Stuff You Should Know - How Stamp Collecting Works

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry just left, 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, it's her own choice.

She's a real live human being. Jerry's had plenty of chances. We've asked her and she loves being in the background and not being on the show. Just want to make that clear. She's a wallflower, a lazy semi-useless wallflower that we love like a sister and who keeps us in line and 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 collecting. 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, Chuck.

We're going to talk about those later. Wow. You have been doing this for a while, haven't you? A couple of years. So we're talking stamp collecting. I don't collect stamps, I never have collected stamps. I've never been friends with somebody who collected stamps. Me neither.

As far as I know, no relatives have collected stamps. Have you ever collected anything? I collected baseball cards, the huge, but it turns out I would posit that stamp collecting is vastly more popular than baseball card collecting 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. Nope.

They're like, I don't even know who Freddie Freeman is. I like the alliteration, but I don't know who he is. Oh, they should. He's great. Sure. 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. Yeah, sure. 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.

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 they were piggy banks, but none of them were pigs. Okay, I got you. So, you know, I think I had like 30 or 40 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, you know, it was like just banks, 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. 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 one I can really remember. I had a Mickey Mouse bank, but who doesn't? That's a good one too. I had a Spider-Man piggy bank, the bust of, you know, 1970s Spider-Man. Wow. 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 England in the cafeteria. I thought you'd 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 article, who was this?

Was this Ed? Yeah, Grabster. It's like, you know, collecting little pieces of art, little tiny works of art. Exactly. And 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 the stamp collecting community really loves to dig into that history and know all about all the different stuff about every single stamp.

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 too. Definitely like, look at, you can enjoy a stamp just on its face, it's pretty, it's neat, it's really well done usually, or at least the ones that are worth collecting. Serves a purpose. 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 too, it's just about as well rounded a hobby as you

could find. Agreed. So another term for stamp collecting is called phylately, 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 phylo or love of like philosophy, love of knowledge. 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 phylately means love of stamps in a really roundabout way. Now, see, I heard it pronounced phylately. Oh, really? We'll go with that one then. Okay. Because I've just been pronouncing that that way in my head for a very long time. Phylately.

There you have it. Who is that with you? Her name is mispronunciation. Emma? Emma says? Mispronunciation. That was good, Chuck. Yeah.

Mispronunciation. We're not going to assume anything. You know, one of the things that I've noticed in Q-A-ing episodes is how many jokes of yours slide right past me while you're saying them. And I don't catch them until I'm Q-A-ing an episode later on. So many jokes. So hats off for all those jokes that I've missed. If you're going to get into phylately or be a phylatelist, then 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 were some money, but it's not the kind of thing where just get into it with the intentions that you should have, which is you're not going to make a ton of money doing this kind of thing. Yeah. Get into it for the love of collecting stamps.

Yeah. That's the way to do it. It's kind of eye-opening and surprising, I think, to most of us on the outside of the phylately world looking in, because we hear about these auctions where stamps go for millions of dollars. Sure. And every once in a while, they'll pop up as like a McGuffin in a movie or something like that.

So the idea that almost all stamps or the wildly vast majority of stamps are really not worth much at all 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 one thing I really love about stamp collecting, which is sort of toward 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 up for some certain 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 governments for the purposes of mailing postage to the general public. 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 fun is finding these things on an old letter, like a cool discovery. And I just, I like the idea of it. 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. 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'm interested in this. Yeah, totally. So I went through the trouble of finding these things. And in that sense, it almost bears a resemblance to that super adorable coin collection that Owen had and 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 12th.

It's kind of like that. It's a really endearing hobby, I think. Yeah. It's not like you're like, all right, I'm going to get into stamp collecting and what are the best stamps to collect? 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 20s really 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 stamp collecting, everybody. Should we take a break? Should be already sure.

Let's do it. Chuck, let's throw caution to the wind like every average stamp collector does. Great. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running

and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. And 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 always a little more footloose, you know what I mean? Sure. My feet are very loose.

So we should probably give some terms here. If you're interested in getting a stamp collector, or if you just want to know a little more about it, there is a lot of arcane jargon and slang in the world of stamp collecting. And one of the reasons why it's been around for almost a couple hundred years now, and over that time, there's just kind of been successive generations who kind of added and refined and contributed to it, 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 issue, no fashion. This is a broad overview. Their entire podcast dedicated to this kind of thing. So we're going to 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 Costanz's wife or fiance. Well, hers was from looking envelopes, right?

