Tag: USA stamp

The SS Dorchester was a cruise/transport ship that was converted to a troopship for war service. In 1943 it was headed for Greenland with 900 aboard, twice the cruising complement. It met it’s fate from a torpedo delivered by German U boat U223. About a quarter of the people aboard were saved by nearby coast guard cutters. A horrible loss for the USA. To lessen the blow, The USA made a big deal of four Chaplains, each of a different sect, who voluntarily gave up their life vests and perished. 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 idea that the leadership is the last to leave a distressed ship was the standard of seamanship. Remember the 3rd class females on the Titanic more likely to survive than higher deck first class men. Apparently such thoughts were slipping as the government decided to reinforce the former standard with the wonderfully politically correct act by the four chaplains of different faiths on the Dorchester. Sometimes an old standard needs reinforcement, as was shown by the recent Italian cruise ship disaster. Interestingly, the stamp design had to be modified before coming out, The four chaplains had not been dead for the required 10 years before a stamp can be issued. Thus their names were removed. Another rule that has since dropped away.

Todays stamp is issue A403, a 3 cent stamp issued by the USA on May 28rh, 1948. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

The SS Dorchester was built in 1926 and operated as a cruise and transport ship along the eastern coast of the USA between Miami and Boston. There were 300 passengers and 90 crew with a small capability to carry some freight. In early 1942 the ship began it’s war service with most of the same crew and still in private ownership. In 1943 there was a convoy headed for Greenland with 2 other cargo ships and three escorting Coast Guard cutters. The early morning torpedo hit came without warning and killed power to the steam engine. Thus the ship was not able to communicate it’s distress to escorts or even blow the abandon ship whistle. The water was so cold that it killed more than drowning but two of the coast guard cutters managed to save 230 of the 904 on board. The escorts were not attacked by the submarine U-223. The four chaplains who gave up their life vests and parrished were Rabbi Alexander Goode, Father John Washington, and Protestant ministers George Fox and Clark Poling. The ship sank in 20 minutes bow first, the opposite of what the stamp imagines.

U-223 was a Type VII German U-Boat constructed at Keil in 1942. The Type VII was the most common type of U-boat. It’s 1943 patrols in the North Atlantic saw it participate in 8 Wolfpacks. A Wolfpack was a tactic of mass attack by multiple subs on a convoy. The Sub would often try to avoid return fire by escorts after the attack by hiding underwater directly under the survivors in the water. U-223 sunk three ships of comparable size to the Dorchester. In another encounter  nearby depth charges forced the damaged sub to the surface and then it was shelled by British destroyer HMS Hesperus. It barely escaped badly damaged. The sub then transferred to the Mediterranean based at Toulon in occupied France. On March 29th, 1944 it was caught by three British destroyers off Palermo and sunk. In it’s last battle it sunk the British destroyer HMS Laforey. 23 of the submarine’s crew of 50 had lost their lives. The sub commander during the North Atlantic battles was Captain Lieutenant  Karl-Jurg Wachter. See also, https://the-philatelist.com/2019/09/09/germany-1943-u-boat-wolfpacks-bring-the-war-across-the-sea/     .

A later famous person was scheduled to be on SS Dorchester but missed the boat. Beat author Jack Kerouac was a merchant seaman and radioman on the ship. Right before sailing he received a telegram offering for Kerouac to play football at Columbia University. Later in the war the US Navy dismissed him from service after 7 days for being of indifferent character and processing a schizoid personality. Leave the fighting to real men I guess. They wouldn’t make decent beat authors anyway.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another for all those that died in the Battle of the Atlantic. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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.

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.

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.

Johnny Appleseed’s real name is John Chapman. That happens to also be my name. So when I spotted this stamp, I knew it was time to learn more about him. Below is what I found. 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 came out in an opportune time as the reputation of Johnny Appleseed was on the upswing in the sixties and seventies. The idea of an itinerant man planting trees and communing with the animals and the indians appealed directly to the youth movement of the era.

Todays stamp is issue A739, a five cent stamp issued by the United States on September 24th, 1966,  Johnny’s 192nd birthday. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents mint or used.

