How Stamp Collecting Works

Over the last two centuries philatelists – stamp collectors – have learned just about everything there is to know about every stamp ever printed. You won’t by the end of this episode, but you might be interested enough to start yourself.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
and there's Chuck and Jerry just laughed. So it's just
me and Chuck being bad boys going through our stamp collection.
Oh yeah, that's right, the purposefully silent Jerry. By the way, Yeah,

(00:27):
it's her own choice. Yeah, she's a real, live human being,
Jerry said. Plenty of chances we've asked her, and she
loves being in the background and not being on the show.
I just want to make that clear. She's a wallflower.
M a lazy, semi useless wall flower that we love

(00:48):
like a sister, that's right, and who keeps us in line,
an who may or may not even exist. That's right.
Let's talk about stamps, baby, So I already said we're
talking about stamp collect thing. Oh and by the way,
this is stuff you should know. I think that it's
not an official episode until I say that. What do
you think that's our watermark? Okay, yeah, nice reference, Chucks.

(01:12):
We're gonna talk about those there. Wow, you have been
doing this for a while, haven't you a couple of years? So, um,
we're talking stamp collecting. I don't collect stamps. I never
have collected stamps. Um, I've never been friends with somebody
who collected stamps. As far as I know, no relatives
of collected stamps. Do you ever collect anything? I collected

(01:32):
baseball cards, the usual, you know, But it turns out
I would I would posit that stamp collecting is vastly
more popular than baseball card collecting. As as popular as
baseball card collecting is, I think, if you're talking worldwide,
probably so, yeah, for sure, because I mean over in
some countries they don't even care about baseball. They're like,

(01:53):
I don't even know who Freddie Freeman is. I like
the alliteration, but I don't know who he is. They should,
he's great. I remember when he was a rookie. Do
you have a rookie card? No? I stopped collecting baseball
cards when I aged out of the well baseball card age. Yea,

(02:13):
but yeah, it was long before Freddie Freeman. No, I
don't have one of his cards, do you. No? I
don't collect baseball cards. I collected banks. I think I've
talked about that before. Uh No, I don't know why
it's weird. I think I just had more than one
of them and then said, well, this is a start
to something. And I collected, Like, I mean, technically there

(02:34):
were piggy banks, but none of them were big, So
you know, I think I had like thirty or forty
banks at one point when I was a kid, little banks.
I suspected you were talking about banks, banks like you'd
walk around and like slap your hand on like a
fifth third and been like, I just collected this bank
something like that. So piggy banks that weren't pigs yeah,

(02:57):
you know, it was like a just bank. Little banks. Yeah,
what was the coolest one you had? I got one
from like a NAPA Auto Parts that was a car
battery bank, and that was that was kind of cool.
I remember that stands out in my memory for some
reason I can imagine, but cool, I don't know is
the right word for it. But okay, that's the only

(03:19):
one who can really remember. I had a Mickey Mouse bank,
but who does think it went too I had a
Spiderman piggy bank the bust of you know, myteen seventies
spider Man and I broke it open with a hammer
and used all the money inside to buy candy and
two lunches at school for a stretch. It was like
I was walking around like I was the King of

(03:40):
England in the cafeteria. I thought you gonna be like
my first pack of cigarettes. There was just a few
short years before then. But yeah, stamp collecting, I've never
known anyone who's done it, but it is hugely popular
and it seems like a really kind of lovely pleasant
thing because, as is pointed out here in this uh article,

(04:01):
who was this was this ed grabstr Uh, it's like,
you know, collecting little pieces of art, little tiny works
of art exactly. But even more than that, stamps have
a very deep, detailed, intricate, arcane history, and I mean
stamps in general, but also every single individual stamp and

(04:23):
the stamp collecting community really loves to dig into that
history and you know, all about all the different stuff
about every single stamp um and so there's a lot
of information to absorb while you're collecting, which I think
is one of the big draws of collecting anything, is
the background information to it. To definitely, like look at

(04:43):
you can enjoy a stamp just on its face, pretty
its neat is really well done usually, or at least
the ones that are worth collecting. But the idea sure
that too, but the idea and it has you know,
a history just from sometimes being old, but then also
the idea that it has a backstory to Um, it's
just about as as well rounded a hobby as as

(05:05):
you could find. So another term for stamp collecting is
called hi lately p h i l a t e
l y. It's not the easiest word to spell until
you stop and think about it, but it's derived from
the words philo or love of like philosophy, love of knowledge.

(05:25):
But this is love of atalia, and that is exemption
from payment. So you would use a stamp to show
that whatever you were sending or whatever is exempt from payment.
You already paid. So really hi lately means love of
stamps in a really round about way. To see, I
heard it pronounced philately. Really we'll go with that one then,

(05:50):
because I've just been pronouncing that that way in my
head for a very long time. There you have it.
Who is that with you? Her name is uh mispronunciation,
Emma says mispronunciation, Yeah, ms, mispronunciation. We're not going to
assume anything, you know. One of the things very good.

