Just To Cheer Everyone Up !

I had a couple of brothers who were much older than me. They "collected" stamps.

The image below shows you what I " inherited". I'm guessing this particular set is from about 1955 or so.

My Mom (God bless her soul) probably stuck them to the pages with the scotch tape and then removed them when it seemed I was going to follow in the steps of my brothers.

Oh, if only our Stamp Albums could talk......

Nice one Prince

I love it when people post "life" pictures like this.
This is actually postal history, no different from when ladies
pasted their bedrooms with penny blacks.
Otherwise this information gets lost forever, because people
assume it too "nerdy".




BTW those damaged stamps look like the "occupations" set,
if you have a 100 Lira there, that's a valuable stamp

Excellent Rodster

Crikey! quick draw McGraw :)

I have a Vanuatu cancellation for you soon
I'll post it for your exclusive interest :)

Interesting to see the Garcelon Stamp company on the glassine envelope.

We stamp collecting kids of the 50s and 60s no doubt remember the ads for "approvals" placed by the Garcelon company in comic books.

The ad always said the company was in Calais, Maine. In reality it was in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, a town on the Canadian side of the border.

The Garcelon building was within walking distance of the bridge across the St Croix River which formed the border in that part of the country.

I remember seeing the building during my early stamp-collecting days when my parents would drive to St Stephen from our home in south-central NB.

It was on the town's main street and its front was clad in shiny black granite with only a small sign simply saying 'Garcelon Stemp Company". Every day, Garcelon workers would cross the bridge to take mail over to Calais and pick up mail destined for the company.

I suppose having a US address was attractive to collectors in the States and was also a benefit to Garcelon because of postal rates.

The exchange rate in those days was as fluid as it is today; and, for many years in the 50s, the Canadian dollar was worth more than the US dollar. That changed in with a decision by a Canadian Prime Minister. Remember the Diefen-dollars.......a phony bill the opposition party had printed which depicted a 97-cent dollar.

The company went out of business in the early 70s. The building is still there, now occupied by a few small shops.

Maybe others will remember some of those stamp companies we used to buy from like Jamestown Stamps of Jamestown, NY, Niagara Stamps of Niagara-on-the-lake, ON. Harris Stamps and others.

While writing this, I Googled Garcelon and I found out most of what I said about Garcelon was correct. Now, that's a relief.

Hehe,
nice yarn, thanks for sharing your memories.

Kenmore and Mystic were two other such companies selling stamps on approval mostly to less experienced collectors and kids. I believe Kenmore was run by Harris' son. Mystic is thriving in Camden NY, not very far from here.

Whatever happened to Jamestown Stamps? I received approvals from them as a kid. As an aside, on a trip to Washington DC, with my PolySci class as a sophomore, we went on a cruise down the Potomac and I met this girl from Jamestown NY. She was amazed that I had even heard of Jamestown, being as how I was from Georgia, clearly in the category of a foreign country to her.

As a kid I bought from Harris and I think Littleton Stamp Co.
Someone please refresh my memory. Was there a Littleton Stamp Company and was it Littleton, MA?

Yes, there was a Littleton Stamp Company. It was in New Hampshire.

Lucille Ball was from Jamestown, New York. But this couldn't have been.

Just a bit of trivia.

XNBer thanks for the memories...i was a customer of most of the approval companies that had little ads in the back of Popular Science etc...they had rubber stamps like "please make your purchase at least 25 cents !" I liked Garcelon..some years ago we were in New Hampshire and stopped for a meal in Littleton...i decided to try and find the Littleton Stamp Company..sad to say I found it a few miles out of town...it looked like a huge windowless metal sided building that might belong to a welding outfit..i had no desire to go closer !!

there is nothing little about littleton

Hey Rod, not that I wish you unwell (of course) but what will happen to your fabulous database when you decide to commune with the angels????

You amaze me with the images you have....................

Spock can you elaborate on your inscrutable "there is nothing little about Littleton ? It looked like a typical New Hampshire town to me ?

I am just about to leave my will as it happens, Jubilee.
( of sound mind and body and all that....)

I'll leave all my stamps and my hard drive to the
Perth Philatelic Society, they can do what they will,
It will be of no interest to me,
I'll be having a prawn on the barbie with Gabriel (I hope)

If I get crook in the next decade or so, I'll make
you a copy, no probs, it's not worth much
but I reckon it'll be cool say 100 years from now.

But then again, in 100 years, the entire knowledge of the planet
will be on the end of a pin