Johnny Appleseed was born in 1774 in Massachusetts. His mother died when he was two and his father quickly remarried and soon Johnny had many half brothers and sisters. When he was 18 he left home taking with him his 11 year old half brother. He first went to Pittsburgh and became itinerant throughout the midwest. His business, and yes it was a business, was to come to a town, buy a small patch of land in the near country, fence it off and plant nurseries. When the plantings were established, he would find a neighbor willing to tend the trees in return for a share of the profits. He would then visit his nurseries annually. This was not a coat and tie type of job and many thought Appleseed a hobo. He played into this by wearing a tin bowl on his head that he would remove to eat out of. He also tended to hire children to be helpers.

Johnny was a deeply religious man and was always recruiting for his obscure Christian denomination, the New Church. This was and is a tiny denomination founded in the 18th century by Swede Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg believed he had received a revelation from God that the Christian church would be replaced by a “new church” that would worship Jesus Christ and him alone as God. This was in the lead up to Jesus returning to Earth. Johnny would bring New Church pamphlets with him in addition to the seeds for which he was more famous.

Johnny Appleseed lived to age 70 and died in a cabin next to one of his nurseries in Fort Wayne Indiana. At the time of his death he owned more than 1200 acres spread out around the midwest. As he never married his estate was left to his one full sister. During his life everyone assumed him poor and the government entered litigation seeking back taxes for all the lands. His sister ended up losing most of the wealth in litigation expenses relating to the estate. Interestingly the variety of apple trees he was planting produced apple not fit for eating but only for use in cider, an alcoholic drink

Well my drink is empty. Not really the story I was expecting, but it should be remembered that even heroes are foremost human. Come again soon when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2021.

In the 1950s, it seemed mail volumes would rise forever. How was the mailman to keep up. Well maybe if machines could sort the mail at speeds impossible for humans. Worth a try, but lets get it done before the election. 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.

There are two interesting things about this stamp issue. They used the architect conception of the  Providence, Rhode Island new automated post office even though the actual post office was built. It looked better in imagination. Also notice the issue date, just a few weeks before the national election of 1960. The in power Republican Administration was doing things for you, Rhode Island. Not enough apparently, in 1960 Rhode Island voted Democrat.

Todays stamp is issue A605, a 4 cent stamp issued by the United States on October 20th, 1960. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused. There is a few copies were the red writing on the bottom was left off, this version is worth $250.

Project Turnkey was started by the new Eisenhower Administration in 1953 as a project to automate the backroom sorting of mail at the post office to cope with rising mail volume. A Democratic administration would have instead seen the opportunity to hire more reliably Democrat voting postal workers. A company called Intelex was brought in to design and manage Project Turnkey and the Providence site was chosen as a laboratory to determine what would work. The project cost over 20 million 1950s USA dollars.

The project opened with much fanfare. There were indeed machines that could sort letters and parcels by size, class and destination. The machine assigned codes that were then entered by humans into a computer. The new complex actually employed 100 more postal workers than the previous facility in addition to 170 workers in the employ of Intelex but was designed for a much higher mail capacity.

The project was not a success. The sorters were not speeding up the process as hoped. Then there was an embarrassment coming from a local stamp collector. Hearing that no human eyes were viewing the mail, the collector sent several pieces of mail through the center with old stamps from Czarist Russia on them to see if the sorters would catch the fraud. The mail went through and then the stunt was publicized in the local newspaper. This inspired copycats and the post office claimed it solved the issue by adding a step where each piece of mail is viewed by one of their employees. The new Democratic Administration ended Project Turnkey, fired Intelex, and the building reverted to a standard post office that still exists. New Postmaster General J. Edward Day blamed the failure on mismanagement of the previous administration who he said tried to design a system to match their pre-written press releases. He dubbed Project Turnkey, Project Turkey.

Well my drink is empty and to be honest reviewing old projects is fun whether they worked or not. Come again soon when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

All too often the needs of workers to improve their lot is subsumed by others seeking a wider system change. Perhaps even more often the individual worker feels himself powerless to advocate with employers to improve his own lot. In the 1950s, most of the unions in the USA united under one man, George Meany, who showed what could be achieved for the worker if what they want is remembered. 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.

American stamp printing was sub par in the 1950s in terms of multi color availability and paper quality. Thus this stamp does not to justice to the Lumen Martin mural created for the new AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington DC. The mural is really a mosaic consisting of over 300,000 pieces that shows a journey through the history of labor with emphasis on the majesty of the labor itself. This allowed the work to rise above the political toward universal truths.

