Month: June 2024

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Laos 1977, Astronaut stamps become Cosmonaut stamps as the King goes for reeducation and the “Red” Prince becomes President

What to throw away and what to keep. For the communist Pathet Lao the ancient Royals had to go. Except not entirely. Laotian Royals had multiple wives and dozens of children. Among them were 3 “Red Princes” whose French educations left them followers of Ho Chi Minh. Perfect for a Communist head of state, with the slight nod that maybe not so much was changing. 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.

One of the last stamp issues of the Royal government of Laos honored American Apollo astronauts. There were no stamps at all for a year and a half and then when stamps came back, one of the first celebrates Soviet Cosmonauts. Different but just a little the same right. Except this issue cellebrates 60 years since the Bolchevick revolution in Russia. That is a pretty big hint that Pathet Lao was having it’s strings pulled form the outside, just like they accused the other side.

Todays stamp is issue A99, a 5 Kip stamp issued by Laos on October 25, 1977. During this period the stamps went under 2 names. Less political issues used Postes Lao. More political earned the full if clunky Republique Democratique Populaire Lao. the regime is still in power but last used the mouthful name on a stamp in 1982. This was a five stamp issue in different denominations that was also available in two different souvenir sheets. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents. The sovenir sheet that included this stamp is worth $6.00.

The Royal government faced a civil war virtually constantly after World War II. The Pathet Lao was openly communist but also claimed to be nationalist. The Royal government, having lasted through the French was seen as collaborators of colonialists. They perhaps were not helping their otherwise valid point by opening areas to North Vietnam’s military. After the USA left Vietnam in 1973 a treaty was signed in Laos that retained the King but had a coalition government including communists. This was not good enough and with South Vietnam and Cambodia falling in 1975 the Pathet Lao made their move. In August 1975 they marched into the capital unopposed with 50 women in front of the column. For a while the King stayed in the Palace. At the end of the year he submited his abdication but just moved to an apartment in Vientiane.

The Pathet Lao had their own Royals. Prince Souphanouvong was a lesser Royal born to a concubine in 1905. His paternal bloodline got him an education in Vietnam and then in France during the period of French Indo China. Such education of natives never leads them to love de Gaulle or even Petian. They instead all seem to become followers of Ho Chi Minh. Prince Soupanouvong returned to Laos a Red Prince and was made a General Secretary of the Pathet Lao political arm. Power to the People!

With the abdication of the real King, Souphanouvong stopped calling himself Prince and the Communist named him President, a non executive head of state. The now ex King was even named his Supreme Adviser. Power to the People. The real commies could not however stomach still having the King around. There was still some fighting in the countryside mainly eminating from the Hmong minority. Remember them from the Eastwood movie “Gran Torino.” Worrying that the King would leave the capital and lead an uprising, The Royal Family was rounded up and sent to a re-education camp. It was announced in 1978 that all the Royals died simultaneously from malaria. Well we know today that there are deadly Asian bugs around.

None of this affected Soupanouvong. In fact even in the re-education camp he would still visit and consult with the ex King. As the eighties went along, the country came less controlled by Vietnam and reopened again to tourism and trade with Thailand. After Soupanouvong retired in 1991, Laos decided that no longer needed Royals to serve as head of state. They do after all have that susceptibility to malaria.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast big families, they help a family adopt and get on. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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South Africa 1991, as we wind it down, why not some achievements to inspire the next bunch

I while back I did a South African stamp from the early 60s as they started to try to go it alone that made the case why it could work, see https://the-philatelist.com/2018/12/21/south-africa-1966-a-tiny-minority-can-go-it-alone-because-they-have-diamonds-but-do-they/  . In 1991 the writing on the wall was more clearly read and South Africa was transitioning to majority rule. So why not look back at some things South Africa achieved going it alone. There was stuff to talk about, like gold mines, but how about medical breakthroughs. Stamps can teach this stamp collector. 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.

This stamp shows the achievement of the first human to human heart transplant in 1967. There was a 1969 stamp showing Dr. Christian Barnard the man who performed it. He gained some notoriety after the achievement and his behavior perhaps is why he was edited out here. As a white South African on the world stage, the world simply demanded that he condemn his own country. He duly Shat on his country even going on a black Africa tour to do it. He of course wanted a Nobel Prize and probably was personally politically liberal. It did not work. He did not get a Nobel. The bow and scrape dance must have earned Dr. Barnard much credibility among South Africa’s majority? No his death in 2001 did not merit a memorial stamp. Interestingly, at least to me, was that his liberal 1960s position was that South Africa should be divided to give blacks homelands, the 1980s policy, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/02/20/bophuthatswana-1985-the-tswana-people-get-industrious-in-the-bop/  .

