Coins and Stamps

"Coin collecting" is properly called "numismatics"; and numismatics encompasses military orders and decorations, merchant tokens, paper currency and banknotes, bank drafts, stock certificates, and much more, including literature about the money objects and the people who made and collected them. So, too, is "stamping collecting" properly called "philatelics" or "philately"; and within the latitudes of philatelics you will find covers ("envelopes"), post cards, cancellations, and literature including the biographies of postmasters, collectors, and dealers.

The Plate Block
 is a set of four near the number
that identifies the printing plate.

Unlike coins and banknotes, stamps were invented as and intended as consumables.  That created an inherent opportunity for new designs.  Interestingly enough, the nation that started postage stamps was perhaps the last to break free of a predictable series, almost entirely of definitives with the ruler's cameo and the value and little else.  

Greece has several series honoring her classical coins.
Left Pythagoras on a coin from Samos. Right Rhodes.

 Postage stamps as we know them today were instituted on May 1, 1840, in the United Kingdom after several years of advocacy by Sir Roland Hill and Robert Wallace (MP), and independent efforts by James Chalmers.  (Wikipedia here.)  

Dominca honors the first stamp.
Israel remembers the Temple shekel of the Bar Kochbar Revolt. 

Also, to the point, while postage stamps do have tendrils in the past, their invention is a recorded event. The first coins are less well attested.  We do know the oldest examples; but we have no clear idea why they were invented. 

Hungary (left) commemorated the guilder of King Laszlo,
one of several in this series.
Monaco remembers
a Double Grosso of Honore the Second
also one of a series.

Like coins, stamps are most often more valuable in "mint state."  However, a mint stamp has no history; and a cancelled stamp does.  With cancellations, we do know the time and place.  Some philatelists pursue cancellations as a speciality.  

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Before Email
Philatelics: the objective virtues of stamp collecting
Scripophily
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Before Email

When a first class letter cost 3 cents, a penny post card was a less expensive way to send a greeting.  Banks used them to clear draft accounts.  Cheers, good news, announcements of arrivals, details of meetings, the events of daily life were innocently open.  

 Of course, most governments, even the bad ones,  were smaller than today.  "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," said Henry L. Stimson, when he served as Secretary of State for President Herbert Hoover, and closed the American "Black Chamber" of cryptography.

Compared to the collecting of classic U.S. Federal coinage of the 19th and 20th centuries, stamps, covers, post cards, and other philatelic materials are inexpensive.  Rarities of high value do sell at important auctions, but generally, for the price of a common slabbed Morgan Dollar, you can buy more than you can carry at a stamp show.

Letters and post cards, commemorative covers, and other artifacts deliver world history from the daily perspective of individuals. In The Maltese Falcon when Sam Spade wants to keep the locker key safe, he mails it to himself, as here, in "City".  Most people do not know that today, local post offices do not sort their own mail.  Just about everything is regionalized into sorting centers where automatic machinery reads and recognizes the address codes. 

  

 That Ayn Rand wrote an essay for Minkus and so was famous for her stamps, not her coins, reflects the fact that women are more often active in philatelics than they are in numismatics.

About 20 years ago, on a DoD job, one of the Navy veterans said to me that the 1940s were the last time that most people had class.  Some years earlier, in fact, a designer I dated sighed that it was hard living in a "classless society."  I do not wear a suit, but I do dress up to travel.  It's the least you can do to  help make the world a better place.  (Just a couple of years ago, monitoring a security camera, I saw one of my fellow Texans remove his hat as he entered an elevator.)

August 1, 1965. 18:45 hours. Over Viet Nam.

Back about 1989 or so, I was teaching technical writing at Lansing Community College and one of my students worked for a contractor at a sorting center for the United States Postal Service. He said that the best way to address a letter is to put two spaces and no punctuation between the city, the state, and the ZIP code:  Hometown  ST  12345-6789  The machines read serif and sans serif equally well; and they can do pretty good with neat handwriting.

Also on Necessary Facts
Thank-You Notes
What is Literacy?
Open Secrets
Philatelics: the Objective Virtues of Stamp Collecting

Philatelics: the objective virtues of stamp collecting

“Those bright little pieces of paper will carry your words across oceans, over mountains, over deserts, and still more difficult: over savage frontiers (the most savage of which are not on the underdeveloped continents). ... Think of the human ingenuity, the technological development, the large-scale synchronization of effort that were required to create a worldwide postal system.”

“While the world politicians are doing their best to split the globe apart by means of iron curtains and brute force, the world postal services are demonstrating...in their quiet, unobtrusive way...what is required to bring mankind closer together: a specific purpose cooperatively carried out, serving individual goals and needs.”

  

“It is the voices of individual men that stamps carry around the globe; it is individual men that need a postal service; kings, dictators and other rulers do not work by mail. In this sense, stamps are the world's ambassadors of good will.”

“The pleasure lies in a certain special way of using one's mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby for busy, purposeful, ambitious people...because, in pattern, it has the essential elements of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world. A career requires the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression toward a goal.”

“The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They are accustomed to working long-range; to them, the present is part of and a means to the future; a short-range event or activity that leads nowhere is an unnatural strain on them, an irritating interruption or a source of painful boredom. Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant, single-tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train...that is, a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning.  Stamp collecting fulfills that need.”

All quotes are from “Why I Like Stamp Collecting,” by Ayn Rand, Minkus Stamp Journal, 1971. You can find the Minkus article archived at several sites, among them, Kenmore Stamp here.

On December 11, 2013, the U.S. Postal Service honored Ayn Rand with an essay in the series "How they Collected."

The hobby is called “philatelics” or “philately.” Phil<love of. A<not. Tela<tally, count, tax: The stamp shows that the tax or fare has been paid.  Rand’s comments apply to many, perhaps most, collecting interests, certainly to numismatics.  The same sort of moral arguments could be made for collecting pens and writing instruments, watches, or antique tools.  Ultimately, the moral context comes not from the object, but from the person who pursues it.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
The Art of Finance
Scripophily
Money as Living History
Numismatics: History as Market

Thank You Notes

“Thank you” is rare enough, even by email. If you want to stand out, send a handwritten note. Even if you practice often and own a passel of pens, it takes time. Making time says that you honor the recipient. You can improve your handwriting with a browse through a calligraphy book and some practice on scratch paper. You can spend 89 cents each on a three-pack of fiber calligraphy pens or you can invest $890 in a Mont Blanc fountain pen.

Fountain Pen Geeks
www.fpgeeks.com
conventions, product reviews, chat and more

You can go to extremes with paper or rely on a basic 25% cotton sheet.  Fine laid 100% cotton or linen are always nice, but not always perceived for what they are.  Be aware that some modern parchment finish or other fineries take modern inks differently. Covers (envelopes) are another parameter.  The U.S. Postal Service democratically treats all envelopes equally – by machine.  Therefore, anything oddly sized or shaped costs extra. 

https://www.pencollectorsofamerica.com/
fountain pens for kids, and much more

Sometimes, I am able to ask the USPS counter clerk for commemoratives.  Commemorative stamps celebrate special events that you might like.  (The "regular" stamps are called "definitives" to philatelists.)  If you know a local coin store that is a member of the American Numismatic Association, they often have sheets of old stamps at a discount, 80% or 90% of face value.  It is nice to be able to celebrate baseball, national parks, space exploration, or whatever else ignites your passions.

The important consideration is how the message is received. If you care enough to make the effort, it will show in the final product.

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Capitalist Culture