Talk on orchid stamp collecting Saturday, 4 November 2017

This Saturday the International Stamp Club will meet, in the housing complex between 1st/2nd at 24th Street in Manhattan. President Dan Rieber has asked Ken Gibson to be the speaker, who will show & tell his orchid stamp collection. Like many topicals, the majority of issues were from the 1960s on. Orchid stamps started in 1905, with the appearance of vanilla vines on Guadeloupe Scott 54-62. For many island nations, especially in the French domain, vanilla was a major crop. Madagascar, Reunion, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe and others raised this fragrant monocot for the pods which were then fermented and sold for sweets and perfumes. The use in the latter takes some by surprise, but it is actually quite a common fragrance ingredient in both mens' and womens' scents, being the long lasting bass note in such products. Other orchids came into the picture decades later, one very memorable stamp is the Costa Rica issue of 1937, which depicts a Cattleya. This was in vivid colour, albeit only two, green and violet. It set the tone for artistic representation of orchids, and like most orchid stamps, depicts one from the issuing country. In the 1960s orchids and other topicals became quite common. By 1990 it is estimated that 2,000 such existed, and a complete count can be made by checking the 1990 American Topical Association list. Presently, it is estimated that there are 5,000 orchid stamps to collect, which may seem a lot, but consider that there are over 25,000 naturally occuring species, and over 100,000 hybrids. Which makes study of orchids a hard task! Books on orchids tend to be large photographic, 'coffee-table' works, which give the reader a sample of orchids, and usually the more common ones, including lots of Phalaenopsis amibilis and its hybrids; this is the world's second most cultivated plant. Thus an orchid stamp collection has practical and educational value, in fact, many rarer species not depicted in the large, showy tomes for mass market consumption may be viewed on stamps. One set that is especially useful to orchidologists is the Guyana issue of stamps from Reichenbachia, the 19th century set of engraved illustrations which is so expensive to obtain, either in the original or as a reprint, found in few libraries. And quite often a country issues stamps of its own native species, sometimes all in one genus, as is often the case with stamps of Asian nations that depict Dendrobiums. This is a large genus with over 1,000 species, and having a set of the world's complete Dendrobium stamps is like having a miniature monograph in hand. Thus the value goes far beyond the catalogue price! The ISC will be hosting future talks by philatelists, so stay tuned. For more information on the ISC, email Phil at nycphilatelic@gmail.com and we'll be glad to welcome you to the club!

New York Times article on stamp collecting and the vibrant stamp market in Manhattan at the Grand Bazaar