Or was it stamps? Oh, I guess it was envelopes, wasn't it? But the same thing. Yeah, close enough. It's still gum. Exactly. I forgot about that. Yeah.

Because he got the cheap stuff. Yeah. He cheaped out. So this is what's used to stick the stamp on if the stamp has never been used at all. It's like this pristine little thing. 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 gum to it to stick it into your collection, which we'll get to as well.

Yeah. So the sticky stuff equals gum, right? Correct. Pretty simple. Let's get a little more complex, Chuck. Ooh. 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 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 as long as they're four, it can be irregular shapes because sometimes blocks of stamps get added to or messed with or just changed over the decades or the centuries. So I've seen that more than that, but in a less regular shape is still considered a block. But what about four in a row and a strip?

Does that count as a block? I believe so. I think as long as it's at least four and that there is, although I guarantee there's another arcane term for what you just said, but as long as it's not all of the ones that were originally attached together, that would be a sheet. Okay. All right. Sure.

Okay. All right. Now where are we? One other thing about stamps that you have to realize is 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. In some cases, that's true. There is somebody in the stamp collecting world that is collecting stuff that nobody

else is. There's always going to be somebody out there who wants something, but in the stamp world, you want something as precise and pristine and centered and perfectly done as possible. That usually tends to be the higher valued stamp. The other kind that are just off, the printing was slightly off-center, that kind of thing, those are called errors, freaks, and oddities, EFOs in the stamp collecting world. Yeah. It's like you're talking about if there's an Obi-Wan Kenobi figure that the first thousand

that they made, he was missing a left ear. In that world, that would be the most valuable thing probably ever made in the history of the world. Like you're saying with stamps, generally, as far as value goes, they want them that are nice and tidy. With those terms, errors, freaks, and oddities, those are just wildly overstating what they describe. You're talking about a stamp that just, the printing is slightly off-center, where the

perforations are just a little bit off or whatever, maybe kind of half go through there. That would be considered a freak. That's how precise stamp printing is meant to be. Some people do collect that, but for the most part, yeah, you want as close to perfect a stamp as possible. That sounds like a record album title. Errors, freaks, and oddities? Yeah.

Sure. The best of guided by voices or something. That's a good one. Or just an off-brand discovery network channel's new show. Yeah. Totally. There's cancellations 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 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. You can still collect those stamps. In fact, most stamps I think 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 because it's not those people at the post office. They're just stamping those things. They got a lot of work to do. Sometimes you'll just barely get a little bit of cancellation on 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. There's a lot of information that can be contained in just a plain old cancellation stamp. Some people collect disaster stamps. If you had a letter that was postmarked or an envelope in a stamp that was postmarked on September 11th, 2001 in New York, somebody's probably collecting canceled stamps and covers like that. Interesting. 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 a shout out to our favorite postal worker, Van Nostrand, from a great state of Washington. I don't know where the ads fall, but if there's a stamps.com ad on this, total coincidence. That's right. Some people, I saw collect machined stamps, metered postage too. Like you said, there's probably a subset out there for anything.

There definitely is. Every rule you see, there's some rebel group out there breaking it in the philataly world. The cover is what I mentioned, don't you dare call it an envelope. You'd really reveal yourself to be an uneducated rube if you did that. Which there's probably a word for that too. Like a beginner philatelist is probably a. A gum liquor. A gum liquor.

That's good. The cover, like I said, is the envelope. Sometimes you will keep that whole envelope, at least for a little while. Sometimes they're easier to hang onto than a tiny stamp sometimes. 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. Again, these are things that people pay attention to in the stamp world or collect. There's another thing that most of us who just use stamps as normal human beings have noticed but don't really pay much attention to are the perforations that we use to separate stamps. Like way back in the day, stamps came in sheets and you, colonial person or second industrial age inhabitant, were expected to pull out your scissors and cut the stamps into little

individual singles. Then finally, an Irishman named Henry Archer from Dublin came up with a perforation tool. All you're doing is making the paper at certain points thinner so that it's easily torn at those points. The first perforated stamp that came out was the 1850 British Penny Red, which was pretty quickly after stamps were first invented postal stamps. With that, Henry Archer created this whole sub-category of stamp, I guess, categorization and a sub-category of categorization.

That is categorical. Stamp collecting people, philatelists, I like it the way I say it more, philatelists. No, I should probably say philatelists now that I say it out loud. Philatelists really pay attention to perforations. It's like a really important part of stamp collecting. Yeah, because it can be a clue as to where it actually came from because these people know how they have perforated things with different machines in different parts of the world in different eras.