(06:12):
One of the things that that I've noticed in queuing
episodes is how many jokes of your slide right past
me while you're saying them, and I don't catch him
until I'm queueing an episode later on. So so many
hats off for all those jokes that I've missed. If
you're gonna get into philateli or be a philatelist, then

(06:33):
you should know that it's not like a get rich
quick thing. You do it sort of for the love
of the hobby itself, and as you go along over
the years, you may eventually acquire some stamps that maybe
worth some money, but it's not the kind of thing where,
um just get into it with the the intentions that
you should have, which is you're not gonna make a

(06:55):
ton of money doing this kind of thing. Yeah, get
into it for the love of collecting stamps. Yeah, way
to do it. Yeah, that's kind of eye opening and surprising,
I think, to most of us on the outside of
the Philadeli world looking in, because you know, we hear
about these auctions where stamps go for millions of dollars,
and every once in a while they'll pop up as

(07:15):
like a mcguffin in a movie or something like that. Um,
so the idea that almost all stamps are the wildly
vast majority of stamps are really not worth much at all.
Is is kind of surprising, or it was to me
at least, But also it just makes me love stamp
collectors that much more, you know. Yeah, And I think

(07:36):
one thing I really love about stamp collecting, which is
sort of towards the end of this research, but I'll
go ahead and say it now, is that it seems
like the stamp collecting purists only collect stamps that are
actually used to mail things like get out of here
with your special edition collector thing that is just printed

(07:57):
up for some certain you know, to give to a dignitary,
like they want stamps like mail in letter stamps. That's right.
And as a matter of fact, there's a kind of
considered one of the big authorities on stamps, the Scott Catalog.
They apparently don't even recognize stamps that aren't released by

(08:17):
governments for the purposes of mailing postage to the general public.
If it if it's not released like that by those authorities,
then it doesn't exist as far as that's concerned. Yeah,
I mean, it seems like part of the fund is
finding these things on an old letter like a cool discovery,
and uh, I just I like the idea of it.

(08:37):
I'm probably not going to get into it just because
I don't have the time for this kind of thing,
but I can certainly appreciate it. And then there's one
other aspect of it too that I kind of turned
up from this, and I'm sure it's not entirely correct
across the board, but it seems like a person stamp
collection is a very personal thing. It says like I
am interested in this, so I went through the trouble

(08:59):
of ending these things. And in that sense, it almost
bears a resemblance to that super adorable coin collection that
Owen had throw Mama from the train. Remember when he
pulls out his coin collection and instead of some rare coins,
it's like a quarter that he had he got changed
for when he was at Coney Island with his dad
when he was twelve. It's it's kind of like that,

(09:21):
you know, it's a really endearing hobby. I think, yeah,
because it's not like you're like, all right, I'm gonna
get into stamp collecting, and you know, what are the
best stamps to collect for? You know, the best stamps
to collect are the ones that speak to you. So
if you get into it for a little while and
you're like, boy, the stamps from the Roaring twenties really

(09:42):
are are pretty cool looking to me, or stamps with
dogs on them, or you could collect many, many kinds
of stamps. But a lot of people sort of get
into stamp collecting and realize, I like these kinds of stamps.
So that's what my collection is going to reflect exactly.
That's exactly right, very cool. So that's am collecting everybody.

(10:02):
Should we take a break? Should we already? Sure, let's
do it, chuck, Let's throw caution to the wind like
every average stamp collector does. Okay, we're back, and um

(10:37):
we should say chuck. I think if this seems a
little weird, if the tone seems a little weird today
this is one of our less than usual Thursday recording sessions.
So it's it's always a little like more foot loose,
you know what I mean? Sure, my feet are very loose.
So we should probably give some terms here if you're

(10:58):
interested in getting a stamp collector, if you just want
to know a little more about it. There is a
lot of arcane jargon in slang in the world of
stamp collecting, and one of the reasons why it's been
around for almost a couple of hundred years now, and
over that time there's just kind of been successive generations
who have kind of added and refined and contributed to it.

(11:20):
But they all have to know what they're talking about
to one another, so they've kind of come up with
a bunch of different terms to describe things. Yeah, like
in true stuff, he'sho know, fashion. This is a broad overview.
Their entire podcast dedicated to this kind of thing, right, Uh,
So we're gonna go over some of those broad definitions.
And the first one we have to talk about is
the gum, which is that sticky stuff that killed George

(11:43):
Costanza's wife or fiance. Well, here's just from looking envelopes,
right or was it stamps? I guess it was envelopes,
wasn't it? But it's still gum exactly. I forgot about
that because he got the cheap the cheap stuff he
cheaped out um. So this is what's used to stick
the stamp on. If the stamp has never been used

(12:04):
at all, it's like this pristine little thing. It's it's
called full original gum, and then it's called new gum
if you have a stamp and you want to add
a little uh gum to it to stick it into
your collection, which we'll get to as well. Yeah, so
the sticky stuff equals gum. Right, pretty simple. Let's get

(12:25):
a little more complex, Chuck, what's a block? A block
is a group of stamps that are still connected to
their little friends. But it's got to be at least
four and a and they can't be four in a
row either. For my research, it's two and two. It's
got to be a square block. Yeah, I saw that there,

(12:46):
as long as therefore it can be irregular shapes, because
sometimes blocks of stamps get added to, or messed with
or just changed over the decades or the century. So
I've seen that more than at but in a less
regular shape is still considered a block. But what about
four in a row in a strip? Does that count
as a block? I believe so. I think as long

(13:09):
as it's at least four and that there is although
I guarantee there's another arcane term for what you just said, um,
But as long as it's not all of the ones
that were originally attached together, that would be a sheet. Okay,
al right, okay, alright, nowhere are Um. One other thing
about stamps that you have to realize is, you know,

(13:31):
you tend to think if you collect things, when you
collect things that are not quite right, like a slightly
off version of what it's supposed to be, that it
would be much more expensive and collectible. And in some
cases that's true, Like there there's a um, there's somebody
in the stamp collecting world, uh that is collecting stuff