Todays stamp is issue A529, a 3 cent stamp issued by the United States on September 3rd, 1959. The single stamp issue was issued to celebrate labor day that year and the coming together of the vast majority of the labor movement into the newly formed AFL-CIO. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is mint or used. This is a little surprising as it was a stamp designed for postal use rather than collectors. It was common for collectors to keep for themselves a plate or zip block of four out of a bigger sheet of stamps. In more recent years it was common for stamp dealers to use great numbers of mint 50s-70s stamps in modern postage. This created exciting looking stamp parcels but greatly reduced stocks of the mint versions of these stamps. If the hobby survives, mint versions of 50s-70s American mint stamps may have some upside in valueation.

The AFL-CIO was formed in 1955 under George Meany, an Irishman from Harlem who had rose up from a plumbers union. There were several cross currents in addition to company managements affecting labor at the time. There was the effort of the international socialists to subsume labor into their coalition for  class struggle. There was the draw of organized crime into labor due to the propensity for places where graft and racketeering were possible. In addition there was a desire of the black civil rights movement that unions specifically advance the interests of blacks, even where that conflicts with existing union membership. Keeping competition down was also the reason immigration into the USA was then opposed by labor. Meany believed that the union was better served specifically using it’s power to advocate for individual workers receiving more work, higher wages, and better conditions. To do this he expelled the longshoreman union for mob conections, he fired a textile union head foe stealing dues, and he allowed membership of unions that excluded by their own choice black applicants. Meany supported the Vietnam War because the war contracts provided extra work for union members. Some of these positions would anger those on the left, but the result was the pinnacle of American union power and the achievement of the highest wages for labor in the history of the world to date.

After George Meany retired in 1979, the labor movement declined and an ever increasing percentage of union members were government workers. Since they can’t strike, the dues manly act as a tax due on government workers to support the Democratic Party. Thus since 1980, the value of unskilled or semi skilled labor in the USA has not kept up with the rest the economy and with that trend the growth of populist politics on the right and left. Lane Kirkland, Meany’s successor most famous quote was “If hard work was such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.” A big change from Meany,

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast George Meany. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Update. The headquarters building that houses the mural in the lobby was attacked and a fire set in the lobby during the protests following the death of George Floyd. The building survived and the front was boarded up and mercy was asked by knuckling under and placing a BLM banner. The social justice warriors of today don’t seem to understand the importance of the labor movement to the political left. First published in 2020.

Part of starting a new nation is making noble the founding fathers. Both what they learned from the home country and what they resolved to make better. Then this all must be chronicled so that future generations know what they are a part of. Charles Wilson Peale was an exemplar of all that and an example that the many new nations of the post war period would have been wise to study. 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 mentioned that new countries might have been wise to study the example of Charles Wilson Peale. This stamp I am afraid does not offer much of an introduction to him. The printing quality of American stamps of the 1950s is really quite bad. Below is the painting the image on the stamp was taken from. It is easy to see how much was lost in the translation.

Todays stamp is issue A511, a three cent stamp issued by the United States on January 15th, 1955. It was a single stamp issue celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, to whom Peale founded an early variant of. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

Charles Wilson Peale was born in modest circumstances in Maryland in 1841. He apprenticed and later worked making horse saddles. He was not a success in this but discovered within him a talent for painting, especially of portraits. He received instruction locally from John Hesseling and was able to travel to England pre revolution to study with Benjamín West. Returning to the American colonies he became a member of the Sons of Liberty. He also passed on his knowledge to students including his brother James and many of his children. He had 16 children many of whom he named after famous artists. His son Raphaelle Peale was a noted still life artist. Even slave Moses Williams received training in cutting silhouettes and when given his freedom, stayed on at the Museum selling silhouettes to customers.

Peale was most famous for his oil portraits of American founding fathers, including over 50 portraits of George Washington. The most famous of these, “Washington at Princeton”, sold in 2005 for $21.5 million dollars. Peale also had an interest in the natural world and taxidermy. This lead to Peale founding his Museum. He developed a relationship with a museum in London where he would exchange stuffed birds from North America for birds from Europe. At the time there was a friendly debate between Thomas Jefferson and French naturalist the Comte de Bufron as to whether North America or Europe had greater biodiversity. When Peale’s Museum  displayed the stuffed remains of a mastodon, the display made quite a sensation, with Jefferson maintaining that the beast still existed in the far north.