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, they're called imperforate. Then I talked about the little strips of stamps, the coils. Because obviously, you're just going to have the perforations on the sides and not the top. Or the top, just not both. Oh, interesting, I've never really, I guess it depends on which way the art is oriented, right? Exactly, yeah.

Then you've got the sheets or the pane. If it's on the outer edges of that sheet or pane, it probably won't have those perforations either. It is a big deal. You'd be surprised. Yeah, and those outer margins even have their own word, chuck selvedge, which also applies to the hem of your shirt or something that's sewn in a certain way to keep it from unraveling. That's called selvedge, too.

But in the stamp collecting world, it's basically the margins, the sheets. Sometimes they have registration marks or dates or the number of the printed in there. Some people collect that, of course, as well, selvedge stamps. I love learning new words. Selvedge. 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, oh, and I was going to tell you this anyway, I had our buddy Wyatt Sinek on Movie Crush yesterday. Oh, cool. What did he 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 Lapetamane comes into the room and he said, sorry, gentlemen, I was just out walking the parapet. And I never bothered to look up what that meant until yesterday. And it's that little, if you're on top of a building, it's the little half wall that goes around the top of a building to keep you from falling off, or to make falling off, you know, more interesting.

Yeah, right. Really bangs up the shins on your way down. So I never knew that before, walking the parapet. Oh, 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 selvedge.

I got you. Oh boy. Oh boy, so let's say Chuck that you said, I care about perforations. I want to know more about these registration marks on selvedge. How do I get into this philately as a hobby, Chuck? What would you recommend people do to start? Get a bank loan for about 15 grand. No, it's 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. And you know, if your skin oils can mar a stamp, so you want to try and handle them with these little tweezers so you don't ruin them. That's a good little tool to have. You're going to want to get an album or a binder. And they make them especially, you know, don't get one for like photographs. They make them especially for stamps.

And sometimes they have 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 a magnifying glass or a jeweler's loop, but you don't need a microscope or anything. I think about a 10X is probably the most kind of magnification you'll need. Yes. Eventually, too, you're going to find that you have perforation fever. Yes.

You're going to get yourself a perf gauge, which is basically a specialized transparent ruler that you line up the lines to the perforation marks. And the gauge of a perforation is how many perforation holes there are per two centimeters. So cool. And this is important because, you know, some stamps are exactly the same as other stamps. The only differences is like they were perforated with slightly different machines or something like that. Or, you know, like the stamp collecting community knows when a perforating machine's pin breaks,

they know about that machine and it's pin. So they can tell you where that thing was printed and when and what run it was out of how many, just because there's a what's called a blind perforation where the hole wasn't punched through where it should have been. In one position on this one stamp, like that's how intensely known stamps are by the philately community. It's really cool. I think that's one thing I like about it is how myopic it can get and how specific it

can get. It's just, you know, it's time well spent and I bet it's very calming. Yes. Yeah. Just researching it is calming, you know. I fell asleep a few times. Stuff like that really comes through. When you're researching something, you find you're relaxed.

The thing you're doing would be even more relaxing, I think. Yes, totally. Like making flies or painting like duck decoys. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Or painting stamps like in Fargo, Margie's husband, I love it. Yeah.

It's just a two cent. Norm. Norm was great. I love it. Yeah, he was great. So you might want a internet connection. You will probably want to get a stamp catalog and we'll talk about the sort of the big books that are out there 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've dollars to doughnuts. You might rather hold a book in your hand. Every time you say that, you said that on Tuesday too in one of the episodes. Did I? Yeah. Every time you say that, I think of this one 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 what we do in the shadows guy 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 on another's words. You use droll. I did. 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, that's a chug word. Yeah. And I just use it.

Is it okay if I use that word? It's fine. I'll lend you droll. Thank you, buddy. I appreciate that. You might want Watermark Detector Fluid, actually that's a pretty good album name too. Sometimes stamps will have an anti-counter fitting measure put in place with a watermark. And sometimes you can hold up a stamp to the light and see the watermark.

And sometimes you will need to dive a bit deeper and put that Watermark Detector Fluid on there. And it's not that much money, but it's not necessarily the first thing you need in your kit as a beginning gum liquor. Right. I mean, you're going to basically just be looking at, well, that's a neat picture. I like that picture. Like 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 $250 that are basically like those, you know, those old-timey projector things that they'd use in class. Like an overhead projector? Yes. Yeah.