(13:53):
that nobody else is. Like, there's always going to be
somebody out there who wants something. But in the standp world,
you want something as precise and pristine and centered and
perfectly done as possible. That that usually tends to be
the higher valued stamp. The other kind that are just
kind of off the printing was slightly off center, that
kind of thing. Those are called errors, freaks and oddities

(14:16):
e fos in the stamp collecting world. Yeah, it's it's like, uh,
you're talking about if like there's an obi wan Kenobi
figure that the first thousand that they made he was
missing a left ear. Uh, in that world, that would
be the most valuable thing probably ever made exactly in

(14:37):
the history of the world. But yeah, like you're saying,
with stamps, they generally they want as far as value goes,
they want them that are nice and tidy, right. But
so I mean with with those terms error free, errors,
freaks and oddities, those are just kind of wildly overstating
what they describe. Like we're talking about a stamp that's
just the printing is slightly off center for the perforation

(15:00):
are just a little bit off or whatever maybe kind
of half got through there. That would be considered a freak,
you know, like that's how precise stamp printing is meant
to be. So um, some people do collect that, but
for the most part, yeah, you want as as close
to perfect to stamp as possible. It sounds like a
record album title, Air's Freaks and oddities, like the best

(15:21):
of Guided by Voices or something that's a good one
or just a you know, off brand Discovery Network Channel's
new show, you know. So um, there's cancelations too. That's
another good term to learn if you're getting into stamp collecting,
and everybody knows a canceled stamp. It's where they take

(15:43):
a like a ink stamp stamp over the postage stamp
and it's canceled. You can't reuse it. It's meant to
say this has been used, it's okay, let it through
the mail, but don't try to reuse it again. And
that's a canceled stamp. And still you can still collect
those stamps. In fact, you know, most stamps I think

(16:05):
that people collect have been used and found on these letters,
which we'll talk about that are called covers. But sometimes
that postmark is on the stamp itself, and sometimes it
is off to the side, you know, because it's not
those people at the post office they're just stamping those things.
They got a lot of work to do. So sometimes
you'll just barely get a little bit of cancelation on

(16:27):
the stamp, and the rest of the goodness, including the
date and where it was mailed from, might be just
on the envelope itself. Yeah, and there's a lot of
information that can be contained in just a plain old
cancelation stamp. Um some you know, like some people collect
disaster stamp. So like if you had a letter that

(16:48):
was postmarked, or an envelope and a stamp that was
postmarked on September eleven, two one in New York, somebody's
probably collecting, you know, canceled canceled stamps and covers like
that interest s thing. I never really thought about that.
That makes perfect sense. Also, while we're talking about the
people working at the post office, I feel we would
be remiss if we did this whole episode without doing

(17:09):
a shout out to our favorite postal worker, Van Nostrin.
That's in a great state of Washington. And I don't
know where the ads fall, but if there's a stamps
dot Com ad on this total total coincidence, that's right.
Some people I saw um collect machined um stamps meter
postage too. And like you said, there's probably a subset

(17:31):
out there for kind of anything. There definitely is every
rule you see, there's some rebel group out there breaking it.
In the Philadeli world, the covers what I mentioned, don't
you dare call it an envelope? Yeah, you'd really reveal
yourself to be uneducated rube if you did that, which
there's probably a word for that too. Yeah, like in

(17:53):
a beginning beginner philadelist is probably come licker. That's good.
Uh So the cover, like I said, as the envelope, Um,
sometimes you will keep that whole envelope at least for
a little while. Sometimes it's a little you know, they're
easier to hang onto than a tiny stamp sometimes, so

(18:15):
you might not want to cut it out right away,
and you can keep up with those envelopes until you
want to get that stamp off. Or like we said,
if it's got some of the really valuable information that
makes that stamp special is on the cover itself, you
may want to keep the whole thing forever and just
have it on the envelope. Right. And again, these are

(18:36):
things that people pay attention to in the stamp world
or collect. And then there's another thing that that you know,
most of us who just use stamps as like normal
human beings UM have noticed but don't really pay much
attention to our the perforations that we used to separate stamps.
Like way back in the day, stamps came in sheets
and you colonial person or you know, UM second Industrial

(19:00):
age inhabitant, we're expected to pull out your scissors and
cut the stamps into you know, little individual singles. Then finally, UM,
an irishman named um Henry Archer from Dublin came up
with a perforation tool. And all you're doing is making
the paper at certain points thinner so that it's easily

(19:22):
torn at those points. And so the first perforated stamp
that came out was the eighteen fifty British Penny Red,
which is pretty pretty quickly after stamps were first invented
postal stamps um. And with that Henry Archer created this
whole sub category of stamp I guess some categorization, a

(19:46):
subcategory of categorization that is categorical. But stamp collecting people philatilists. Um.
I'm i'd like it the way I say it, more philatelists.
Now I should probably loud um. So philatilists um, really
pay attention to perforations. It's like a really important part

(20:09):
of stamp collecting. Yeah, because it can be a big clue.
I mean, it can be a clue as to where
it actually came from, because these people know how they
have perforated things with different machines and different parts of
the world in different eras. So it can be a
very big clue as to the age of the stamp
and where it came from. If they don't have those perforations,

(20:30):
they're called imperforate imperforate, and then you know, I talked
about the little strips of stamps, the coils those obviously
you're just gonna have the perforations on the sides and
not the top or the top, just not both. Uh.
Oh interesting, I've never really. I guess it depends on
which way the art is oriented, right. Uh. And then

(20:50):
you've got the sheets or the pain, and if it's
on the outer edges of that sheet or pain, it
probably won't have those perforations either. And uh, it is
a big deal. You'd be surprised. Yeah. And those outer
margins even have their own word, chuck, salvage, which also
applies to like, you know, the the hem of like

(21:11):
your shirt or something that's that's sewn in a certain
way to keep it from unraveling. That's called salvage too.
But in the stamp collecting, it's basically the margins, the
sheets um and sometimes they have you know, um registration
marks or dates or you know, the number of the
print run printed in there. Some people collect that of
course as well, salvage stamps. I love learning new words salvage.

