Inside Linn’s: Stamps and postal history from the 9/11 era

By Charles Snee

The Sept. 2 digital-only issue of Linn’s Stamp News will be available to subscribers Saturday, Aug. 17. While you wait for your issue to arrive in your inbox, enjoy these three quick glimpses of exclusive content available only to subscribers. 

Stamps and postal history from the 9/11 era

In Modern U.S. Mail, Richard L. Beecher introduces readers to what he calls a “side interest in philatelic material related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and other significant events that transpired as a result of the attacks.” With the upcoming 23rd anniversary of the attacks, Beecher takes a look back at the stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service and explores “how the mails were used to support and oppose the subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the lengthy war that followed.” The two covers he illustrates take opposing views of the Iraq war.

Tools and terms for finding your stamps

William F. Sharpe opens his Computers and Stamps column with a brief anecdote about dropping a binder of stock pages filled with duplicate United States from the top of his second floor stairs. He uses that philatelic mishap to discuss a number of sources he used to identify the Scott catalog numbers of the stamps, including the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers, the Identifier of Definitive Issues section in the Scott online catalog and Google Images. As one might expect, some stamps were harder to identify than others. Sharpe has all the details.

Tip of the week: United States 2018 The Art of Magic pane

Stamp Market Tips columnists Henry Gitner and Rick Miller recommend keeping an eye out for mint panes of 20 of the five United States 2018 nondenominated (50¢) The Art of Magic stamps (Scott 5301-5305). “This set of stamps appeals to stamp collectors and to people generally uninterested in stamp collecting who are interested in the subject of stage magic,” Gitner and Miller write.

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