A couple weeks ago, another poorly researched article appeared in a newspaper known for missing key information on genocide and famines, some might say even supporting Hitler and Stalin: the New York Times. Last month a hit piece appeared on stamp collecting, and no surprise it was NOT written by anyone who was known in the stamp circles, just someone with a photo of rather worthless stamps and a collections they threw out, quite possible the one in the photo. Here in New York a major dealer who sets up every weekend at the outdoor market on Colombus and 77th was amused at the article, especially after inviting a New York Times journalist to check out the stamp world. But rather than take a real look, the NYT just decided that stamps were dead. If so, why did the city host the largest stamp show in the world in 2016 at the Jacob Javits Centre? Why are there stamp clubs througout the city, from the Collectors Club to the International Stamp Club, both in Manhattan, not to mention all the clubs out in Brooklyn and other boroughs? Ken Gibson, who sets up each Sunday at the Grand Bazaar, says he cannot keep up with demand, and gets people buying everything from US face to 19th century stamps, and yes, other dealers who buy from him as he unloads boxloads of treasures. This last week as he sold a worldwide collection to a man who will use it to educate his three children, a man stepped forward and started asking about Ukranian stamps; turned out he was the founder of the Ukranian Stamp Museum, and, malinki mir as is said in Slavic tongues, Gibson's Russian mates got talking to the Ukranian, and no, war did not start, but rather it was found that their grandmother was from the same town in the Ukraine as the stamp museum. Lots of life in the stamp world, but not so much at the offices of Lady Gray. Just for laugh, here is what their hapless writer penned and what an even more hapless editor allowed to go to print: Silver Spring, Md. — I got rid of my stamp collection the other day. It was no great loss from a monetary standpoint. The emotional loss, though, was enormous. There was a time when my collection might have fetched a good amount, because there was a time when people cared about stamps. They used them to mail bills, letters and postcards, and in the process paid attention to what was on them. You didn’t have to be a collector to value the beautiful, quirky and rare. Today, many if not most bills are paid online. Letters are rarely written and sent; email suffices. Stamps are still used occasionally, if rarely saved or savored. And most of what passes for stamps are generic images printed on demand at a postal kiosk. Stamps were, and sometimes still are, things of beauty and history, links to distant places that spawned a global hobby known as philately, or, simply, stamp collecting. Putting a bright spotlight on the hobby was none other than President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the philatelist in chief, often shown in official White House photographs with a magnifying glass, viewing his collection. Before hours wasted on video games and other ephemeral pleasures, the hobby transfixed and transported youngsters. Stamps were the adhesive coins of the realm, a way to learn geography, history and politics. Every high school had its stamp club. I never joined one, but I did earn the stamp collecting merit badge in Boy Scouts (thankfully, the badge still exists), and I amassed a sizable collection from various sources. I received foreign stamps from one of my dad’s well-traveled co-workers. On my own, I pursued new domestic issues, sending a stamped self-addressed envelope to post offices of issue. The envelope would come back with the new stamp and the dated postmark with the special “First Day of Issue” cancellation. For each new “commemorative” stamp, I acquired a “plate block” of four stamps ripped from the corner of a sheet of stamps, printed on the first day. Even the United Nations issued stamps, which could be sent only from the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, and I collected them, too. There were stamp shows and dealers who would advertise in the back pages of comic books. For a few bucks they’d send you a package of loose stamps to get you hooked. Stamp collecting could be addictive, and for many in my generation it was. But there comes a time to let go of childish things, and the stamps, plate blocks and first-day covers I collected in the 1950s had sat in a box in the basement for too many years, unlooked at, unattended to, low-hanging fruit in my efforts to downsize. So off I went, with my collection, first to Maryland Stamps and Coins, open for 42 years and among the dwindling number of businesses still serving a dying hobby. There I learned the sad truth: There is no longer a market for the collection I once so greatly valued. Collectors are passing on at an alarming rate; the average collector, I was told, is 65 to 70 years old. There was a time when the Inverted Jenny stamp was a household name; though examples continue to fetch seven figures at auction, how many people have even heard of it? Judy Johnson, the membership manager of the American Philatelic Society, the world’s largest nonprofit organization for stamp collectors, confirmed all of this. The society has 28,953 members today, compared with 56,532 two decades years ago — a 50 percent drop in 20 years, and prospects are not good. “Trying to bring in the younger 30-to-50-year-old crowd is really difficult,” she said. The continuing decline is because of “things you can’t control, illness and death.” The Maryland stamp dealer had no commercial use for my collection. But, he said, I could donate them to Stamps for the Wounded, a veterans organization. It was, the brochure he handed me stated, “Philately’s Volunteer Service Committee.” I called Bruce Unkel, who helps organize donations. He invited me to bring my collection to a storage facility in Falls Church, Va., where, every Saturday for four hours, volunteers sort and prepare the donations for shipment to Veterans Affairs hospitals and residences across the country. Arriving at the facility, I walked through deserted hallways to reach the locker where three men, Bruce, 76, Larry, 74, and Drew (“just old,” he told me), sat and sorted. Except for when the facility “puts their intercom on and we get music and advertisements,” Drew said, it is quiet in the storage unit where they go about their work. On average, they get one collection a week. It cost $30 to ship a box, and they ship about eight a month, mostly to veterans of Vietnam and Korea. In addition to stamps, they accept cash, to cover the cost of the storage rental and, well, postage. All three men still collect, but Bruce won’t touch anything “worldwide” issued after 1970 because there is just too much of it, and every two years you must buy a new stamp album to accommodate new additions. It is all just too much, even for the die-hards. This was written by Eugene Meyer, and evidently he is an 'author' (of what?) who does not believe in spending time to really learn his subject. But for that sort of person, there is always a job at the NYT, just ask Jayson Blair!