(21:34):
I learned one yesterday. Parapet mm hmm, you know what
that is? No, I mean, I've seen it before. I
just cannot bring to mind what it means. It's like
the little And I learned this because uh oh, and
it was gonna tell you this anyway. I had our
buddy Wyatt Sinek on movie Crush yesterday. Oh cool, what

(21:55):
do you talk about Blazing Saddles? And there's a scene
where and I've seen Blazing Saddles probably three dozen times.
It's up there with spinal tap as far as comedies
that I've seen, and I know it basically by heart.
And there's a scene where mel Brooks's Governor Lepetta Maine
comes into the room and he said, sorry, gentlemen, I

(22:16):
was just out walking the parapet and I never bothered
to look up what that meant until yesterday. And it's
the little if you're on top of the building, it's
the little half wall that goes around the top of
the building to keep you from falling off off you
know more interesting. Yeah, right, really banks up maschins on
your way down. So I never knew that before walking

(22:38):
the parapet. Yeah, okay, So he was saying like he
was basically walking on the edge of a high wall.
I guess a low wall, Yeah, low wall, high up
with his selvage. I got you. Oh boy, so um,
let's say Chuck that you said I care about perforations.
I want to know more about these registration marks on salvage.

(23:01):
How do I get into this filati um as a hobby, Chuck?
What would what would you recommend people do to start?
Get a bank loand no, you know, it is really
one of the cool things about stamp collecting is it's
a very low barrier to entry. You need to get
these little special tongs, these little baby tweezers with rounded tips,

(23:25):
and you know, if your your skin oils can mark
a stampa, you want to try and handle them with
these little little tweezers so you don't ruin them. That's
a good little tool to have. Uh, you're gonna want
to get an album or a binder, and they make
them especially you know, don't get on one for like photographs.
They make them specially for stamps. And sometimes they have

(23:46):
little pockets that you can slip them in that are adorable.
And sometimes they have hinges, which are little strips of
paper with a little bit of gum on them to
put the stamps on. You might want to magnifying glass
or a Jeweler's loop, but you don't need a microscope
or anything. I think about a ten X is probably
the most kind of magnification you'll need. Yes, um eventually too,

(24:10):
you're going to find that you have perforation fever, and
you're going to get yourself a perf gage, which is
basically a specialized transparent ruler that that you line up
the lines to the perforation marks. And uh, the gauge
of a perforation is how many perforation holes there are

(24:31):
per two centimeters. And this is important because you know,
some stamps are exactly the same as other stamps. The
only difference is is like they were printed on they
were perforated with slightly different machines or something like that.
Or you know, like the stamp collecting community knows when
a perforating machines pin brakes. They know about that machine,

(24:53):
and it's then so they can tell you where that
thing was printed and when and what run it will
is out of how many just because there's a a
what's called a blind perforation where the hole wasn't punched
through where it should have been in the one position
on this one stamp, Like that's how intensely known stamps

(25:15):
are by the filate pilately community. It's it's really cool.
I think that's one thing I like about it is
how my opic it can get and how specific it
can get. It's just, you know, it's it's time well spent.
And I bet it's very calming. Yes, yeah, just just
researching it is calming. You know, I fell asleep a
few times. Stuff. Stuff like that really comes through. When

(25:37):
you're researching something, you find you're relaxed. The thing you're
doing would be even more relaxing. I think like making flies,
or painting like duck Decoy, Yeah, yeah, I love that,
or or painting stamps like and Fargo Margie's husband. It's
just the two cent norm norm was great. I love it. Uh.

(26:02):
So you might want a internet connection. Um, you will
probably want to get a stamp catalog and we'll talk
about this sort of the big books that are out there,
uh in a bit. But all of this stuff is
basically online now. But you also might like having a book.
If you're into stamps. I bet you dollars to donuts
you might rather hold a book in your hand every

(26:23):
time you say that. You said that on Tuesday two
in one of the episodes. And yeah, every time you
say that, I think of this when Simpsons where Homer
goes deal and puts his dollar down. It's weird because
I don't really say that expression much, but I've said
it twice in a week. Yeah, you definitely did, because
I thought about it the other day too. Also did
my that dumb what we do in the Shadows guy

(26:46):
in like two episodes in a row. Yeah, and another
point too. It's so funny because I think it's a
mild transgression when we kind of cop one another's words.
You use droll. Um. I can't remember what episode, but
you said droll, and then I used it recently too
after that, and as I was saying it, I was like, yeah,

(27:10):
and I just use it. It's okay if I use
that word, So it's fine. I'll lend you droll. Thank you, buddy.
I appreciate that. Uh, you might want watermark detector fluid.
Actually that's a pretty good album name too. Um. Sometimes
stamps will have an anti counterfeiting measure put in place
with a water mark, and sometimes you can hold up

(27:34):
stamp to the light and see the water mark. And
sometimes you will need to dive a bit deeper and
put that water mark detector fluid on there, and uh,
it's not that much money, but it's not necessarily. The
first thing you need in your kit is a is
a beginning gum liquor, right, I mean, you're you're gonna
basically just be be looking at well, that's a neat picture.

