Collecting Telephone Cards

With the rise in popularity of cellphones, gone are the days of using telephone cards as a means to make telephone calls. However these highly collectible pieces of plastic are still collected by fusilatelists (telephone card collectors). I have also heard used the term Telegery for the hobby.

Telephone Cards are collected for a variety of reasons, primarily dictated by the picture or theme of a phonecard.   No surprise, Disney is the #1 phonecard collectible. Surprisingly, Coca-Cola is second and McDonald's is third. Also popular collectibles are animals and artwork, birds and flowers and ships and cars and space and sports players and movie stars and comic images as phone cards are often collected by topic or theme.

Phone cards are special credit card-sized pieces of plastic with preloaded credit for making a telephone call from a public payphone.  But when you look at the extensive catalogue of issues, the designs, the themes, the occasions they celebrated or commemorated, it is easy to see how phone cards have become desirable collectibles. Today it is a hobby that is followed by people the world over.

The first phone cards as we know them today appeared in Italy in 1976, in the UK in 1981, and in the USA by the end of 1991. It is estimated that there are roughly 2 million to 4 million people who collect phone cards worldwide, many just casually.

Phone cards produced and sold in a country tended to match the pay telephone system in that country. For example telephone cards from Japan are magnetic, but in Great Britain they are optical, and in the United States it was remote memory (which required a PIN number). Magnetic cards were the most widely used because of the now-familiar magnetic strip on the card.

Twenty years ago, it was the fastest-growing hobby in Great Britain, and increasingly frustrating for U.S. collectors who struggled to obtain these foreign-made treasures (usually made in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, China, and other countries) at a reasonable price. This, of course, was the era before eBay.

The first phone card for use in the United States was a NYNEX card, which sold for $5.25 in 1991 and, less than three years later, it was considered a valuable rarity that was almost impossible to find.

Almost every country in the world has in the past or still continues to issue telephone cards. Like stamp collecting, with so many different issues, some in large number, some in very small numbers, collectors of all ages have been bitten by the bug to start collecting them.

Designs vary from Christmas themes to TV and film themes to wildlife themes. While other designs simply help to advertise and promote a brand or business.

Early phone card designs originally occupied two thirds of the face of the card, while advances in card printing and card technology, allowed for  designs that could be printed in full on both sides of later issues.

As with most collecting hobbies, there are commonly seen items and you also have the rarely seen and more desirable. Of course, the interest of iHobb.com as a purveyor to collectors is the need to provide archival protection to collections so they hold their value over time

 Disney fans love to collect everything Disney, from variations of Mickey Ears to the very popular hobby of pin collecting that shows no signs of abating, even though there were predictions more than a decade ago that the market was glutted and demand would die soon.

One of the oddest Disney collectibles is Disney phone cards. They are still being produced, but the demand for them is no longer as strong as it once was.

As is true with all collectibles, the value of telecards is determined by age,  quantity issued, the popularity of the theme or issuer, and the condition of the card. Unused mint cards are more valuable because some cards like the Italian Urmet cards required a corner be broken off before use.

Over the years telecard collecting has lost some popularity, but they are still listings on eBay and plenty of collectors. And the need to maintain condition of collections as the more rare cards will hold value into the future.

A HISTORY OF WHITE ACE STAMP ALBUMS

 

 

Dating from the Golden Age of Stamp Collecting, The Washington Press was founded in 1933 by Leo August, a New Jersey philatelist, stamp dealer, and publisher, along with his brother, Samuel August. By the end of WW II, they were producing and selling more United States stamp albums than any other company except the Harris Publishing Company of Boston. White Ace albums were more expensive than Harris albums and served a market niche of more upscale collectors.

One of the most popular stamp albums in the United States has been the White Ace specialty album series for United States stamps. The albums, produced by the Washington Press, have had lasting popularity for over fifty years. The albums are printed on high quality paper and use attractive page layout and design. The paper they are printed on is acid free, an important consideration in stamp albums, as it protects the stamps from being damaged by acids leaching from the paper onto the stamps.

The albums are sold in many formats - singles, plate blocks, and blocks being the three most popular – so, that collectors can buy just the sections that they need. This has been one of the main reasons for the enduring popularity of White Ace stamp albums. Collectors could buy just the sections that they needed for the stamps they were collecting at any given point in times so that these collectors didn’t need to spend more money on albums than they need to.

