The United Stamps of America!

My very basic Freedom U.S. album by H.E. Harris (at left in these photos) covered all of the 19th century in one page. Compact yes, but I had accumulated an abundance of early U.S. with no little black & white album-page illustrations in which to put them.

As a result of my recent MaxSold win I ended up with an 1960s Minkus All-American and an H.E. Harris Liberty U.S. album (at right in these photos). Both had very good descriptions and excellent coverage of the early U.S. issues, but I couldn't keep all three U.S. albums. With the Liberty being superior, I wondered if I could combine its early U.S. pages with my Freedom pages. (A long time ago, I had removed and three-hole punched the pages from the Liberty and added them to my own album pages for superseding U.S. issues.)

Yes, I could. I drew a line in the American sand, in the early 1930s, and transferred my early U.S. issues to the Liberty pages. There is one page of overlap and I used that to double up my coverage of the Washington centennial other period stamps. I used a USPS Guide to U.S. Stamps and Google to try to get the right stamp on the right illustration.

Stamp Show in Kingston - October 25, 2025

 

A Seventh Fellow Traveler on the Journey...

...joins my collection of Travelers. This is Number Seven. Part of a MaxSold auction lot (vendor photo at top). It's a 1971 edition, excellent shape, not too swaybacked, pages not yellowed, maybe 100 stamps stuck in. Also in the lot were the Canada Post millennium souvenir, intact, and two baggies of WW on- and off-paper. My winning bid was $16.

This is my second spare Traveler. I've acquired four over the last three years, each for less than $10. As I start the latest, annual round (3.0) of my Long & Noble Crusade to albumize acquired stamps, I'm in good shape and ready to expand as needed to Travelers 6 and 7.

The Deerly Departed

While going through my MaxSold finds, I came across this 1963 Costa Rican white-tailed deer stamp with a notable cancel ' 19 FEB...' - my Dad's birthday. As the person who 'worked stamps' with me and my siblings many years ago, this was a full circle moment.

MaxBoxes!

A MaxSold auction this week included two views of stamp collecting items on a dining room table. Both the table and the stamp collecting items were up for bids. Though the bidding went higher than my initial maximum (doesn't it always?) I was eventually the successful high bidder - the albums and Canada Post books in the top photo for $30, the miscellaneous hoard below for $42, both before taxes and fees. What I was really interested in was the Canada Post Collector Packs. There were more pictures posted on the MaxSold website that led me to believe these were intact, unopened and therefore usable as postage!

As Canada Post continues hiking postage rates, stamp collectors like me who rely on exchanges, circuits and mailing stamps all over the world face increased costs to participate in this hobby: $1.24 within Canada, $1.75 to the U.S. $3.65 International. But what if I could buy mint postage at a reduced rate and use it at face value? When bidding, I hoped to #$%^ that the packs were full, since their contents were not visible. Well, examining the packs upon pick-up (in two boxes and feeling like 30 pounds' total weight !) showed me that they were indeed full!

I formulated a total of mint postage obtained in these two lots, and it was three times the bid price! This mint postage will fund well over 150 mailings to other collectors.

The albums are lightly used, nothing valuable observed so far, and I may consider switching my current paperback US (lacking some spots for early issues) and paperback Canada (lacking some spots and information on some issues) to these H.E. Harris dust-covered binder albums. The miscellaneous envelopes will be a fun sort over the long winter months. Two full packets of usable stamp hinges will save me $15 all on their own!

These appear to have belonged to someone who started collecting earlier in life, then returned to the hobby perhaps upon retirement. I will give these items a good home in my retirement, and share them with others if I can't! This collection will live on. I'd like to thank Joan for curating this collection all these years!

On the Educational Value of Stamp Collecting

Joseph Bellina wrote the following on The Hub @ Stamp SCHOOL to start a conversation. Though written with young people in mind, it seems to me that not all new collectors are young collectors. We should be trying to interest adults, too because while it's important to 'start them when they're young' it's also important not to exclude younger or older adults as new collectors! I'm publishing it here because I think it's worth preserving for philatelic posterity. Joseph writes:

The value of stamp collecting for a young person is not in the content that is what is on the stamps - but rather the process that is the act if organizing the stamps in some way based on the content. Organizing requires seeing similarities and differences making order out of chaos. Just the act of matching the picture in the stamp with the picture in an album is an intellectual process. Grouping topical stamps or thinking how to display them on a page is a creative act. 

There are few places these days where children are free to make choices so much is organized yet free play is powerful learning. Collecting stamps gives them that since they can choose what they do with the stamps. Of course as they organize these objects they may become curious about some aspect of what is on them and then the content becomes more important.  

Let me get a bit more technical. We make sense of the world by a mix of observation and inference - that is what we experience and what we think about what we experience. What we experience are the facts about the world. What we think are our ideas. With stamps usually we can agree about the facts what is on the stamp. Of course as one looks more closely at perforations or watermarks, our thinking evolves and other important facts are discovered. 

So, observation and inference are not completely separate since what we choose to observe depends on our thinking, and what we think is affected by what we observe. But the opportunity for a young person to do this, and to engage with others is powerful learning, because in the beginning the facts regarding what is on the stamp are clear, and easily agreed up so the focus because developing ideas. 

That is the real power of stamp collecting.

(Top photo - recent Canada sorted for a potential trade.)

I completely agree with Joseph re: albumizing stamps being a creative act. Too much so to be constrained by printed black & white images, lines and boxes in an album!

Burying the Lead and Maybe the Hobby

I recently joined the American Philatelic Society's The hub @ Stamp SCHOOL. Though not an APS member, the hub looked like an easy way to see and participate in online conversations on stamp collecting. "Learn and get to know like-minded people interested in stamps and postal history! Not sure which group is best for your post? Post it here!", they told me.

But what message does the number one topic each day send (top photo)? Membership is declining! There are 176 replies and 628 views so far, by far the most popular topic. The usual suggestions follow: make more use of social media to attract new, younger members; pay some influencers; give more courses; focus on expertizing and exhibiting. Does it say 'make stamp collecting more fun' anywhere in here?

Imagine if a business started an app, and the main message the app sent you each day was, "Why are our prices so high?".