Speaker 1: still down there. But they think it's possible some of
45:36
Speaker 1: it still preserved and they might bring it up someday.
45:39
Speaker 1: President Roosevelt was a very dedicated stamp collector FDR pre
45:45
Speaker 1: presidency and then through his presidency, which was many, many years.
45:50
Speaker 1: And this is interesting and that the president has the
45:52
Speaker 1: ear of the Postmaster General and it seems unfair. Well,
45:57
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's kind of cool though, Like
45:58
Speaker 1: he got into it and he wasn't just like, yeah,
46:01
Speaker 1: just print a bunch of stamps, it's fine, like every
46:03
Speaker 1: other president. Um. In the nineteen thirties he got together
46:06
Speaker 1: with General James A. Farley of the Postmaster General and said,
46:11
Speaker 1: you know, let's help. I want to help design these things,
46:13
Speaker 1: and let's brainstorm colors and themes and designs. And but
46:18
Speaker 1: if he was terrible at it, and Farley would see
46:21
Speaker 1: him come into like oh here comes another bad idea
46:24
Speaker 1: from FDR figures had like gigantic hands and stuff. But
46:30
Speaker 1: he was the president, so Farley had to release the
46:32
Speaker 1: stupid stamps. That's pretty funny, uh, but it's kind of
46:36
Speaker 1: cool though. He did sketch out ideas apparently, and in
46:39
Speaker 1: his collection he had some full sheets and he had
46:42
Speaker 1: some die proofs and stuff like that, so he did
46:45
Speaker 1: he did have a an advantage for sure. Yeah. Apparently
46:49
Speaker 1: they used to release a lot of pictures of him
46:51
Speaker 1: collecting stamps as part of like calm reassurance to the
46:54
Speaker 1: nation that there was like a steady hand um literally
46:58
Speaker 1: and figuratively and leading the country, which is kind of cool.
47:02
Speaker 1: Can we talk about the Inverted Jenny the coolest stamping? Yeah,
47:05
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of famous stamps, we should say, the
47:07
Speaker 1: Inverted Jenny is not the most, the most the high
47:10
Speaker 1: the most valuable stamp that goes to the um the
47:14
Speaker 1: British Guiana magenta, right, Yeah, which isn't that great looking,
47:19
Speaker 1: but it's just rare. I guess I think there's only
47:22
Speaker 1: one of it in in um in existence, the British
47:26
Speaker 1: Guiana one sent magenta, but the the far and away
47:29
Speaker 1: the Inverted Jenny is the the most famous stamp of
47:33
Speaker 1: all time has to be. Yeah. So in nineteen eighteen,
47:37
Speaker 1: the U S commissioned to stamp to commemorate the first
47:40
Speaker 1: air mail service going on. And so they decided on
47:44
Speaker 1: a two color stamp with a plane on it OC
47:47
Speaker 1: Curtis j N four. And when you do something with
47:50
Speaker 1: two colors, you print the first thing. In this case,
47:53
Speaker 1: it was the red frame around the plane, and then
47:56
Speaker 1: the second thing that they would print with the the
47:58
Speaker 1: blue plane itself. And there was an error at one point,
48:02
Speaker 1: and there were a few pains where it was flipped
48:04
Speaker 1: upside down and it was either the sheet or the
48:06
Speaker 1: printing plate was upside down, and so that the jenny
48:10
Speaker 1: was inverted, and you've got this upside down plane. And
48:14
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, stamp collectors get winded this and
48:17
Speaker 1: they're like, oh my gosh, there was a mistake. We
48:20
Speaker 1: need to get our hands on some of these. Yeah.
48:22
Speaker 1: This guy named William Roby showed up at the printing
48:25
Speaker 1: press and said, do you have any that are messed
48:28
Speaker 1: up that are upside down? And they had found that
48:31
Speaker 1: they had printed some accidentally. Uh, and all but one
48:34
Speaker 1: sheet was destroyed. So one hundred inverted Jennis were produced,
48:38
Speaker 1: which makes it not one of the rare stamps around.