(27:57):
I like that picture, like, that's that's a cool stamp.
And then eventually you'll be like, what's on the back,
what's the secret hidden message that I'm missing on this?
That's right. I also saw there's machines that you can
get for about two fifty dollars that are basically like
those you know, those old timey projector things that they
use in class, like an overhead projector. Yes, yeah, but

(28:19):
this is a this is one that projects into some
sort of magnifier that you lean over and look into. Um,
there's like a light bulb and you don't have to
use any fluid. It doesn't have any impact on your
stamp whatsoever. It's just just shows you the watermark. It's
pretty neat, all right. I mean that's for the well
healed philatilists. I'm out. So there's another thing you need

(28:42):
that's really really important. It's a basic part of stamp collecting,
that is stamps, That's right. And if you're just getting started, Uh,
one thing you can do is go online and you
can buy just a lot or a collection of stamps,
a sort of a grab bag that you have no
idea what's in there are And that can be a
really fun way to get started, because, like I mentioned earlier,

(29:04):
that's where you might poke through and get inspired and say,
you know what, it turns out I really like this
particular kind of stamp or two, and I think that
might be what my focus should be. And that's a
good way to find that out. Yeah, I mean, getting
a grab bag of anything. It's a good way to
really find out who you who you really are? You

(29:24):
know so, and that is something you can do. You
can order it online. If you live in a big
enough city there's probably a stamp collecting store. Um. You
can also like I read this pamphlet by I think
the American philatli Association or Society APS. I believe they
wrote the pamphlet um and they yeah philatltic, philatlic damn

(29:51):
that word, Okay, philadelic. I think I got it right. Yeah, okay. Um.
The American Philadelic is so Man had a pamphlet and
they basically said, if you're a little kid and you
don't have any money because your parents don't give you
an allowance or anything, you could still get into stamp collecting.
And they give all these ideas of how to get

(30:13):
free stamps. Go to like offices and be like, hey,
you got any mail, you guys get a lot of mail,
You got any envelopes you don't want anymore? Or start
find a pen pal in another country because they'll have
stamps that are a diamond dozen to them, but to
you it's a foreign stamp, and you can just start
sending each other letters with you know, cool stamps or

(30:35):
even stamps inside the envelope. Who knows. Um. There's a
lot of ways to get into stamp collecting, basically for
free or for the cost maybe of a stamp. Um
that that which is again one of the one of
the reasons why stamp collecting is just so accessible. It
costs noct next to nothing to to get into to
get started with, and even when you really get into it,

(30:55):
it's not an expensive hobby. No. And if you know,
if you get a bunch of stamps, or you get
a bunch of covers with stamps and you're just beginning
your your journey. Um, you're gonna get them all lamb
out in a room, look at him. Decide what you like.
And you don't want to just remove all. I mean,
you can do whatever you want, but uh, I would

(31:18):
advise that you decide what you wanna um separate from
the cover because there is a process involved that we're
gonna go over now. And it's not the hardest thing
in the world. But you don't want to do that
to twenty or thirty stamps that you're like, no, actually
don't like these after all, it's a waste of time. Yeah,
I mean, it's like that next level of preservation. Um.

(31:41):
And once you pick those out, what you do is
you get a bowl with warm water, warm tap water.
You lose control of your bladder. Then you start the
stamp sorting process. That's right. You go pp just a
little bit, and then you float that stamp if you
have cut it away for in the cover. If you
decided to do that, leave yourself a few centimeters around

(32:04):
the stamp, you know, don't get too close. Yeah, but
you make a good point you you want to go
through everything first and be like, are there any cool
um you know, cancelations on? Here? Is this envelope just
need you? You don't necessarily want to separate all stamps
from envelopes or exactly, So you you want to make

(32:24):
that decision first, and then once you decide that you
want just the stamp, then you start cutting out and
leave a little envelope around it. Right, So you float
that little bad boy in some warm tap water. Yeah,
you gotta float it stamp up, and you can do
a few at a time. But I wouldn't get too
crazy if you're just a little gum liquer and I

(32:44):
would wade into those warm waters. And if it's from
a Christmas envelope or something, if it's like a red envelope, yes,
beware because that can very much discolor your stamp. Hopefully
it's just like a good old fashioned white envelope. Wait
about ten or fifteen minutes and that stamp will start
to that gum will just sort of dissolve away, and

(33:06):
that stamp will kind of separate and then float off
on its own. Get those tongs, those little tweezers out.
You don't want to just grab it with your grammy
old human fingers and just kind of pat it dry,
and you've got yourself a stamp. You want to be
really careful though, because a wet stamp is unsurprisingly very fragile.

(33:27):
A lot of people put um, there's they're wet stamps
on paper towels. You want to make sure you've gotten
all the gum off first though. Um. And then they
put those paper towels in a heavy book and then
let the let it dry like that. That's I mean
what we just described as phil atalytic um state of

(33:48):
the art. Basically, that's right. So you want to take
another break and they come back and talk a little
stamp history, famous stamps, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I
love this part. Let's do that alright. So you mentioned

(34:25):
stamp history. Uh, they've been collecting stamp since the first stamp,
which is kind of cool. I don't know why someone said,
you know, I want to hang onto this, but someone did.
And uh. After May one, Great Britain issued the Penny Black,
the very first postage stamp. It was supposed to roll
out on May six as far as being used, but

(34:47):
they sent him out a little bit early to post offices,
so they were ready to go on May six, and
some post offices said, let's just go ahead and kind
of get the ball rolling because I've been feeling we're
going to be behind really quickly. And so some of
those little penny blacks are dated earlier than May six,
and those will be worth a little bit more money,
but they are not like there were a bunch of