Todays stamp is issue A276, a 25 cent stamp issued by South Africa on May 30th, 1991. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog. the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Dr. Christian Barnard was trained and practiced in Cape Town. A hospital in Minnesota, having had good luck with another South African doctor, sought more and got Dr. Barnard for a few years, There he became involved in a top flight heart institute. The field of transplanting hearts seemed life changing. In 1954, the heart of a chimpanzee had been transplanted into a human and beated but the man died 90 minutes later never having woken up. Probably for the best that. Several teams in America and now Barnard’s team in South Africa transplanted one dogs heart into another. A small percentage lived. Dr. Barnard in 1967 was ready to try on humans. He convinced those involved there was an 80% chance of success. The heart of a brain dead 25 year old woman that had been hit by a car was put in a 57 year old man near death from hypertension and diabetes. In the women’s last minutes she had ice water poured in her ear to look for any reaction. The transplant was successful and the man woke up with the new heart. He died a few weeks later from pneumonia brought on by the anti rejection drugs.

Dr. Barnard in 1969

Dr. Barnard was now famous. He divorced his wife and married a string of young models. He even claimed to have had a one night stand with Gina Lolabrigida  while in Rome to have an audience with the Pope. His reputation sank over time as it became obvious that heart transplants were not a long term success for patients. He further lowered himself when he began promoting an anti aging creme. Country’s don’t get to cast their heroes

The reason heart transplants didn’t work is theorized that the patients brain had adjusted to the original damaged heart and those instuctions continued to the new healthy heart. Soon enough the new heart was itself bad.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the team at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. It still exists and still uses that name. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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USA 2020, This is a REAL stamp. Hmmmm…..

I got this in the mail from a charity. This label showed though a clear window on the envelope with a big “This is a real stamp” and an arrow to it, see below. Whether it is or not is a good question. 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.

The envelope I got

Stamps. com allows you to download an image and have it printed on their shipping label. The Paralyzed Veterans of America, a charity I do support, hoped that by including a stamp you are more likely to return their request for a donation. Their logo of a wheelchair bound veteran/soldier saluting is included. Interestingly the request included a no postage necessary business reply mail envelope so they wanted you to return the label to them unused. To me this is not a good message from the charity. They will spend any donation I give soliciting more donations rather than on helping the American hero in the wheelchair.

While this has no value to a collector. Remember the old stamp collecting rule, if it is not in the catalog, it is not a real stamp. So we have the basic argument between collector and postal patron. The patron will remind you that this will get your letter mailed, so case closed. I disagree, so will a metering label but people understand that is not a stamp. It does have a value of 55 cents though, and that is more than twice the catalog value of most of the stamps in my collection.

Stamps.com was founded in 1996 in El Segundo California by three Masters of Business Administration candidates at the University of California at Los Angeles. The original name was Stampsmaster but it was the bubble stock market dot com era and the name was quickly changed. Interesting that no stamp dealer had grabbed stamps.com. When I started this site nearly 3 years ago, I had to put the dash in the domain because I couldn’t get thephilatelist.com. The dash probably cuts my views in half. Well enough of my whining, lets get back to the go go big money 90s. In a year and half the company had received 36 million dollars of angel investor funding, including a personal investment from American Postmaster General Marvin Runyon. They then, still within the year and a half, cashed out with an ipo in the public market that raised over 50 million dollars. The postal service was working with them on private but official postage delivered over the internet. The iffy double dealing with the Postmaster saw the law changed to allow advertising on the internet label-stamps.

Then Postmaster General and former Ford and Nissan executive Marvin Runyon. His nickname was Marvelous Marv.

After the dot com bust, stamps.com realized what the postal service or any stamp dealer could have told them. Stamps are a small margin business with declining volume over time. They still exist as they have diversified by buying shipping companies but are loosing money.

The download your own picture to our label model was spoofed in 2004 by the celebrity mug shot website, thesmokinggun.com. They successfully ordered USA legal stamps with images on them of notorious figures like Slobodan Milosovich and Monica Lewinsky of blue dress fame. Stamps.com refined their rules to ban any vintage image.

Well my drink is empty and I think I will have a few more while I ponder angel investors with big money interested in money losing stamp websites. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

 

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Pakistan 1964, Pakistan makes an appearance at the sort of New York World’s Fair

This not quite World’s Fair was dedicated to man’s achievement on a shrinking globe in an expanding universe. New York wanted to do it to show off progress since the 1939 Worlds Fair there. Conceived before the societal changes of the late sixties, by the time it was executed the fair was facing the realities of a changing world. 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.

Though the stamp shows the well designed culturally appropriate Pakistan Pavilion over a background of the Fair’s signature stainless steel Unisphere, the largest globe in the world, the stamp is somewhat let down by pour printing. The fair did provide a way for Pakistan to introduce itself to the Fair’s over 50 million visitors who were mostly children. The fair made an impression on the youth of that generation, as it was perhaps one of the last gasps of 1950s America.

