Stamp Coins

Stamp Coins

Minting a New Collection

From rodeo stars to Buffalo Nickels, the latest trends in stamps and coins.

Considering collecting coins? Want to start a stamp collection? If you are in it for the money, think again. “We never encourage it because it’s such a risky business,” says stamp expert Kathleen Wunderly of the American Philatelic Society. “If you want to make money, invest in real estate.”

Of course, that hasn’t stopped America’s four million philatelists, and similar warnings from numismatic mavens haven’t slowed America’s two million coin collectors, either. Both groups are drawn to the beauty and historic value of what are essentially high-grade government documents. Moreover, stamps and coins are often issued in the form of commemoratives with the sole and honest intention of enticing collectors.

No matter what your motivation is, though, bragging rights depend on knowing what’s hot. To fill you in, we’ve put together this primer of the latest trends.

Stamps: Celebrities stamps are doing boffo box office as philatelists snap up the $7 Schwarzenegger from Mali, the $1 Madonna from St. Vincent, Tanzania, and, of course, the United States.

Coins and stamps. Minted Coins. Photo: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

A new hit: Marilyn Monroe, Tanzania was first in 1991, with an oversized $7 stamp. Then came Gambia in 1993, which was soon followed by the tiny island nation of St. Vincent and, a little while later, Mali.

Cash-strapped governments like to issue commemoratives of this sort because they are rarely used for postage, which makes them a painless way of raising revenue. So far, these governments – with the help of private, multinational stamp distributors – have predicted well what philatelists will desire. All of the Marily stamps have been sold and are now available only through dealers and other collectors.

Not wanting to miss out on a good thing, the U.S. Postal Service in 1995 introduced its own Marilyn stamp, and sold the entire 400 million run within a year.

The Postal Service generated another popular stamp somewhat less intentionally when it decided to commemorate rodeo star Bill “The Bulldogger” Pickett in 1994.

Pickett, one of America’s first black rodeo stars, got his nickname in the 1930s because he could stun an enraged steer by pinching a lip nerve with a well-placed chomp. Sadly, that sort of precision was nowhere evident when the Postal Service decided to include Pickett in its “Heroes of the American West” series. Instead of portraying Pickett’s famous teeth (as well as the rest of his face) the Postal Service mistakenly based its portrait on a photo of Pickett’s brother and manager Ben.

In all of its existence, the Postal Service had not once put the wrong face on a stamp. This was the sort of rarity that stamp collectors could really sink their teeth into, especially since a mortified Postal Service had stopped the presses and recalled the 5.2 million panes that already had been released. A meager 183 panes were leaked out to a lucky few collectors.

Corrected versions of the panes were released within months, but no one cared about them. The new stamps were plentiful, accurate and easy to obtain. The remaining Ben Pickett stamps, on the other hand, were under lock and key in a warehouse in Kansas City. Collectors wanted them, the Pickett family wanted them destroyed, and the Postal Service, saying that collectors deserved access to the stamps and that Postal Service regulations forbade it from intentionally creating rarities.

The dealers lost the suit, but with permission of Pockett’s relatives the Postal Service decided to sell 150,000 of the panes by lottery for a mere $14.50 (face value plus “postage and handling”).

Stamp experts estimated at the time that a single pane would fetch over $100 in the private market because, like any good performer, Pickett had left his audience wanting more.

Coins

Numismatists trying to nickel-and-dime their way into a new collection should forget the dimes and double-check their nickels. Today’s Jefferson nickel hasn’t been through a design change since 1938, so it is possible to collect almost every mint since then just by checking out your pocket change.

The precursor to the Jefferson nickel was the Indian head buffalo nickel, which was minted from 1913 to 1938. “They’re a beautiful coin, and they’ve seen some gains recently,” says Kari Stone, Managing Editor of COINage magazine. She attributes their popularity to their relatively Low prices, especially since excitement from a big investment peak year of 1989 is now past and the market is now setting into the lower end of the business cycle. Although some U.S. coins run into five and six figures, a good buffalo nickel (i.e., one in “extremely fine condition”) will cost you about $100.

Lincoln cents also are popular. A 1909-s VDB – that is, a penny designed by Victor D. Brenner and minted in San Francisco in 1909 – would be worth $700 today if it were in mint condition.