(35:09):
penny black So it's not like the Honus Wagner baseball card.
It's not like the penny Black is the most valuable
stamp ever made. It's a little counterintuitive, but rarity for
any collection is what makes it valuable, and they're just
not as rare as you might think, right, But that's
a good example of that cancelation that people um will

(35:29):
will collect because you wanna canceled penny black that pre
dates that May sixty team forty date because it's just
unusual and rare totally. That's also I think May one,
so May one was the date where they started issuing them,
even though that was five days early, so that would

(35:49):
be what's called the first day cover. It's an envelope
with the stamp that's canceled on the first day of issue.
And sometimes there's even a special stamp that they'll use,
say first day issue. People collect covers like that too.
They even have like ceremonies for these kind of things, especially,
I swear to God if they're releasing a commemorative stamp.

(36:09):
In particular, there's definitive stamps, which are your everyday, you know,
American Flag Forever stamp um that they basically release an
unlimited quantities. Then there's commemorative stamps. They usually have a
more limited run. They're available for a limited time. They
often commemorate a person and events something like that um,
And when they release those stamps, they'll have like a

(36:32):
ceremony um at a specific post office in a specific
city with dignitaries and famous people there. Sometimes they'll print
programs and everything. And if you're a stamp collector, you
want to be at that first day ceremony or at
the very least you're collecting those kind of covers too,
if that's the kind of thing you're into, Yeah, I
think it's kind of awesome that when you go to

(36:54):
the post office still and you go and ask for
a book of stamps, if you have no interest at
all in stamp collecting, they will present you, usually with
a few things, ago what kind of stamps you want?
And and anecdotally I can say that most people choose
something rather than saying I don't care, I just want something,
to mail something, give me questions. I've been plenty of

(37:18):
post offices and most people go, oh, those dogs look nice.
I'll take those. Yeah, dogs playing poker even better, It's cute.
I love it. I pick out my stamps. I don't
spend a lot of time on it, but if they
present me with a few, I'll kind of give them
a quick once over and say, well, I'd like to
mail that represents me a little bit, and that's kind
of what it is. Give me those Mr Rogers stamps.

(37:40):
How are there some? I'm sure there is. Yeah, I'll
bring you one. I'll mail you something with one on it. Yeah,
I do, Okay, send me something for sure, I will. Uh.
You mentioned the first day cover though, they people will
collect first day covers of just very regular, commonly issued

(38:00):
stamps just because it's the first day cover. Because you
never know that thing might be worth something one day. Right,
But that's what I'm saying. That's what they have those
ceremonies for two sometimes and then if you have, like
a something that's designed or a design that's printed on
a stamp is called a cache. Yet another arcane jargon
term um. And people spend a lot of time, by

(38:22):
the way, I looked up into the cache a world,
and there are stamp collectors that very much get into
making their own caches and uh special made caches, and
it's a whole other subset as well. Yeah, it's basically
you know, if you if you've ever seen an envelope
with a stamp of an angel blowing a trumpet around
Christmas time or something like that, that's cache. Well, I

(38:45):
mean a cache is an additional like ink stamp put
on the envelope. That's what I'm saying, Okay, like a stamps. Yeah,
I know that we need another term. I think that's
what confused rubber rubber ink stamp, A rubber ink stamp
of an angel blowing a horn around Christmas time. I
got you, I got you. So um. America got into
the stamp releasing act less than a decade after Great Britain,

(39:08):
and Great Britain, by the way, being the first nation
on the planet to issue postage stamps, didn't bother to
put the nation of origin. If you look at every
other stamp ever issued by a government authority, it has
the nation on it. Somewhere there's some signifier that this
came from America or Zimbabwe or something like that. Um,

(39:29):
Great Britain still to this day doesn't because they were
the first, and so they still don't don't put Great
Britain or UK or anything on their stamps. Right, it's
pretty cool. Yep. So America got into it in eighteen
forty seven July first, No less, there was a five
cent Benjamin Franklin at ten cent George Washington And what
else did we need? You know? Yeah? And this is

(39:51):
not you know, we It can get confusing when you
think of like the Stamp Act and you know, stamping
t and things like that. Those were different kinds of stamps.
We used to stamp tax bills and permits and any
kind of government sort of thing exchange might be stamped.
That is a revenue stamp, and you it's sort of

(40:13):
just a different world. Like if you collect postage stamps,
you might also collect revenue stamps, but there you keep
them separate. You don't put them together. You don't tell
your friends who collect postage stamps that you're collecting revenue
or fiscal stamps that's your postage. Stamps are kind of
where the bread and butter is for stamp collecting. I

(40:34):
think so, like we said um before, the kind of
like one of the recognized authorities on stamp collecting and
stamps in general is the Scott Catalog, which has been
produced from a company in Ohio since eighteen sixty eight,
and they basically just started tracking stamp after stamp. So
the lower the number associated with the stamp that the

(40:56):
Scott Catalog has given that stamp, the earlier the stamp
is released, and so over time it's grown into I
think a twelve volume collection catalog the Scott Catalog has,
but it's so widely known and widely used that a
lot of stamps are just are discovered or described and

(41:16):
talked about by their Scott Catalog number rather than you know,
whatever common name they have, right. And there are prefixes
and suffixes, uh if there are different special issued stamps
or some of those errors you're talking about, or some
rad purse Um, the inverted Jenny which we'll talk about
in a minute, like that's known as C three A

