"Trashy Labels"

by John M. Hotchner

I recently received an email from a reader, with the subject line as above, that reads in part, “Remember when the American Philatelic Society initiated its black dot [sic] program to identify stamps issued primarily for sale to collectors? They seemed to be especially concerned with the United States bicentennial issues. I don’t know what caused the program’s demise. Perhaps there were so many stamps issued primarily for sale to collectors that the black dot became meaningless. It was a well intentioned program that perhaps became overwhelmed by the avalanche of garbage that the postal authorities threw on the market.”

A bit of history: The APS Black Blot program came about in response to the flood of new issues from newly independent nations, many of which had higher than needed face values and portrayed subjects completely foreign to the new nation — subjects calculated to interest collectors in the developed nations. In other words, stamps were seen by the former colonies of western nations as a cash cow. The APS, and a later similar program by the International Federation of Philately (FIP), were well intentioned efforts to tell collectors what stamp issues and varieties they ought to avoid as being beyond the postal needs of the issuing countries, often overpriced, and issued in small quantities to stimulate the market besides.

The thought was laudable, but the concept carried the seeds of its own destruction; just as earlier efforts like the late 19th century Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps, which editorialized against the U.S. 1898 Trans-Mississippi set (9 stamps with values of 1˘ to $2), urging “collectors to refuse to purchase these stamps, and so assist in preventing the issue of stamps intended mainly for the purpose of sale to collectors and speculators.”

This view was not universally approved. An editorial in the Feb. 15, 1897 issue of The Philatelic Journal of Great Britain said this:

“There is not the slightest doubt that collectors of the issues to, say 1890, look despisingly on the flood of new issues; on the other hand, it is just as true that new collectors cannot possibly hope to obtain at the prices ruling today anything like a complete collection, and perforce must commence on a later date ...

“One of our chief objections to the SSSS is that its actions bring new issues ‘en bloc’ into disrepute, and consequently hurts the feelings of the new collector, who has already sufficient to contend with the high-handed way in which he is looked down upon and treated by his brethren of the old school ...

“We do not say you must collect so-and-so, neither do we advise collectors not to collect so-and-so. Let everyone collect what he pleases if he treats stamp collecting as a hobby. Those, however, who look upon stamp collecting as a moneymaking game are well able to look after themselves. The greatest enemy to philately today, in our humble opinion, is the latter individual; he who simply buys to force up prices and then sells. Such a collector is no more than a philatelic gambler.”