White Ace also offers an extensive line of colorful blank pages for topical collections. With special pages for Birds, Flowers, Black History, and over 30 additional thematic subjects, no other philatelic printing house provides such pages.

In addition to White Ace Album Pages, the August Brothers also printed and sold high quality Art Craft First Day Cover Cachets. An early driving force in expanding the hobby of collecting First Day Covers, Art Craft FDCs spawned a new area of philately and the brothers were instrumental in the founding of the American First Day Cover Society in 1955. Production of Art Craft Cachets was ended in 2016 but collectors still seek the existing 80 years of beautiful covers.

Stamp collecting is a hobby! But is it an investment?

Yes, it can be a profitable hobby. But the cost structure of the stamp business does not lend to the rapid run-up in value of a philatelic investment. Consider that at auction the seller generally pays 15% of the hammer price to the auctioneer and the buyer pays an additional 10% over the closing bid. Thus, purchasing a stamp or cover at auction puts one back 25%, requiring a healthy run-up in the stamp market to get back to even.

This evasive nature of profits from collecting often leads the unwary down a path of folly. Take the example of the ‘bargain’ found on eBay for a small percentage of the Scott Catalog Value (SCV). Close scrutiny of the ‘bargain’ too often reveals ‘fakes’. Unlike forgeries, fakes begin as genuine stamps that are then altered to increase value.

Common methods of producing fakes are regumming or perfing/reperfing. There are also the washed cancels producing seeming mint stamps. Regum the stamp and the faker has a Mint Never Hinged stamp. Poorly centered?  The fakers can reperf to produce a better-centered stamp, or eliminate a straight edge to increase the value.

The buyer must also be aware of the valuable Washington/Franklin coils that began life as imperforates. A simple addition of perforations and the common imperforate pair becomes a valuable coil pair. According to 1847USA (a terrific website for the study of U.S. Classic Stamps), the Scott 388 is considered to be one of the most commonly faked stamps in U.S. philately. With a catalog value for the MNH pair of $7,500 and higher still for the guideline pair, this valuable ‘investment stamp’ may be produced by adding perforations to a pair of the imperforate #384 valued by Scott at $22.00.

Pictured above is a Scott #493 line pair valued by Scott at $230.00, with a Certificate shown at the bottom of this page. Without a certificate you could be looking at an reperf of imperf #483 valued at $47.50 if it is truly MNH and not also regummed

We have all seen an attractive stamp with a thin? A faker can use this stamp as an opportunity to regum, thus hiding the thin, and producing a MNH valuation.

But all is not lost. The collector of classics can use a few common sense rules to insure their collection includes genuine stamps of value.

First, know your source. Those of us who are members of the American Philatelic Society (APS) are pledged to uphold a standard of integrity that precludes knowingly dealing in fakes and altered stamps. But even the best of us could potentially pass along a fake or a forgery out of ignorance.

So the second rule is to have your higher value ‘investment stamps’ expertized. I recommend the Professional Stamp Experts (PSE), American Philatelic Society’s American Philatelic Expertizing Service (APEX), and The Philatelic Foundation. There are also specialty groups for the stamps of particular countries and eras.

What these organizations have that the rest of us do not have, in addition to a committee of experts who have collectively seen it all, are tools we would all love to have for measuring and magnifying. But probably just as important are references of the genuine stamps, discovered fakes and forgeries.

It is also worth noting that a dealer or knowledgeable collector will not buy at a reasonable price an ‘investment grade’ stamp that does not carry a certificate from a reputable expertizer.

So, enjoying stamp collecting as a hobby and with some degree of caution and savvy you may over time realize some maintenance of value from the eventual sale of your collection.

Early Rural Free Delivery Mail Service Covers

R.F.D. - Rural Free Delivery was, in its day, one of the great social equalizers bringing to rural America something that had been enjoyed by urban America for years, delivery of the mail. John Wanamaker, of the Philadelphia Department Store fame, who served as Postmaster General from 1889 to 1893 had the very logical idea that it made more sense for one person to deliver mail than for 50 people to ride into town to collect their mail. He cited business logic and social philosophy as reasons to give rural dwellers free delivery

Of equal significance was the political pressure of the National Grange, National Farmers’ Congress, and State Farmers’ Alliance advocating for the farmers and rural America. The actual implementation of Rural Free Delivery came about under the administration of William L. Wilson, Postmaster from 1895 to 1897. On October 1, 1896, rural free delivery (RFD) service began in Charles Town, Halltown, and Uvilla in West Virginia, Postmaster General Wilson’s home state.