Commemoratives, on the other hand, are not doing so well. The U.S. Treasury stopped issuing them in the 1950s because the constant creation of new commemoratives as a source of painless funds glutted the market and alienated collectors. They gave it another shot in 1982, and many commemoratives since then have been popular. But Stone warns that so many coins are now being minted that collectors will again lose interest, citing the 1994 World Cu commemorative – a coin that collectors ignored in droves.

Fact File: Coin Collectors, Phone Home: Colorful, prepaid telephone cards are catching on as a subset of the field of numismatics. A trend in Europe since Italy released the first debit card in 1976, COINage magazine reports that collectors here are snapping up the cards, which are printed in about 150 countries. The U.S. alone creates 25 million cards a year, and some now are worth up to $1,000. A card depicting a Big Mac that was given free with McDonald’s purchases in 1993, for instance, is now worth $125.

Fact File: Some stamps cost 32c, others a little more: The highest price paid at auction for a U.S. stamp collection was $8,2 million in 1993, and despite the price tag, the Japanese seller didn’t come close to recovering his initial investment. The highest price paid at auction for a single stamp was $1.35 million in 1990 for a rare Swedish stamp, the first to break the $1 million mark. The Swiss industrialist who bought it had coveted the stamp ever since he saw it at an exhibition as a child.

Face value: Who’s Who on a $100 Bill

$1 – Front: George Washington, Back: U.S. Seal, circulation in August 1994 $5,772,813,662

$2 – Front: Thomas Jefferson, Back: Signers of Declaration, circulation: $976,023,972

$5 – Front: Abraham Lincoln, Back: Lincoln Memorial, circulation: $6,022,128,480

$10 – Front: Alexander Hamilton, Back: U.S. treasury, circulation: $13,066,968,420

$20 – Front: Andrew Jackson, Back: White House, circulation: $76,376,592,100

$50 – Front: Ulysses Grant, Back: U.S. Capitol, circulation: $42,022,616,050

$100 – Front: Benjamin Franklin, Back Independence Hall, circulation: $219,236,790,200

$500 – Front: William McKinley, Back: Ornate Denomination, circulation: $145,832,000

$1,000 – Front: Grover Cleveland, Back: Ornate Denomination, circulation: $169,062,000

$5,000 – Front: James Madison, Back: Ornate Denomination, circulation: $1,775,000

$10,000 – Front: Salmon Chase, Back: Ornate Denomination, circulation: $3,450,000.

Where to Go to Get Started

Associations, catalogs and magazines for stamp and coin collectors

Stamps: American Philatelic society – Oldest and largest, services include insurance and certification

The Scott Catalog: Scott Publishing Co., Annual – Six volumes of definitive numbers and prices

Linn`s Stamp News: All the stamp news that`s fit to print.

Coins: American Numismatic Association. Like APS, it is the oldest, the largest, and the best

The Standard Catalog of World Coins. Krause Publications annual. Definitive prices for coins minted from 1801 to the present

Coin World: Lives up to its motto: “Enriching coin collecting through knowledge.”

The End, painting by Elena.

Collectible Cards

Collectible Cards

What cards are collectible?: An experts tells you his favorites and why cards become popular

A child collects a complete set of 1951 Topps cards and keeps them in a shoe box under the bed. Years later mom pitches them in the trash. “21,000 down the drain! The collector cries.

Theo Chen says the story is mostly apocryphal. But Chen, an analyst for the authoritative price guide that makes up the bulk of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly , admits card can be valuable, “otherwise, pur publication wouldn’t be built around a price guide.”

But the value of a baseball card is hard to predict as a player’s batting average. Here are some tips from Chen on how to guess which cards will be batting .500 in the years to come.

Put your money on popularity: The first thing is the player – his popularity, his accomplishments, his place in sport history. There are cases of players with better stats whose cards are much less valuable than other players. It really just comes down to popularity, whether the guy was a flashy player whether he did a lot of endorsements that made him larger than life, whether he played during the right era. Dwight Gooden, for instance, was seen as the potential greatest pitcher of the era. Now, he’s got into off-field problems and his cards are almost unsellable.

