Month: April 2018

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Russia 1977 Should be recruiting for the KGB

A beautiful girl dressed like a stewardess, a big creepy black car, an elicit phone call and a patriotic medal. What is this stamp selling? Slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

I gave a partial run down on what is going on on this large stamp. Our Russian readers can read what it is really selling and there are even a few clues on the stamp if you look closely. We know that is really a smokescreen. The communist Soviet system of the time assigned workers where they were needed. Would the system really be so foolish to assign a girl that looks like that to do what the stamp claims? Of course not.

The stamp today is issue A2181, a 4 kopec stamp issued by the Soviet Union on September 16th, 1977. The stamp is alleged to be showing aspects of a certain system in the Soviet Union. I will stick to my argument that this is a smokescreen. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents mint. A stamp that is such a great period piece in China would be worth 100 times that. I know that more stamps were printed for the Soviet Union and that most went straight into the collections of young people. It is past time for Russian collectors to get a hold of this stamp while it is still cheap.

The catalog says the car on the stamp is a Moskvitch 430. I think it is actually a 427. The car does have the version of the grill that was export only. Just the thing to slip across the Finnish border to meet up with your warm and lovely contact. They sold a lot there where it was known as the elite 1500. The engine was hotted up and resembled BMW’s famous four that it predated.

Apropos of nothing, in 1977 Vladimir Putin was a KGB operative and his future wife was a stewardess on Aeroflot where she was awarded the honor of serving on international flights. Putin is known to own period Soviet vintage cars. Neither him nor his then wife had any connection to the Soviet postal service.

Here is the rub. The stamp is really celebrating the postal service. We are to believe that she is a postal supervisor and our dapper young hero in emptying a mail bin into the sack which he will then load into the postal delivery vehicle. If this really is what the stamp is about, I am disappointed. The stamp could have been so much better. That’s right John, believe the smokescreen.

Well my drink is empty and I have probably had enough so I will open the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be imagined from stamp collecting.

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Rebuilding Dresden, East German style

In the aftermath of a war that concluded with a devastating firebombing, this stamp displayed what a new government did to renew the city. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

I must say that I like this stamp. East Germany farmed out it’s stamp issues. As a result there are some oversized, overdone issues that were printed in too much quantity. Not this issue. This issue celebrated the 20th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic by showing clean modern architecture in 12 cities. Many of the cities were heavily bombed in the war and so the new construction was sort of a rebirth. This is how the GDR must have seemed to it’s leaders.

The stamp today is issue A357, a 10 pfennig stamp issued by the German Democratic Republic on September 23rd, 1969. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. Central Europe was full of stamp collectors and if there are still collectors of communist era memorabilia, this issue of stamps may yet be discovered.

Dresden was firebombed by British Lancaster bombers in February 1945. German resistance in the west was fading and the eastern city was crowded with refugees from the advancing Russians from the East. 75 percent of the city center was destroyed and 25,000 people perished. Post war, some consider this a war crime but  British Air Marshal Harris interviewed many years later stated that the bombing was justified and reduced the German ability to keep fighting.

Dresden had been a cultural and royal center of the Prussian Empire with a long history. As such there were many historically significant sites damaged in the bombing. The East German decided to concentrate on German Cultural sites such as the opera house for reconstruction. The Prussian and church heritage was judged of less importance. The East Germans were out to construct a new modern scientific Germany, and with that came new modern architecture. It should be noted that there were more of the old buildings repaired in East Germany than in West Germany.

Interestingly at the time both East and West Germany considered themselves the legitimate government of all of Germany. Each viewed the other government as the lackey government of an occupied country. Since both East and West Germany were inundated with over a million foreign soldiers, there was some point to this critique, on both sides.

We all know the reunification that occurred in 1990 was a victory for the West and a defeat for the East. The west had delivered more economic opportunity and freedom to it’s people. It should be remembered though what a bold undertaking the East German government attempted. There was war devastation, no Marshall Plan of USA aid as in the west, and crippling war reparations that had to be paid to the Soviets. Through these challenges, East Germany built the most dynamic economy in the communist world. A fair appraisal of East German leadership should include consideration of this. It was not considered in the immediate aftermath as East German leaders had charges filed and long time leader Erich Honecker had to run to Russia and later Chile to avoid prosecution while Egon Krenz, his short term successor, spent time in German jail.

Well my drink is empty so I will pour another to honor the citizens of Dresden and their recovery efforts after the war. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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China celebrates the post office anniversary as the final period of the long civil war heats up.

After the Japanese defeat in World War II China had a choice to make. The old regime, the Kuomintang, the Communists, or a coalition of the two. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

A westerner like myself who cannot read Chinese characters gets a very different impression of the stamp than what was intended. At fist glance it appears to be a homeless person with all his possestions on his back hitchhiking a ride to town on the truck. An every day scene at the time probably all over the world. Agriculture requires ever fewer workers and so they go to the cities to hopefully make their future. This is something that is almost never shown on a stamp. It is too fraught with uncertaintity. To see it instantly attracted me.