Since the RFD carriers simply delivered mail and picked it up to take to the post office in town, these early letters do not carry postal markings to identify them as RFD mail.

 However, in August 1900 carriers began marking the mail picked up on their routes with pencil cancels. Within a few years carriers were outfitted with rubber stamps bearing R.F.D. the post office town name and the date plus a bar cancel and a number (known as a Doane Cancel). Use of these cancelling devices was discontinued by June of 1903.

Postal bureaucracy was simpler in those days, but just as important, as the charge to be responsible for the mail was to be taken seriously. Here is a page from the Form 1977 of June, 1913 entitled INSTRUCTIONS TO APPLICANTS FOR THE RURAL CARRIER EXAMINATION. Included is a listing of the possible reasons for not being considered to be admitted to the exam, including a person not a citizen or not owing allegiance to the United States, handicapped persons including insanity, epilepsy, and TB, or one addicted to the habitual use of intoxicating beverages to excess.

Those persons chosen to take the examination and passing signed a CERTIFICATE OF THE OATH OF MAIL CONTRACTOR AND CARRIERS required by Act of Congress of March 5, 1874

Tendering ones resignation from the post of rural letter carrier was done with the Post Office Department form 2520-P which was mailed as official Business bearing penalty mail postage exemption.

Finally, here is a photocopy of a letter from the Postmaster General in 1897 to a Wm.B. Gaitree designating Mr. Gaitree a special agent for the experiment of rural free delivery. Payment is to be $5.00 per day plus up to $4.00 per day for expenses. Employment will cease with the expiration of the special appropriation  intended to fund the experiments in rural free delivery.

History is littered with postal and other enterprises that foundered on the rocks of an administration change caused by a different party taking office, RFD survived and expanded beyond humble beginning in West Virginia until in 2012, nearly 41 million homes and businesses were served by the Postal Service’s rural letter carriers.



Collecting Postage Due Stamps

 Postage Due Stamps came about as a response to mail sent with insufficient postage. The extra postage due is indicated by a stamp added to an underpaid piece of mail indicating the amount of extra postage due.

The first Postage Due Stamp was issued by France in 1859. Many other nations followed, including the United States Post Office in 1879.  Postal regulations called for the postal clerk to affix a postage due stamp to an envelope in order to indicate insufficient postage and how much money the addressee had to pay to receive the mail.  Thus came into being the first series of Postage Due Stamps with denominations from 1-cent to 50-cents in 7 denominations.

Since postage due stamps are almost always used only within a single country, they are usually quite simple in design, mostly consisting of a large numeral, and an inscription saying "postage due", "porto", etc.; often there is no country name. As is the case with regular issue stamps, a variety of values may be needed to make up specific amounts.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) addressed the problem of underpaid foreign mail. The UPU decided that unpaid or insufficiently paid international letters should be marked with a "T" standing for the French word “Taxe,” and from April 1, 1879 the amount missing in centimes should also be indicated in black.

 

 Some argue that postage due stamps are actually a label, as they have no value of their own. Labels have often been used to collect money for other purposes, such as magazine subscriptions. However, in the case of Postage Due Stamps, they are a Post Office issue and are related to the cost of sending letters and parcels through the mails. This certainly qualifies them as an item of interest to stamp collectors.

Printed by the American Bank Note Company, today the stamps have a catalog value of over $3000 in mint condition. Collected used the stamps value $340.00

Actually there is no reason for mint postage dues to reach private hands as they have no use beyond the postal clerks assessing postage for mail received, and are of no value to postal patrons in paying the appropriate postage, but sold to collectors they were. In the case of a special printing of U.S. Postage Dues on soft porous paper, the combined catalog value for these 7 stamps is $86,000, and there are no catalog notes to indicate that they were ever used.

The number of special printing postage dues actually sold into the philatelic inventory is shrouded in mystery. In an article by William E. Mooz, on the 1c appearing in the Philatelic Chronicle No. 170, May 1996, Mr. Mooz offers evidence to support his theory that the actual number of true Special Printings sold was significantly lower than the reported figures. For example, the 1c (J9), Mr. Mooz estimates 500 sold, but suggest that as many as 400 purchased by G. B. Calman were destroyed to reduce the supply and increase the value of his remaining stock. Confusing the matter, it is widely accepted that nearly 9,000 1c stamps sold by the post office as Special Printings were actually regular issues (J1-J7).