(41:38):
in the stamp world, this C denotes airmail stamps. Yeah,
which is great and little counterintuitive, a little bit. Sure
it would be an A in my world you would
think so, But I think A is for awesome. The
most awesome stamps is what the A has reserved for.
There's also the Michelle Catalog from Germany, and that is

(42:01):
around to fill in the gaps that the Scott Guide
does not cover, because the Scott Guide is American and
they're like, we don't want Cuban stamps in our book.
Can you believe it? Yeah, it's weird. If there were
nations that are embargoed or whatever, h sometimes they will
not be I think North Korean stamps too, are not
in the Scott Catalog. So the Michelle Catalog comes around

(42:23):
because they're German and they're like, sure, we'll cover it.
It's fine, sure. Um. So it turns out that there's
actually been a pretty decent amount of famous people who
collect stamps. Um. Just because there's so many people who
collect stamps, some of them are bound to be famous. Right.
John Lennon, Yeah, I read about his stamp collecting. He

(42:45):
seems to have inherited his cousin Stanley's stamp collection basically
changed the name on the cover of the album to
his name, and then you know, added a few more stamps.
He doesn't seem to have been a passionate philatilist by
any stretch. From what um Eine Rand was I know. Uh.

(43:05):
And then Patrick Dempsey I saw reference here there. Yeah.
And then Queen Elizabeth the Second apparently as a stamp
collector um. And then Sally Ride was a very famous
philadelist as well and ended up on a stamp her self. Yes, sadly. Um.

(43:25):
This is something that I think is super cool, the
fact that Sally Ride was fine. She didn't die in
an act that was Christie mcculloff. That's what I was
thinking of. Did you ever see that Challenger documentary yet?
I still haven't. It's a man, it is just astounding.
You can't believe it. I can't believe the interviews that
they got and what they got the people to finally

(43:46):
admit to. It's crazy amazing. Amelia Earhart, I think this
is super cool. She actually funded some of her aviation expeditions, uh,
including some of those transatlantic flights with stamps. She would
get covers and she would sometimes their cash cachide and
she would get stamps, and she would fly to places

(44:08):
and get them postmarked, and it would be obviously super valuable.
She might even sign it sometimes and sell them and
this would be like, boy, this is a cover and
a stamp from Amelia Earhart's flight across the ocean. Uh,
stamped here and in like England or something, or stamped
in England or canceled. I guess in England. And Uh.

(44:32):
When she went down in that plane there were five
with along with poor fred Noonan, there were five thousand
covers that she had pre sold to fund that flight
that were stamped and postmarked for her stops around the world.
Very cool fact that brought to mind the mail on
the Titanic. Remember we were making fun of people dropping
off their mail. Apparently there was a lot of mail

(44:53):
on the Titanic and I didn't think about it. But
it wasn't just people dropping off their mail. Passengers on
the titan and mailing postcards. R MS stands for Royal
Male Ship, so the RMS Titanic was a mail carrier too,
so it was carrying British and Irish and European mail

(45:14):
over to America as well. And from what I could tell,
none of it survived. There's a surviving letter that was
not mail, that was written on Titanic letterhead, but it
was kept in somebody's belongings. But I guess all of
the male workers on the Titanic died basically trying to
save the mail, but they were unable to and it's
still down there. But they think it's possible some of

(45:36):
it still preserved and they might bring it up someday.
President Roosevelt was a very dedicated stamp collector FDR pre
presidency and then through his presidency, which was many, many years.
And this is interesting and that the president has the
ear of the Postmaster General and it seems unfair. Well,

(45:57):
I mean, I think it's kind of cool though, Like
he got into it and he wasn't just like, yeah,
just print a bunch of stamps, it's fine, like every
other president. Um. In the nineteen thirties he got together
with General James A. Farley of the Postmaster General and said,
you know, let's help. I want to help design these things,
and let's brainstorm colors and themes and designs. And but

(46:18):
if he was terrible at it, and Farley would see
him come into like oh here comes another bad idea
from FDR figures had like gigantic hands and stuff. But
he was the president, so Farley had to release the
stupid stamps. That's pretty funny, uh, but it's kind of
cool though. He did sketch out ideas apparently, and in

(46:39):
his collection he had some full sheets and he had
some die proofs and stuff like that, so he did
he did have a an advantage for sure. Yeah. Apparently
they used to release a lot of pictures of him
collecting stamps as part of like calm reassurance to the
nation that there was like a steady hand um literally
and figuratively and leading the country, which is kind of cool.

(47:02):
Can we talk about the Inverted Jenny the coolest stamping? Yeah,
there's a bunch of famous stamps, we should say, the
Inverted Jenny is not the most, the most the high
the most valuable stamp that goes to the um the
British Guiana magenta, right, Yeah, which isn't that great looking,
but it's just rare. I guess I think there's only

(47:22):
one of it in in um in existence, the British
Guiana one sent magenta, but the the far and away
the Inverted Jenny is the the most famous stamp of
all time has to be. Yeah. So in nineteen eighteen,
the U S commissioned to stamp to commemorate the first
air mail service going on. And so they decided on

(47:44):
a two color stamp with a plane on it OC
Curtis j N four. And when you do something with
two colors, you print the first thing. In this case,
it was the red frame around the plane, and then
the second thing that they would print with the the
blue plane itself. And there was an error at one point,
and there were a few pains where it was flipped
upside down and it was either the sheet or the

(48:06):
printing plate was upside down, and so that the jenny
was inverted, and you've got this upside down plane. And
all of a sudden, stamp collectors get winded this and
they're like, oh my gosh, there was a mistake. We
need to get our hands on some of these. Yeah.
This guy named William Roby showed up at the printing
press and said, do you have any that are messed