But this is one that projects into some sort of magnifier that you lean over and look into. 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 just shows you the watermark. It's pretty neat. All right. I'm in.

That's for the well-heeled Philatelists, though. I'm out. So there's another thing you need 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, one thing you can do is go online and you can buy just a lot or a collection of stamps, sort of a grab bag that you have no idea what's in there.

And that can be a really fun way to get started because like I mentioned earlier, 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 is a good way to really find out who you really are.

I agree. You know? Sure. 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. You can also, like I read this pamphlet by I think the American Philateli Association or Society, APS, I believe.

They wrote the pamphlet. And they, yeah, philatelitic, philatelic, damn that word. Okay. Philatelic. I think I got it, right? Yeah. Okay. The American Philatelic Association, the APS 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 in a stamp collecting. They give all these ideas of how to get free stamps. Stealing mail. 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? Yeah.

You can start, find a pen pal in another country because they'll have stamps that are a dime a 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 even stamps inside the envelope. Who knows? There's a lot of ways to get into stamp collecting basically for free or for the cost maybe of a stamp, which is, again, one of the reasons why stamp collecting is just so accessible. It costs next to nothing to get into, to get started with. And even when you really get into it, it's not an expensive hobby.

No. And if you get a bunch of stamps or you get a bunch of covers with stamps and you're just beginning your journey, you're going to get them all, lay them out in a room, look at them, decide what you like, and you don't want to just remove all, I mean, you can do whatever you want, but I would advise that you decide what you want to separate from the cover because there is a process involved that we're going to go over now. And it's not the hardest thing in the world, but you don't want to do that to 20 or 30 stamps that you're like, no, I actually don't like these after all.

To waste the time. Yeah. I mean, it's like that next level of preservation. And once you pick those out, what you do is you get a bowl with warm water, warm tap water. Stick your finger in until you lose control of your bladder and then you start the stamp sorting process. That's right.

You go pee, pee just a little bit and then you float that stamp. If you have cut it away from the cover, if you decided to do that, leave yourself a few centimeters around the stamp, you know, don't get too close. Yeah. But you make a good point. You want to go through everything first and be like, are there any cool, you know, cancellations on here? Is this envelope just neat?

Yeah. You don't necessarily want to separate all stamps from envelopes or covers. Or any rad perfs. Exactly. So you want to make 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. Stamp up, right? Yeah. So you put 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 liquor. And I would wade into those warm waters. And if it's from a Christmas envelope or something, if it's like a red envelope. Beware.

Yes. Beware because that can very much discolor your stamp. Hopefully it's just like a good old fashioned white envelope. Wait about 10 or 15 minutes and that stamp will start to, that gum will just sort of dissolve away. And 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 grimy old human fingers and just kind of pat it dry.

And you've got yourself a stamp. Yeah. You want to be really careful though because a wet stamp is unsurprisingly very fragile. Yeah. A lot of people put their wet stamps on paper towels. You want to make sure you've gotten all the gum off first though. And then they put those paper towels in a heavy book and then let it dry like that. I mean, what we just described is philateletic state of the art basically.

That's right. So you want to take another break and then come back and talk a little stamp history, famous stamps, that kind of stuff? Yeah. I love this part. Let's do that. Okay. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology.

But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. It doesn't look good, there is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right.

So you mentioned stamp history. They've been collecting stamps since the first stamp, which is kind of cool. I don't know why someone said, you know, I want to hang on to this. But someone did and after May 1st, 1840, Great Britain issued the Penny Black, the very first postage stamp. It was supposed to roll out on May 6th as far as being used, but they sent them out a little bit early to post offices, so they were ready to go on May 6th. And some post offices said, eh, let's just go ahead and kind of get the ball rolling

because I'm feeling we're going to be behind really quickly. And so some of those little Penny Blacks are dated earlier than May 6th. And those will be worth a little bit more money, but they were a bunch of Penny Blacks. So it's not like the Honest Wagner baseball card. It's not like the Penny Black is the most valuable stamp ever made. It's a little counter-intuitive, 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 cancellation that people will collect, because you want a canceled Penny Black that predates that May 6th, 1840 date, because it's just unusual and rare. Totally. That's also, I think May 1st, so May 1st was the date where they started issuing them, even though that was five days early. So that would be what's called a first day cover. It's an envelope with a 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 ceremonies for these kind of things, especially, I swear to God, if they're releasing a commemorative stamp in particular, there's definitive stamps, which are your everyday American flag forever stamp, that they basically release in 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, an event, something like that. And when they release those stamps, they'll have a ceremony 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 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 to go, what kind of stamps you want? What do you have? And anecdotally, I can say that most people choose something rather than saying, I don't care. I just want something to mail something. Stop asking me questions.