The postage due stamp is not always affixed to individual letters. In instances of business mail, the total due might be summed, and the appropriate stamps added to the top letter in a bundle, or to a bundle's wrapper. But most were affixed to individual letters and yet postal covers bearing valid postal-used postage due stamps tied together by a dated cancellation or other postal markings with a postage stamp on cover are somewhat rare and very few have survived on a wrapper.

 Collecting postage due stamps of the United States is relatively simple and quit affordable (outside of J8-J14 as discussed above). The only tools needed are a perforation gauge and watermark fluid. Postage due issues have 5 basic designs as noted by the Scott catalog, with color, perforation and watermark characteristics to add variety, for a total of 104 issues and maybe 30 minor varieties denoting color shade differences.

Postage due stamps were used for just over 100 years. The last postage due stamps went to press in November 1985. Two changes brought about the demise of postage due stamps. The USPS required prepayment of postage in full. Thus, most mail was returned to sender for proper postage. And when mail was forwarded to the recipient, they moved to using rubber stamps and other auxiliary markings to track the postage due.

A second section of U.S. Postage Due Issues is the Parcel Post Postage Due Stamps of 1912. The parcel-post law authorized the Postmaster General, with the consent of the Interstate Commerce Commission, to issue special stamps for postage on Parcel Post Mail. Accompanying Parcel Post Postage Due Stamps were a logical accompaniment. What seemed like a good idea was not and in 1913 an ICC order allowed for regular postage to be used for parcels and the Parcel Post stamps were discontinued after the existing stock of stamps was exhausted.

For further exploration of the subject, following is an interesting reference:

A PDF article that includes a section of the Parcel Post Postage Dues

https://postalmuseum.si.edu/symposium2011/papers/charles-postage_due.pdf

The problem of insufficient postage on letters not paying the correct fee had existed since the creation of regular postal systems, it was greatly heightened by the advent of postage stamps, that allowed customers to make their own decisions about the correct amount to pay, without the assistance of a knowledgeable postal clerk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_due

How postage due stamps can spice up a worldwide collection: Stamp Collecting Basics

http://www.linns.com/news/world-stamps-postal-history/2016/november/stamp-collecting-basics-postage-due-stamps-worldwide-collection.html#

Stamp Collecting: From Department Stores to the Internet

What began as a robust philatelic program in a New York City department store continues to have remnants on the modern internet, but only a slice of what was. In what was a major commercial success beginning in 1931 in the Gimbel’s Department Store in New York City, the Minkus Stamp Company opened a small stamp counter that eventually expanded to stamp counters in department stores around the country.

The popularity of the stamp hobby in the first 30 years of the 20^th Century was evident in the hundreds of stamp stores open on Nassau Street in lower Manhattan. The United States Post Office actively promoted the hobby, but the hobby was still not a major factor in American culture until all was changed by Jacques Minkus, known as ‘The Merchant Prince of Stamp Collecting’.

After immigrating to the Unites States from Germany in 1929, Jacque and his brother, Morris, were printing miniature dictionaries for sale in chain stores. They were approached by a stamp dealer regarding a stamp album that was being imported from England at a cost of 65-cents a copy. The stamp dealer asked the Minkus brothers if they could produce the album for less.

They did, selling their albums for a dime and talking the chain stores that carried their dictionary into stocking the albums and accompanying bags of stamps. Soon they were producing thousands of albums for an eager public.

Next stop was a small counter in the rear of the famous Gimbels Department Store. Gimbels was one of the big three that dominated American retailing in the 1930; Sears, Macy’s and Gimbels. Although not a stamp collector himself, Minkus and the company that bore his name had a significant impact on the stamp collecting hobby. His success in large part was founded on his understanding that the hobby must be fun and the entry level need be inexpensive.

At its high-point the Gimbels Stamp Counter grew to a dominant position on the store’s main floor, covering 2,300 square feet of floorspace, with 40 professional philatelists to serve the thousands of stamp collector customers.   At their peak, the stamp department was re-designed by the prominent Raymond Lowey Associates, a project which took over two years of planning to accomplish, and at a cost of over a million dollars.

