Ralph Kimble, the ‘Stamp Man’

U.S. Stamp Notes by John M. Hotchner

Stamp collecting is more than 180 years old, but we in the hobby today often forget the luminaries of the past on whose shoulders we stand. I was reminded of this by a couple of 1930s covers and a flyer found recently in dealer boxes at stamp shows.

One of the finds is the cacheted card shown in Figure 1. Another is a four-page flyer, the front of which is illustrated in Figure 2. The card is dated 1932, and the flyer mentions a 1933 summer announcement. Both the card and the flyer present “Lt. Col. Ralph A. Kimble, The Stamp Man of WMAQ,” with the flyer adding “Specialist in Educational Philately.”

Kimble was born in 1893 and became a stamp collector at age 8. He was a pioneer in bringing stamp collecting to the airwaves and initiated a weekly philatelic broadcast in 1930 on WMAQ, a Chicago news radio station.

He was also a writer with a regular column in the Chicago Daily News newspaper and two philatelic books to his credit, Commemorative Postage Stamps of the United States 1893-1933 and How to Collect Stamps.

He was editor of the Stamps magazine for a time, and editor of the American Philatelist of the American Philatelic Society from 1936 to 1951 (with a leave of absence during World War II for service with the United States Army).

It seems he was not only an expert in philately but also an expert at self-promotion, which I don’t think is a bad thing. After all, it brought him listeners as well as readers, while helping to sell the hobby to new collectors.

Connect with Linn’s Stamp News: 

    Sign up for our newsletter