Philately - The Fiction Connection
The Mystery Box book is the proud winner of a Silver Medal awarded by the Chicago Philatelic Society CHICAGOPEX Literature Exhibit
Read the Book Review by Barbara Kinne of the APS American Philatelist
Frederick Highland's 'StampWhys' series made its first appearance in Linn's Stamp News in 1999. Since then the monthly offering has grown to a collection of over 90 articles.
The series is both playful and educational --not that they are mutually exclusive! Philatelic StampWhys quizzes are designed to illustrate some aspect of the stamp collecting hobby. Topical StampWhys, on the other hand, challenge the reader to identify an odd or unusual and often humorous stamp image.
The Mystery Box web site will eventually be home to all of them, and now includes four sets (21 quizzes). See how you fare.
Topical StampWhys from China and Czechoslovakia [Go]
Philatelic StampWhys from Egypt, Haiti, "The General Government", and Guatemala
[Go]
| Ambrose Bierce singed the eyebrows of more than a few intellectual scions of his day with this irreverent definition for Dictionary: |
" A malevolent |
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A Devil's Glossary of Philatelic Terms, too, is a most useful work. The definitions of the selected philatelic terms gathered in The Mystery Box are accurate, be they at times tongue in cheek. To quote Dr. Highland, "I believe that stirring up the pot of philately, as in other things, does not necessarily cook the golden goose of fact." |
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Sometimes called a "mystery lot", this collectors' delight consists of stamps available for purchase whose exact composition, hence worth, is unknown.
Almost every philatelist I have known has lied extensively and in great detail about the find he has discovered in a mystery box. The term is the source for the title of my book of mystery stories, which, being filled with the lies of fiction, is bound to please everyone in search of suspense, thrilling adventures, and wondrous tales.
Unlike definitive issues, commemoratives are not intended for everyday postal use over an indefinite period. Commemoratives, therefore, are issued on a special date to memorialize an individual (including the odd dinosaur or endangered species), place, activity, or event.
Commemoratives are usually beautiful to behold and definitives tend to be ugly, containing as they do images of political leaders.
Most stamps are either perforate or imperforate. Many of the early 19th century issues were of the latter type and had smooth edges all around. Perforation was created to make the stamps easy to detach and in time became a major method by which stamps are identified.
Perforations vary so greatly in size and type that someone invented a perforation gauge to assist the philatelist in telling them apart.
I have always derived a great deal of pleasure in lining up a stamp on a gauge and matching the perforations, but then I am amused by very simple things.
A dedicated stamp collector lives almost entirely for that moment of ecstasy when a stamp long-sought appears serendipitously, as in a mystery box, and is held, at last, in his trembling tongs.
Imagine Indiana Jones for the first time beholding the Holy Grail. Only collectors in tip-top physical shape and advanced stages of consciousness survive the ordeal.
Collector survivors report this discovery to other collectors as a find.
DEFINITIVE -- see commemorative (above)
literary device
for cramping the growth of language and making it hard and inelastic. This
dictionary, however, is a most useful work."