Instead on further investigation, it was celebrating the anniversary of the postal service. Perhaps the rural postman depicted on the stamp should wear more of a uniform. Getting mail organized and delivered in rural areas in complicated and expensive to set up. I can see why a government would want to celebrate the achievement. There are plenty of stamps from all over saying how great the post office is. I would have rather put myself with the man moving to town.

The stamp today is issue A87 a $200 yuan Chinese stamp issued by the KMT government on December 16th 1947. It displays rural mail delivery and is part of a 5 stamp issue celebrating the 50th anniversary of the postal service. You may notice the high denomination. Inflation was out of control at the time. An issue from 18 months later had no denomination on it at all, it was sold at the rate of the day. The first forever stamp? According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents mint.

The final period of the civil war in China began in 1947 as the KMT launched a large offensive toward the CPC capital. The CPC had much strength in the countryside and had taken control of many Japanese arms. The KMT received much aid from the USA and they tried to leave surrendered Japanese troops in place to prevent CPC advances. This was very discrediting as one thing uniting all Chinese was the desire to be rid of the Japanese. The Russians had accepted the Japanese surrender in Manchuria and turned over that area to the CPC.

Large campaigns were fought by the two huge armies with the KMT gradually giving way. In late 1949, the remnants of the KMT fled to Formosa. Communist Chairman Mao renamed Peiping as Peking and the new capital of the Peoples Republic of China. Both KMT and the CPC claim to be the legitimate government of all of China. This suits both sides as if Taiwan sought recognition as a separate country, it would mean China gives up sovereignty of Formosa. That is not acceptable to the Peoples Republic.

Well my drink is empty so I will pour another to toast the man on the stamp carrying the heavy sack. Whether postman or a tramp, or CPC or KMT, may your rounds be successful. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Skylab, NASA falling back to earth

How to follow up going to the moon, how about a space station? Okay until it comes back down.So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

60s and 70s space program stamps were a great staple. They were often oversized and brightly colored, something new at the time. The stamps were not just from the USA and the USSR. The third world often got into the act. you could even tell whose cold war team the country currently routed for based on whether they were touting the American or Soviet program. In 1975, Laos had an issue honoring American astronauts. In 1977, following the communist takeover, there was another stamp honoring Soviet cosmonauts.

Todays stamp is issue A932, a 10 cent stamp issued by the USA on  May 14th, 1974. The stamp featured the Skylab space station on the one year anniversary of its launch. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is mint or used.

The idea for a space station was first proposed by German rocket scientist Wernher von Braum in the early fifties. The science fiction writer Author C Clark was also an early proponent. A space based telescope and a venue for extended periods in space would be invaluable for research. At the time, there was also a competing United States Air Force program for a manned reconnaissance satellite. This program was cancelled when it was realized that unmanned satellites were much more cost effective.

Work on Skylab intensified in 1969 when Dr. von Braum looked for ways to keep NASA employed after the moon landings. The large Saturn 5 rocket that handled the lunar landing could be launched unmanned to get Skylab into orbit and leftover smaller Saturn Ib could be used to bring crews to the station. Several Saturn Ib launches had been cancelled during this period  allowing for their recycling economically into the Skylab program.

The launch of Skylab was mostly successful but part of it’s solar panel power array broke off and left the station with less power. Some repairs were successfully made on the first manned mission to it. Three of four scheduled missions were carried out. The last one left astronauts Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson, and William Progue in space for a then record 84 days. The space station had an airlock allowing occupancy in normal clothing and the astronauts had private beds and access to a shower and toilet. Human waste was not spewed out into space but tanked and returned to earth for analysis. No doubt a less glamorous job at NASA.

Although the space station was left with enough supplies on board for future missions that could have also regenerated the orbit, the last mission was cancelled. It was hoped that the then in development space shuttle could provide a more economical way to visit the station  but the space shuttle program was very late and quite the budget buster.

With no further missions Skylab’s orbit slowly deteriorated until it reentered the atmosphere and crashed to earth in Australia in 1979. A Soviet satellite had crashed to Earth in 1978 leaving much radioactive debris in Canada. Skylab did not contain anything radioactive but still created much hysteria about where it would land. No one was hurt but there was a widely seen light show has it gradually broke apart on its last orbit. NASA was surprised how long it held together during re-entry. The program cost $11 billion in todays money. The Chinese space station Tiangong 1 reentered the atmosphere yesterday near Tahiti. That station went up in 2011 and ceased functioning in 2016.

Well my drink is empty so I will pour another to toast the 9 astronauts that spent time on Skylab. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.