I've been plenty of 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 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. Are there some? I'm sure there is. Yeah. I'll bring you one. Sure. I'll mail you something with one on it.

How about that? Do you really have some? Yeah, I do. Okay. Send me something for sure. I will. I'll mention the first day cover though, people will collect first day covers of just very regular, commonly issued stamps just because it's a 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 too sometimes. And then if you have something that's designed or a design that's printed on a stamp, it's called a cache, yet another arcane jargon term. America. And people spend a lot of time, by the way, I looked up into the cache world and there

are stamp collectors that very much get into making their own caches and special made caches and it's a whole other subset as well. Yeah. It's basically, 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 mean a cache is an additional like ink stamp put on the envelope. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Oh, okay. Like a stamp. Yeah, I know. We need another term. I think that's what confused me. Rubber ink stamp. A rubber ink stamp of an angel blowing a horn around Christmas time. I got you.

I got you. So America got into the stamp releasing act about less than a decade after Great Britain did. 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.

Great Britain still to this day doesn't because they were the first and so they still don't put Great Britain or UK or anything on their stamps. That's right. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So America got into it in 1847, July 1st, no less. There was a five cent Benjamin Franklin at 10 cent George Washington and what else did we need?

You know? Yeah. And this is 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 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 dirty secret. Postage stamps are kind of where the bread and butter is for stamp collecting, I think. So like we said before, that 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 1868. And they basically just started tracking stamp after stamp. So the lower the number associated with the stamp that the Scott catalog has given that stamp, the earlier the stamp was released. And so over time, it's grown into, I think, a 12 volume collection catalog, the Scott catalog has, but it's so widely known and widely used that a lot of stamps are described and talked about by their Scott catalog number rather than whatever common name they have.

Right. And there are prefixes and suffixes. If there are different special issued stamps or some of those errors you were talking about or some rad purse, the inverted Jenny, which we'll talk about in a minute, like that's known as C3A in the stamp world. Because C denotes air mail stamps. Yeah, which is great and a 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 with the A is for A is reserved for. There's also the Michelle catalog from Germany. And that is 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, sometimes they will not be. I think North Korean stamps do are not in the Scott catalog. So the Michelle catalog comes around because they're German and they're like, sure, we'll cover it. Sure. So it turns out that there's actually been a pretty decent amount of famous people who collect stamps 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 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 added a few more stamps. He doesn't seem to have been a passionate philatelist by any stretch from what I've heard. All right. Ayn Rand was.

I know. And then Patrick Dempsey I saw referenced here or there. McDreamy. Yeah. And then Queen Elizabeth II apparently is a stamp collector. And then Sally Ride was a very famous philatelist as well and ended up on a stamp herself. Yes, sadly. This is something that I think is super cool.

The fact that. No, no, Sally Ride was fine. She didn't die in an accident. Oh, that's right. She died later in life. Yeah, yeah. That was Kristen McAuliffe. That's what I was thinking of.

Did you ever see that Challenger documentary yet? I still haven't. It's in my view. 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 admit to. It's crazy.

Amazing. Amelia Earhart. I think this is super cool. She actually funded some of her aviation expeditions, including some of those transatlantic flights with stamps. She would get covers and she would sometimes they're a cash aid and she would get stamps and she would fly to places 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 stamped here and in England or something or stamped in England or canceled I guess in England. And when she went down in that plane, along with poor Fred Noonan, there were 5,000 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 on the Titanic and I didn't think about it, but it wasn't just people dropping off their mail, passengers on the Titanic mailing postcards. RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship. So the RMS Titanic was a mail carrier too. So it was carrying British and Irish and European mail 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 mail 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 it's still preserved and they might bring it up someday. So President Roosevelt was a very dedicated stamp collector, FDR, a pre-presidency and then through his presidency, which was many, many years. And this is interesting in that the president has the ear of the postmaster general.

I know, it seems unfair. Well, 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. In the 1930s, 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 what if he was terrible at it and Farley would see

him come in, just 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 those stupid stamps. It's pretty funny. But it's kind of cool though. He did sketch out ideas apparently and in his collection, he had some full sheets and he had some die proofs and stuff like that. So he did, he did have 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, literally and figuratively and leading the country. It's just kind of cool. When we talk about the inverted Jenny, the coolest stamp of all time. Yeah. There's a bunch of famous stamps.

