Considering their rarity and value, Stradivarius violins seem to be the most carelessly handled items in the world. There are about 600 of them and in the last three years, one was left in a cab, and two on trains (the latest story of lost and found is here ). The stories follow a pattern-someone […]
Another Stradivarius Left on a Train Read More »
Tom and Ray Magliozzi are the brother mechanics who have run the radio talk show “Car Talk” for the last twenty-five years. The show is broadcast weekly on NPR and has a listenership of about three million each week. The Magliozzi brothers intersperse car advice and solving callers car repair problems with wit and charm.
Every country has sub specialties that are avidly collected by internal collectors but which foreign specialist collectors of those countries never really warm too. As an auctioneer you can see this in bidding patterns and where certain stamps eventually sell to. Ordinary Great Britain stamps in our auctions sell to Americans, Canadians, Britons and Europeans. Plate
August 1 marked the day that the United States Postal service was technically in default on its pension liabilities. If it were a private company, it could be taken into court and liquidated. Numerous proposals have been made on how to reconfigure the USPS so that it could be either a profitable private business or
The Problem with the Post Office is the Problem with American Politics Read More »
We are so used to enormous technological change impacting our lives that we have become quite casual about it. But major technological change was more unusual a century ago and no technology ever seemed as liberating as the first manned flight. Soaring like the birds has been the aspiration since Icarus and the Wright’s feat
Now is the time to begin your specialized collection of Olympic stamps. The popularity of this thematic flows in quadrennial cycles, usually peaking a few months before the games themselves. Olympic philately is one of the most interesting and long established of the topical philatelic areas with the first set being issued by Greece for
Generations of men and women have made many of their best friends from people they had met at stamp clubs. Shared interest is one of the preconditions of becoming friends. It gives you a basis to start conversations and a pleasant fallback when things get dull. Stories of stamps that you have and how you
I am not nearly clever enough to do the Sunday New York Times Cross Word Puzzle. But being a stamp collector I am pretty much the go to person in our home for exotic geography, oddball Presidents, and significant events for say the year 1948. And beyond the pleasure of acquisition and completion this is
Philately and Shared Cultural Knowledge Read More »