(48:28):
up that are upside down? And they had found that
they had printed some accidentally. Uh, and all but one
sheet was destroyed. So one hundred inverted Jennis were produced,
which makes it not one of the rare stamps around.
Remember that that British key on um one set in Jenna.
There's only one. There's only one Benjamin Franklin z Grill.
There's a hundred of these things. But um, people just

(48:50):
love them. They go bonkers for them. Uh. And as
a matter of fact, one of the reasons why the
Inverted Jenny has become such a a sought after part
of the stamp collecting world is because it's it's just
been in the spotlight so much like there's been some
really high profile thefts of inverted Jenny's over the years.
There was some one block of four called the McCoy

(49:13):
block that was stolen in nineteen fifty five, and every
couple of decades one of them is recovered and there's
a big to do about it. Um. There was another
theft from the New York Public Library nineteen seven that
was finally recovered years later. Um. It's just something about
that stamp makes it the most the most famous of
all time, that's right. And then that's one case there

(49:36):
was a dealer or those This man who purchased the
sheets sold it to a dealer dealer sells it to
this wealthy businessman, and the dealer had penciled in numbers
on the back of these stamps individually so you could
identify the stamps, which of course it meant it was
not in mint condition, but they were at least identifiable.

(49:57):
And I think the story goes that one of these
was stole one and it turned up in the eighties
with the perforations cut off and the number on the
back was changed to a nine, which wasn't a stamp
that had ever been circulated. So they knew that it
was the stolen stamp, right, but they thought that it
could have been this nine that had never been circulated,

(50:18):
that it made its way in a circulation. But it
wasn't until two thousand two when a woman's locket, the
wife of Colonel Edward Green, the guy who bought that
original block of one that businessman um she died in
her locket made its way into auction and somebody opened
it up and found that the inverted jenny in the

(50:39):
number nine position was actually in the locket, So the
other one was found to be a fraud that way,
which is just you can't write this stuff, you know,
I think you met Colonel Mustard. It's Mr Green, I know.
I thought the same thing, Professor Plum. Pretty cool story though.
I think the last one in nineteen sold for one

(51:00):
three five mills, So yeah, there was a block of them.
I think, not the most valuable, but pretty pretty brighty plus. Also,
it made its way into one of the better movies
that came out of the eighties, Brewsters Millions, Remember, Oh
sure was that in there? Yeah, he burned up like
a bunch of money by mailing a postcard using the
inverted Jenny is mail. That's a fun fact. Yeah, yeah,

(51:23):
pretty cool. Huh. I love it. And that ties in
with Blazing Saddles because Richard Pryor almost played Sheriff Bart
Oh nice. What was the name of the actor who
did in? Said Cleveland Little, who was a great But
Richard Pryor was a writer on the movie. Okay, uh,
you got anything else about Richard Pryor or philatili Nope,
neither do I. But there is a ton out there,

(51:47):
Like I read an article about the serial number that's
written on the side of the plane on the Inverted
Jenny and how Philatilists got to the bottom of why
that serial number was used. Like I mean, there is
a lot of information out there, and there's a lot
of stamps to collect. So go forth and try out
a new hobby and see what you think. And since
I said go forth, that means, of course it's time

(52:07):
for a listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this heartfelt thanks.
Hey guys, as we mark the one year anniversary of
the COVID Lockdown, I'm compelled to write and thank you
for what you've done, what you do, and hopefully what
you will continue to do. Yours was my first podcast
subscription from several years back, and as a stay at
home mom, that has uh, that list has grown substantially

(52:29):
across several genres and I'm plugged in constantly when I cleaned,
cook exercise, et cetera. When Lockdown was first initiated here
in California, I try to keep as normal as schedule
as possible. Despite all three of my children relegated to
home for distance learning. UH, none of my at least
dozen podcasts seemed appropriate to absorb except for yours. The

(52:49):
funny ones seemed too trivial, the crime ones too gruesome,
the historians too dry, and none could keep my attention
again except for yours. Your show is such the perfect
balt between knowledge, lightheartedness, sincerity, and understanding, and the true
friendship radiates from your voices. Uh, and it's incredibly soothing.
I revisited your past episodes for ten months before I

(53:11):
was able to keep listening to anything else. I'm sure
I'm not alone when I say I don't know how
I would have gotten through this past year without YouTube
filtering out all the negative vibes in my head. You
two are the bestest friends I've never met. Keep on
keeping on, and that is Zeneida Johnson of San Jose, California. Man,
that was a bang up email, Zeneida, thank you very

(53:32):
much for that. It is and believe it or not,
we need to hear that stuff too, so we really
appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, well, I'll never get tired
of hearing that. But it's all, you know, It's just
we talked about a pat on the back, you know,
being hearing that we help people get through the pandemic.
Is that's about as high praise as you can get
these days. Means a lot. Yeah, thanks a lot, Zeneida. Um,

(53:54):
and uh, we're glad that we could help you out
and everybody who we helped out and everybody who we
sly lee, annoyed or made laugh or did anything or
last year or thirteen years, thank you for listening. How
about that if you want to get thank you. If
you want to get in touch of this like Zenaida
is it Zenator zane Ida Zenaida she even uh was
kind enough to put a little pronunciation guide very nice.

(54:16):
If you want to get in touch of this like
Zenaida did, then you can send us an email to stuff.
Oh wait, don't forget to lick a stamp and slap
it on the bottom with that stamp and then send
it off to Stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

(54:38):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.