Todays stamp is issue A60, a 1.5 Rupee stamp issued by Pakistan on April 22, 1964. It was a two stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The site of both the sanctioned 1939 New York World’s Fair and the unsanctioned 1964-1965 fair was Flushing Meadows Park in Queens. It had long been a marshy garbage and ash dump. New York builder Robert Moses had dreams of turning it into a massive 1100 acre park. The 1939 fair was just the opportunity to make his vision a reality. Unfortunately, the full scope of what he had in mind for the property could not be covered in the first fairs budget. A second worlds fair would provide the resources to finish the job.

Selling the rest of the world on the fair proved difficult, Seattle had hosted a worlds fair in 1962 and Montreal was scheduled for 1967. The Bureau of Exhibitions had several rules that were against the fair. No country was to have more than one fair in a 10 year period, no fair was supposed to last more than 6 months, and no fair was to charge rent to exhibitors. The organizers of the fair traveled to Paris to request that the rules be waived and the event be officially sanctioned by the BoE. This was refused and the organizers then went out with intemperate remarks about the BoE and the BoE responded by making an official statement suggesting that countries not participate in the fair. This is the only time this as happened. The fair went ahead but no shows were Canada, the Soviet Union, Australia and most of Europe. Indonesia initially agreed but relations deteriorated and the completed Indonesian Pavilion  was occupied and barricaded during the Fair.

40 nations did participate, mostly ones trying to ingratiate themselves to the USA. The most popular of the foreign pavilions was Vatican City, that brought over and displayed the Pieta. There were still over 100 pavilions mostly sponsored by American corporations. They mostly displayed consumer goods with a space or computer theme. The fair had a goal of 70 million visitors which would have had it break even with it’s initially high ticket prices. That goal was why it went two years but it only managed 51 million visitors, even after a second year ticket price cut.

The Unisphere globe was maintained in the park after the fair closed as United States Steel donated 1 million dollars to insure continued maintenance. Nevertheless the fountains were turned off in 1970. In the middle 1990s there was a refurbishment that turned back on the fountains. As of today, June 24, the Unisphere has not been removed as part of the BLM erasure of history. In 2019 it however was scaled by an environmental group  to hoist a banner protesting the Amazon River fires that year.

Unisphere in 2018

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Robert Moses and his realized dream of turning a dump into a park. I would propose a statue, but you know….. Come again soon when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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Great Britain 1969, National Gyro replaces cash from the milkman

In the Britain of the 1960s, bank accounts were only for the top 20 percent. The working class were usually paid weekly in cash, but that left junior salarymen having to endorse their paychecks, often to the milkman, to get their money. A new Labour government knew there must be a better way, and kindly thought to use the established infastructure of the post offices to make it happen. 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.

The design of this stamp did not age well. The organization was just getting going in 1968 so one can understand the stylized emblem as a way to signal future promise rather than current reality. However now over 50 years have passed, emblems have come and gone and eventually the whole thing was privatized.  I came at this stamp thinking they were talking about some sort of radar technology.

Todays stamp is issue A220, a 5 pence stamp issued by Great Britain on October 1st, 1969. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations showing off new technology at the post office. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used or unused.

In 1959 the government came out with a white paper that challenged that the banking industry was not serving the money needs of the bulk of the country. This confirmed what the Labour side of politics always suspected. The banking industry itself admitted that small accounts were unprofitable and at the time many smaller towns did not have bank branches making it hard for the middle class to access their pay. Many were really endorsing over they monthly paycheck to the milkman. Many other countries offered basic banking services through their post offices, which usually even the smallest village had. A new post office bank started from scratch could also use computers to automate processing and base more transactions off payer initiated wire transfer instead of payee based check cashing or depositing. The term giro was an old term for a wire transfer. The post offices would also benefit. They were already used to hand out welfare/dole payments and dealt in vast quantities of cash. Private banks were charging the post office high fees to do this and a National Giro Bank operated through post offices could take this function over.

The National Giro got up and running in 1968. A lot of money had to be spent to be ready to open nationally and the bank of course started with much infrastructure and no customers. The first few years saw the operation generated large losses  due from the government owners. In 1970, the then new Tory Heath government proposed labeling it a Wilson failure and shutting it down. They instead settled on a reorganization plan to lower losses.

Eventually National Giro was handling one in three wire transfers and was the sixth largest bank in Britain when ranked by deposits. It was the the first bank in Britain to offer an interest earning checking accounts. The bank also had a large stigma. The post offices remember handed out dole payments and GiroCheques became slang for handouts to lay abouts. There was also the problems that checks written by regular account holders resembled dole checks more than a check drawn on a private bank,

In 1989 the system was privatized and sold off to Alliance & Leicester, a mutually owned building society, similar to the old American Savings and Loan. The privatization included a contract that allowed it to keep working through post offices which it did until 2003. Alliance & Leicester was absorbed by the Spanish bank Santander Group in 2010. In 2013 the British post office relaunched some of the old money services under the Post Office Money brand.

New Emblem for the old service relaunched

Well my drink is empty and while Money will be more popular then Gyro their emblem seems lacking. Strange since current operations seem to spend ever more time on branding instead of doing. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.