The business of maintaining the Peale Museum and the connected Academy of Fine Art was difficult as there were not enough visitors and Peale was unable to secure government subsidies. Moses Williams lost his house as his commissions dried up. Soon after Peale’s death in 1827 the collection was sold to P. T. Barnum and broken up. The current Academy of Fine Arts was reestablished later by former students of Peale.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Charles Wilson Peale. I will have to be a short one since I cannot afford one of Peale’s portraits. Perhaps one of Moses Williams silhouettes? Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.

A controversial aspect of modern stamp issues is issuing stamps not just of a country’s statesman, but cultural figures, even low culture. Some collectors avoid this by ending their collection at World War II. Not here at The Philatelist, where with Judy Garland we get to learn about soaring movies like Wizard of Oz, Meet me in Saint Louis, and A Star is Born filled with sad heart strings songs Garland later sang at swank dinner clubs on two continents. Part of the story also though is multiple marriages, affairs, abortions, breakdowns, drug abuse, tax leins, suicide attempts, and an early death. Maybe the traditional stamp collector has a point sticking with Queen Victoria and George Washington. 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.

In her teens, Metro Golden Mayer studios marketed Judy Garland as the girl next door going so far as having her diet and exercise to prevent curves from forming on her under five foot frame. Garland rebelled against that and after the success of The Wizard of Oz she was allowed to glamourize and appear in a successful string of musicals aimed at adults. A portrait from this period is perhaps how Garland would want to be remembered and what the United States Postal Service offered.

Todays stamp is issue A3117, a 39 cent stamp issued by the USA on June 10th, 2006.The date would have been her 84th birthday. It as a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 1$ unused.

Judy Garland was born into a vaudeville performing musical family in 1922. Her birth name was Francis Ethel Gumm. Beginning at age two, she performed with her sisters as the Gumm Sisters with her mother accompanying on piano. Their manager thought that Gumm Sisters sounded too much like Glum Sisters, and Judy picked Garland after her manager said she was as pretty as a garland of flowers. The family relocated to southern California when she was thirteen and now Judy Garland was signed to MGM studios after being spotted singing Yiddish songs in a Vaudeville style revue. Her first movies were semi successful and often paired her with boy actor Mickey Rooney.

The biggest success of her life came at age 17 playing Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. It came at a troubled time in her personal life. Her first chosen affair ended badly after her intended eloped with Lana Turner. On her 18th birthday, she attempted to announce an engagement to her new musician fellow, but he was still married to Ethel Merman. The studio convinced Judy to wait a year until his divorce went through and also to abort his child to not complicate her film schedule. No surprise that marriage didn’t last.

Her success earned her more adult roles and she married Vincent Minnelli, her frequent movie director. By this point she was taking heavily barbiturates and morphine. When the first of her films failed at the box office, MGM let Garland go not willing to put up with the expensive delays that happened when you hired her. She had a mental breakdown and cut her neck and wrists in a suicide attempt. This story got out and Garland was highly embarrassed thinking that everyone was looking for her scars.

She did find a new success away in London performing musically live both her movie songs and her earlier vaudeville material at the London Palladium. This was quite lucrative but her now third manager husband was not making sure her taxes were being paid and her big payday was seized by the IRS. The success however lead to her last big movie musical, a remake of A Star is Born. The production of the movie was as troubled however as her late MGM work.

After a brief American variety TV show that had Garland singing with Frank Sinatra and Robert Goullet was cancelled, to was shown opposite Bonanza, Garland was back to London trying to recreate her live success from years before. Her performances were hit or miss. She by now was on her 6th husband and her health was failing. She died at age 47 of a barbiturate overdose complicated by scerosis of the liver. The death was ruled accidental because though she had 10 barbiturate capsules in her system, her jar was still half full and she had another unopened jar with 100 capsules.

Well my drink is empty. Learning about this type of person with super high highs and deep lows takes it out of you. Come again next Monday for another new story that can be learned from stamp collecting.