The Virtual GB Album

This section of the Virtual GB Album was originally developed as a talk that I gave to several stamp clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area. In choosing a topic for the talk, I tried to meet two criteria: the talk had to be of interest to collectors who did not specialize in Great Britain and it had to be easily illustratable. Something like “Flyspecs of the Wilding Definitives” would not meet the first criterion, and “Phosphor Variations of the Machin Series” would fail the second (and the first as well!).

By the time I developed this talk, I had become fairly proficient in the use of a scanner and Adobe Photoshop® to create good images from actual stamps and covers. I also had previously tried to use a camera to make slides of the material. This turned out less than successful because I don’t have the proper photographic equipment or experience, and, in addition, slide projectors are hard to find in this computerized age and are notoriously difficult to operate successfully when you can find one.

I scanned the material and used my computer with a borrowed computer presentation projector to give the talk. It was, if I may say so myself, very successful. As a by-product, the images can now be “mounted” here in the Virtual GB Album.

When giving the talk, I was introduced as a specialist in British philately and one of the Great Britain columnists for Linn’s Stamp News. To this I added that my experience with Linn’s is in good part responsible for my interest in British postal history. Like many collectors, at first I was only interested in British stamps. However, when I was faced with writing a periodic column, it became necessary to branch out beyond stamps so that I could write about a wide range of topics. In addition, I had become familiar with nearly all British stamps to the level of my own interest, and postal history opened up a whole new collecting area for me.

I have never had a specific area of specialty in postal history. I have simply acquired items that interested me and fit in my rather limited stamp budget. As you will see in this album, my interests range from the pre-stamp era to the latest cover franked with Machin definitives. My collection, as reflected here, has breadth rather than depth.

Given the wide variety of items in the collection, I felt the only way to organize it was chronologically. It starts, therefore, with pre-stamp covers and ends with a recent Elizabethan item.

As I did in my talk, here I try to explain each item and what I found interesting about it. Often the interest is political or social in nature, rather than philatelic. My hope is that you, too, will find these items interesting and will learn something from most of them.

One thing that often confuses collectors who are new to postal history is the many meanings of the word “stamp.” If you are simply collecting adhesive postage stamps, then there is only one meaning — the noun “stamp ” refers to the small piece of paper and the verb “stamp” refers to putting one of these pieces of paper on an envelope. However, when discussing postal history, the noun “stamp” can refer to a postal marking on a cover, such as the ones shown above, and it can also refer to the device used to apply such a marking. Similarly, the verb “stamp” can refer to applying such a marking to a cover. I have tried to be careful to make my explanations clear, but keep these multiple definitions in mind when reading the text.

Being relatively new to postal history, I don’t have a full background in its intricacies. If you see some information that I’ve omitted, or, more importantly, that is wrong, please write to me at larry@gbstamps.com and let me know.

So now, please click the ‘Next’ arrow for Tidbits of British Postal History.