With this success, the retail model was replicated by Minkus in 38 other major department stores nationwide.  Icons of this success were the publication of the Minkus Master Global and Supreme Global Stamp Albums. Many of these albums continue in use today, having been handed down from father to sons and mothers to daughters. Minkus also published the New American Stamp Catalogue, in competition with the dominant Scott Catalog.

The catalog never overtook Scott, even though it featured more description of the stamp subjects than the more spartan Scott Catalog. Finally in 2004 what was by then Krause-Minkus Publishing was acquired by Scott and the catalog was discontinued. But the Minkus legacy continues on.

While today the Minkus Album is out of print, there are a sufficient number of Minkus Albums still in use that we (iHobb.com) maintain a robust business in annual supplement updates for the Minkus  Still popular are the All-American, U.S. Commemorative, U.S. Regular Issue and the U.S. Plate Block Album plus new binders to replace the worn and the expanding collections in albums begun during this heyday of stamp retailing.

The department store is being replaced by Amazon and the internet and local stamp stores are being replaced by part-time dealers at stamp shows and those of us on the internet. Time marches on. But we stand on the shoulders of companies like the Minkus Stamp Company and its founder, Jacque Minkus.

The USPS Souvenir Page Program

Collectors of USPS Souvenir Pages combine into one collection the stamps issued by the U.S. Post Office, together with a First Day of Issue Cancellation, and information about the stamp issue. This third factor, the reasoning for the stamp issue, or the historical or social significance of the stamp, is just as important now that stamps feature more than just dead presidents and founding fathers, as important as they are to any stamp collection.

The Postal Service began the USPS Souvenir Page Program with the Family Planning Stamp in March 1972. This Souvenir Page (#72-0) was only available at the ASDA Stamp Show in Madison Square Garden, New York City and at the Main New York City Post office on 8th Avenue across from The Garden.

The next month, the USPS initiated a subscription service, beginning with the National Park Series.  The Postal Service had observed collecting interest in Stamp Posters with First Day Cancels produced by enterprising collectors and dealers who began affixing stamps to the Post Office produced announcement posters and having them first day cancelled.  The decision was made by the USPS to begin a program of their own and, as they say, the rest is history.

 Production began with about 2,000 of the Family Planning Souvenir Page sold and 10,000 of the first four subscription pages (#72-1, 72-2, 72-3, and 72-4). Today the Family Planning Page is 'rare' and the first Subscription four are 'scarce' Since the initial introduction of USPS Souvenir Pages there are now over 1,000 types, which is enough to provide years of collecting activity.

A challenging element of the segment of the hobby is to include ‘Unofficals’ or ‘Poster Bulletins’, the forerunners of Souvenir Pages 

The USPS produced announcement posters for every US postal issue, including stamped envelopes, postal cards and aerogrammes. Intended for display on Post Office bulletin boards from 1959 (49-Star Flag) through 1981 (Rachel Carson), the bulletins were also made available to collectors. They are 8 x 10-1/2 inches, and were printed on lesser quality paper without watermarks.  At first the posters were printed in gray but soon the USPS began to print them in a single color similar to the color of the stamp. Posters include an image of the stamp(s) along with information about the stamp and it's subject.

Since stamp collectors affixed their own stamps to these early posters, many possibilities exist including plate blocks, zip blocks, tab singles, coil line pairs, and combinations with other stamps.  Unofficial Souvenir Pages were created for most US postal issues, including stamped envelopes, postal cards and aerogrammes.   They were created on both folded and unfolded posters and as with Stamp Posters , unfolded examples command a premium.

There are more than 1,800 souvenir pages listed in the Scott Specialized Catalog of United States Stamps & Covers. In the 2001 Scott U.S. Specialized Catalog, the Hemingway souvenir page is listed as Scott SP857 with a value of $1.60, one of the lowest values of all the pages. The 2015 catalog value has increased to $4.75, so clearly there is increasing interest in the items.  The 1972 8¢ Family Planning page (SP208), had a 2001 value of $500 and in the 2014 catalog the value has risen to $675.00.

Collectors interested in starting a Souvenir pages collection can enroll in the USPS subscription program through USPS Stamp Fulfillment Services, Box 219424, Kansas City, MO 64121-9424. Details also are available by calling toll-free 800-782-6724.

                             

The iHobb.com listing of Souvenir Pages for sale