Wagner. Collectible Card

Condition is important: Old cards in good shape are worth so much because so many people didn’t take care of their cards. They kept them in shoe-boxes, put them in bike spokes, flipped them, whatever. Ones that survived are tough to find.

Get these cards: Seattle Mariner out-fielder Ken Griffey, Jr. From Upper Deck, and White Sox slugger Frank Thomas are the twin titans of baseball cards. They’re young; they are seen as friendly, nice guys; they are dominant offensive forces in the spot; and they are incredible early numbers that put them well on track toward the hall of fame. Also keep an eye on Jeff Bagwell of the Houston Astros. If he keeps up the pace he’s been doing, he might be seen as the National League’s version of Frank Thomas.

Jose Canseco from Donruss. Sandy Koufax from Topps, Ricky Henderson from Topps.

Advice for Fast Bidding

Going, going, gone

Some advice for when the bidding gets fast and furious

It’s easy to lose big at an auction, especially if you don’t know some of the tricks of the trade. Here, expert auction-goers from around the country offer some advice to bear in mind before you raise your paddle.

If there is a catalog, read it carefully. Most people gloss over the introductory material that lists the terms and conditions, and that’s a mistake, because often you’re given clues about what the auction house actually thinks about an object by the way they phrase attributions and dates. If the book says “in the Chippendale style,” that means they don’t think it was made in the Chippendale period (mid- to late-18th century).

– Charles Hummel, Deputy director for the Collection at Winterthur in Wilmington, Del.

You should wrote your bid down on the catalog, and remember when you set your limit that on top of the hammer price you’ll pay a 10 percent fee – 15 percent at Sotheby’s and Christie’s – as well as sales tax. I stuck to my game sheet. Auctions are exciting, and all of a sudden things are moving along and you can find yourself bidding $200 when you meant to spend $100.

– Kenneth Newman, Owner of the Old Print Shop in New York City.

Don’t bid on anything you haven’t personally examined or anything you feel uneasy about – the bad feelings you get about an object at an auction will only increase with time and eat away at you over the years. During the preview, stand near what interests you. If you like a table, look at a chair next to it as other people – maybe people who know a lot more than you do – examine the table. Listen to what they say about it.

Advice for miracles. Photo: Elena

– Chuck Muller, Editor of Antique Review.

You might consider commissioning a dealer to bid for you – a typical charge would be 10 percent. Read the magazines and look at the ads for dealers, or go to antique shows and size up the dealers, or go to antique shows and size up the dealers. See what they’re selling. At antique shows, you’re on neutral territory – you both paid to be there, so you’ve both got a stake in the thing. Collecting and buying antiques and art is one place that really rewards knowledge, so go to the best dealers in the field.

– Sam Pennington, Editor of Maine Antique Digest.

I believe in material that has a proven track record – things that have survived bad economic times well. Chinese export porcelain, Delftware, early metal-works, Old master paintings and drawings. These things very rarely even take a down-turn. Reprsentative pieces by outstanding craftsemen – those will always hold their value.

– Mark Allen, Antique Dealer in Putnam Valley, NY.

It’s a good idea to note who the dealers are and how they’re bidding, but you need to take what you hear from them with a grain of salt. Remember that they’re stopping their bidding at close to wholesale prices, so that even if you go above what the dealers are bidding, you can still get a fair price – probably something closer to retail. On the whole, the published estimates are a good guide; the pieces that sell for more than the estimate are very often the finest pieces.

– Karen Keane, Managing director of Skinner auction house in Boston, Mass.

Expert sources: Finding the Auction Action

Here are the leading journals in the world of antiques, art, and auctions, Richard and Sabine Yanul, owner of the Franz Bader Bookstore in Washington, D.C., also recommend their favorite books.

Magazines:

Art & Auction: A classy glossy that covers the international art scene with good gossip and features on collecting. Calendars cover auctions, fairs, museums, events and galleries in the United States and abroad.

Maine Antique Digest: The bible for antique dealers. 300 quirky pages each month with listings of auctions all over the country, and reports on many of them, both famous and obscure. This is the one magazine to get.

Antique review: A 100-page tabloid focused on pre-1900 antiques. It’s best for news about the auction in the Midwest and features great coverage of the artists and makers.

Art & Antiques: More of a coffee-table mag, less market-oriented than the others. A good read, with a column on collecting in different cities and features on artists and trends.