We should say the inverted Jenny is not the most, the most valuable stamp that goes to the British Guiana Magenta, right? Yeah, which isn't that great looking, but it's just rare, I guess. I think there's only one of it in existence, the British Guiana One-Sent Magenta. But the far and away, the inverted Jenny is the most famous stamp of all time has to be. Yeah. So in 1918, the U.S. commissioned a stamp to commemorate the first airmail service going

on. And so they decided on a two-color stamp with a plane on it, a Curtis JN4. 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 would be the blue plane itself. And there was an error at one point, and there were a few panes where it was flipped upside down. And it was either the sheet or the printing plate was upside down.

And so the Jenny was inverted. And you've got this upside down plane, and all of a sudden stamp collectors get wind of this. And they're like, oh my gosh, there was a mistake. We need to get our hands on some of these. Yeah. And then a man named William Roby showed up at the printing press and said, do you have any that are messed up, that are upside down?

And they had found that they had printed some accidentally, and all but one sheet was destroyed. So 100 inverted Jennies were produced, which makes it not one of the rare stamps around. Remember that British Keyanna once at Magenda, there's only one. Right. There's only one Benjamin Franklin Z grill. There's a hundred of these things. But people just love them. We go bonkers for them.

And as a matter of fact, one of the reasons why the inverted Jennies become such a sought after part of the stamp collecting world is because it's just been in the spotlight so much. Like there've been some really high profile thefts of inverted Jennies over the years. There was one block of four called the McCoy block that was stolen in 1955. And every couple decades, one of them's recovered and there's a big to do about it. There was another theft from the New York public library in 1977. That was finally recovered years later.

It's just something about that stamp makes it the most famous of all time. That's right. And in this one case, there was a dealer or there was this man who purchased the sheet, 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 was not in mint condition, but they were at least identifiable. And I think the story goes that one of these was stolen and it turned up in the 80s 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 that had made its way into circulation, but it wasn't until 2002 when a woman's locket, the wife of Colonel Edward Green, the guy who bought that original block of 100, that businessman, she died and her locket made its way into auction and somebody opened it up and found

that the inverted Jenny in the 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 meant 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 2019 sold for 1.35 mil. Yeah, there was a block of them, I think. Not the most valuable, but pretty, pretty pricey. Plus, also, it made its way into one of the better movies that came out of the 80s, Brewster's 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 as mail. That's a fun fact. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool, huh? I love it, and that ties in with Blazing Saddles because Richard Pryor almost played Sheriff Bart.

Oh, nice. Full circle. What is the name of the actor who did and said? Cleveland Little, who was great, but Richard Pryor was a writer on the movie. Okay. You got anything else about Richard Pryor or Philataly? Nope. Neither do I, but there is a ton out there.

I read an article about the serial number that's written on the side of the plane on the inverted Jenny and how Philatalists got to the bottom of why that serial number was used. I mean, there is a lot of information out there, and there's a lot of stamps to collect. Go forth and try out a new hobby and see what you think. As I said, go forth, that means, of course, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to 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. Sure. Yours was my first podcast subscription from several years back, and as a stay-at-home mom that has, that list has grown substantially across several genres, and I'm plugged in constantly when I clean, cook, exercise, et cetera. When lockdown was first initiated here in California, I tried to keep as normal a schedule as possible, despite all three of my children relegated to home for distance learning.

None of my at least dozen podcasts seemed appropriate to absorb except for yours. The 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 balance between knowledge, lightheartedness, sincerity, and understanding, and the true friendship radiates from your voices, and it's incredibly soothing. I revisited your past episodes for 10 months before I 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 you two 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 Zanida Johnson of San Jose, California. Man, that was a bang up emails, Zanida, thank you very 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, I'll never get tired of hearing that, but it's all, you know, it's just, we talk about a pat on the back, you know, hearing that we help people get through the pandemic is about as high praise as you can get these days.

Means a lot. Yeah, thanks a lot, Zanida, and we're glad that we could help you out, and everybody who we helped out, and everybody who we slightly annoyed or made laugh or did anything over last year or 13 years, thank you for listening. How about that? Nice to sit. If you want to get, thank you. If you want to get in touch with us like Zanida, is it Zanida or Zanida?

Zanida, she even was kind enough to put a little pronunciation guide. Very nice. If you want to get in touch with us like Zanida did, then you can send us an email too. 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 StuffPodcasts.iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

I'm Munga Shatikler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts.