Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Slide(s) of the month - Stamps


January 2018

Time to make: 1 hour

 Boys Life "Slide of the Month"

"Button 'N' Things" May 1959, page 58
Kenneth Damm

"Postage Stamp" July 1987, page 56
Robert Schleicher

"Stamp" May 1978, page 67
Wayne Mason



When I was a Scout, Stamp Collecting Merit Badge was a very popular merit badge to earn during the cold days and nights of winter. Now when you combine two hobbies, (a philatelsideist?), the results can be stunning. 

The first stamp, a 1929 1 cent Ben Franklin, is mounted on a coat button. The loop is a coat hanger which the ends are glued into the holes of the button. But more on this slide later...

 The middle slide is made using wooden knob with  a 3/4 inch eye screw, to form the loop, screwed into the knobb.  The stamp is a 1939 "50th Anniversary of Statehood" for Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota 

The last stamp is mounted on a thin piece of 1/8 inch painted plywood with a wooden loop glued to the back. When is a stamp not a stamp? Well when I was researching this stamp I discovered the Republik Maluku Seltan I have is a private issue stamp with no postal value. Henry Stolow, a stamp dealer in New York, Munich and Berlin, had many stamps of "doubtful validity" created with deliberate printing errors and overprints. In addition he also involved in creating many fake stamps for the Indonesian Maluku Islands as an independent nation.




 Originally, the "Buttons 'N' Things" slide showed a picture of the coat button with macaroni letters spelling out

Pack 3
Den 2

Well, I'm out of macaroni letters but have a couple of other items mentioned in the article which could be mounted on coat buttons. Besides a stamp, a small radio tube and electronic parts were also mentioned as something interesting for a slide. I decided to mount a nixie tube




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