Books:

The New Five Points of Furniture: The classic, first published in 1950, by a son of Israel Sack, one of New York City’s most respected antique dealers. Lives up to subtitle Early American – Good, Better, Best, Superior or Masterpiece with exhaustive, definitive rankings of about 200 different furniture types, including hundreds of photos.

The Collector’s encyclopedia of Antiques: Includes sections on type of furniture, porcelain, tapestries, a glossary, tips on repairs and maintenance, hints about fakes and forgeries, lists of good museum collections, and recommended reading, 2000 (mostly small) illustrations.

Field Guide to American Antique Furniture: Provides an anatomy of furniture types, with easy-to-read line drawings labeled with the relevant terms. Includes an overall history and chapters on different periods, with 1,700 drawings.

Sotheby’s Art and Auction: The Art Market Review. Conran-Octopus, published yearly. Gorgeous color photos of the works on every page, but more useful for window shopping than serious research.

Art an Auction in America: Krexpress, published yearly. The most affordable price guide available – and one of the best that can be found anywhere.

Opening a Hotel

Opening an Hotel

Most people, at least if we consider the developed world where finding one’s next meal is not the majority’s preoccupation, people want to make money. Many people want to make money by acquiring the skills and qualifications that employers look for, or academic and experiential credentials, while other people prefer to take the more entrepreneurial route and become their own own boss.

Naturally, being your own boss has many advantages. You deduce how much vacations and free time you get, when and how hard you work, and even if you show up at work at all in many cases. However, being your own boss also has disadvantages. Most enterprises in this world have pros and cons. For example, if you happen to be the sole proprietor of a business firm, you alone bear all the risks of the company.

Hotel in Nassau. Photo by Elena

Still, the company can also go public if it is a large enough company to go public, or sell stock and raise capital that way. Thus, according to corporate law, the shareholders share in ownership of the company. Therefore, a Board of Directors may be created which could even fire the original founder through an unanimous vote! The principal agent theorem is often cited here because management’s first and foremost goal should be to maximize shareholders’ value, by paying higher dividends in profits, for example, but often times personal goals such as salary bonuses or other managerial cash incentives may be more appealing to a particular manager.

Another way for entrepreneurs to enter the business world without an initial business idea of their own, is through franchising. Choice Hotels is one such example. Choice Hotels include The Econo Lodge, The Comfort Inn, the Quality Inn and many other hotels chains which business owners could invest in. In a way, such a situation may be viewed as the best of both worlds, since the franchisee fees take care of the business concept, but the entrepreneur still has a business he or she gets to run.

Do I Have a Deal for You

Do I Have a Deal for You

In Hollywood, everyone from the parking attendant to the prima donna has an agent. But buying insurance isn’t like inking a pact with a movie mogul. You might do better without an agent.

The Buyer’s Guide to Insurance from Consumer Federation of America’s Insurance Group offers some guidance.

The best way to use an agent: Agents almost always sell insurance on a commission basis. The more money you pay them, the more money they make. Agents representing only one company usually receive a lower commission, so that their prices can be lower than “independent agents who sell for several companies”. Companies that don’t use agents usually have the lowest rates. Furthermore, consumer satisfaction tends to be higher for the lowest priced companies.

The best way to use an agent is to get a good low price from a company that doesn’t use agents then ask the agent if he or she can beat that deal. According to CFA, USAA (which only sells insurance to active or retired armed forces commissioned officers) and Ameritas are “the best companies” that don’t use agents.

A good deal. Photo by Elena

When more means less: Premiums tend to be proportional to policy limits; a $360,000 homeowner’s policy costs about 20 percent more than a $300,000 policy, even though the extra risk for insurance companies (because most claims are for partial losses) is far less than 20 percent more.

So don’t automatically go along with agent or company suggestions or higher limits. Beware of inflation-guard automatic increases in coverage or premiums. The percentage insurers select may be too high (or, sometimes, too low) for your house. Check it out against recent sales in your neighbourhood.

Why not to drop an old policy: Don’t let an agent talk you into dropping an old life insurance policy, if it pays dividends. Replacement of such policies has reached scandalous proportions in recent years as agents churn such policies for commissions.