48:41
Speaker 1: Remember that that British key on um one set in Jenna.
48:44
Speaker 1: There's only one. There's only one Benjamin Franklin z Grill.
48:47
Speaker 1: There's a hundred of these things. But um, people just
48:50
Speaker 1: love them. They go bonkers for them. Uh. And as
48:53
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, one of the reasons why the
48:55
Speaker 1: Inverted Jenny has become such a a sought after part
49:00
Speaker 1: of the stamp collecting world is because it's it's just
49:04
Speaker 1: been in the spotlight so much like there's been some
49:06
Speaker 1: really high profile thefts of inverted Jenny's over the years.
49:10
Speaker 1: There was some one block of four called the McCoy
49:13
Speaker 1: block that was stolen in nineteen fifty five, and every
49:17
Speaker 1: couple of decades one of them is recovered and there's
49:20
Speaker 1: a big to do about it. Um. There was another
49:23
Speaker 1: theft from the New York Public Library nineteen seven that
49:26
Speaker 1: was finally recovered years later. Um. It's just something about
49:30
Speaker 1: that stamp makes it the most the most famous of
49:33
Speaker 1: all time, that's right. And then that's one case there
49:36
Speaker 1: was a dealer or those This man who purchased the
49:39
Speaker 1: sheets sold it to a dealer dealer sells it to
49:42
Speaker 1: this wealthy businessman, and the dealer had penciled in numbers
49:46
Speaker 1: on the back of these stamps individually so you could
49:49
Speaker 1: identify the stamps, which of course it meant it was
49:53
Speaker 1: not in mint condition, but they were at least identifiable.
49:57
Speaker 1: And I think the story goes that one of these
49:59
Speaker 1: was stole one and it turned up in the eighties
50:02
Speaker 1: with the perforations cut off and the number on the
50:05
Speaker 1: back was changed to a nine, which wasn't a stamp
50:08
Speaker 1: that had ever been circulated. So they knew that it
50:11
Speaker 1: was the stolen stamp, right, but they thought that it
50:16
Speaker 1: could have been this nine that had never been circulated,
50:18
Speaker 1: that it made its way in a circulation. But it
50:20
Speaker 1: wasn't until two thousand two when a woman's locket, the
50:24
Speaker 1: wife of Colonel Edward Green, the guy who bought that
50:27
Speaker 1: original block of one that businessman um she died in
50:32
Speaker 1: her locket made its way into auction and somebody opened
50:36
Speaker 1: it up and found that the inverted jenny in the
50:39
Speaker 1: number nine position was actually in the locket, So the
50:42
Speaker 1: other one was found to be a fraud that way,
50:44
Speaker 1: which is just you can't write this stuff, you know,
50:47
Speaker 1: I think you met Colonel Mustard. It's Mr Green, I know.
50:51
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing, Professor Plum. Pretty cool story though.
50:56
Speaker 1: I think the last one in nineteen sold for one
51:00
Speaker 1: three five mills, So yeah, there was a block of them.
51:02
Speaker 1: I think, not the most valuable, but pretty pretty brighty plus. Also,
51:07
Speaker 1: it made its way into one of the better movies
51:09
Speaker 1: that came out of the eighties, Brewsters Millions, Remember, Oh
51:13
Speaker 1: sure was that in there? Yeah, he burned up like
51:16
Speaker 1: a bunch of money by mailing a postcard using the
51:19
Speaker 1: inverted Jenny is mail. That's a fun fact. Yeah, yeah,
51:23
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Huh. I love it. And that ties in
51:26
Speaker 1: with Blazing Saddles because Richard Pryor almost played Sheriff Bart
51:30
Speaker 1: Oh nice. What was the name of the actor who
51:32
Speaker 1: did in? Said Cleveland Little, who was a great But
51:35
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor was a writer on the movie. Okay, uh,
51:39
Speaker 1: you got anything else about Richard Pryor or philatili Nope,
51:43
Speaker 1: neither do I. But there is a ton out there,
51:47
Speaker 1: Like I read an article about the serial number that's
51:49
Speaker 1: written on the side of the plane on the Inverted
51:52
Speaker 1: Jenny and how Philatilists got to the bottom of why
51:55
Speaker 1: that serial number was used. Like I mean, there is
51:58
Speaker 1: a lot of information out there, and there's a lot
52:00
Speaker 1: of stamps to collect. So go forth and try out
52:03
Speaker 1: a new hobby and see what you think. And since
52:05
Speaker 1: I said go forth, that means, of course it's time
52:07
Speaker 1: for a listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this heartfelt thanks.
52:12
Speaker 1: Hey guys, as we mark the one year anniversary of
52:14
Speaker 1: the COVID Lockdown, I'm compelled to write and thank you
52:17
Speaker 1: for what you've done, what you do, and hopefully what
52:18
Speaker 1: you will continue to do. Yours was my first podcast
52:22
Speaker 1: subscription from several years back, and as a stay at
52:25
Speaker 1: home mom, that has uh, that list has grown substantially
52:29
Speaker 1: across several genres and I'm plugged in constantly when I cleaned,
52:32
Speaker 1: cook exercise, et cetera. When Lockdown was first initiated here
52:35
Speaker 1: in California, I try to keep as normal as schedule
52:38
Speaker 1: as possible. Despite all three of my children relegated to
52:41
Speaker 1: home for distance learning. UH, none of my at least
52:45
Speaker 1: dozen podcasts seemed appropriate to absorb except for yours. The
52:49
Speaker 1: funny ones seemed too trivial, the crime ones too gruesome,
52:52
Speaker 1: the historians too dry, and none could keep my attention
52:56
Speaker 1: again except for yours. Your show is such the perfect
52:59
Speaker 1: balt between knowledge, lightheartedness, sincerity, and understanding, and the true
53:04
Speaker 1: friendship radiates from your voices. Uh, and it's incredibly soothing.
53:08
Speaker 1: I revisited your past episodes for ten months before I
53:11
Speaker 1: was able to keep listening to anything else. I'm sure
53:14
Speaker 1: I'm not alone when I say I don't know how
53:15
Speaker 1: I would have gotten through this past year without YouTube
53:18
Speaker 1: filtering out all the negative vibes in my head. You
53:20
Speaker 1: two are the bestest friends I've never met. Keep on
53:24
Speaker 1: keeping on, and that is Zeneida Johnson of San Jose, California. Man,
53:30
Speaker 1: that was a bang up email, Zeneida, thank you very
53:32
Speaker 1: much for that. It is and believe it or not,
53:35
Speaker 1: we need to hear that stuff too, so we really
53:38
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, well, I'll never get tired
53:41
Speaker 1: of hearing that. But it's all, you know, It's just
53:43
Speaker 1: we talked about a pat on the back, you know,
53:45
Speaker 1: being hearing that we help people get through the pandemic.
53:48
Speaker 1: Is that's about as high praise as you can get
53:51
Speaker 1: these days. Means a lot. Yeah, thanks a lot, Zeneida. Um,
53:54
Speaker 1: and uh, we're glad that we could help you out
53:56
Speaker 1: and everybody who we helped out and everybody who we
53:59
Speaker 1: sly lee, annoyed or made laugh or did anything or
54:02
Speaker 1: last year or thirteen years, thank you for listening. How
54:05
Speaker 1: about that if you want to get thank you. If
54:08
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch of this like Zenaida
54:10
Speaker 1: is it Zenator zane Ida Zenaida she even uh was
54:13
Speaker 1: kind enough to put a little pronunciation guide very nice.
54:16
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this like
54:17
Speaker 1: Zenaida did, then you can send us an email to stuff.
54:21
Speaker 1: Oh wait, don't forget to lick a stamp and slap
54:24
Speaker 1: it on the bottom with that stamp and then send
54:26
Speaker 1: it off to Stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
54:32
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
54:35
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
54:38
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.