1898 Revenues is an experiment. This site is a blog, which is essentially an online diary that allows me and other contributors to easily post updates or additions whenever we wish. Everything in the left column comprises the running diary section which is updated frequently, while the right-side columns, which can be edited, largely stay the same from day to day.
As for the experiment, there are other blogs out there in philately, but none that I’ve found that function as a workbook for specialist collectors.
The blog format allows for a collector with a roving attention span like mine to “post” or add material to the site as ideas or inspiration occur. As a specialist collector of the 1898 series of US revenue stamps, I have many sub-interests in the series, and am particularly a collector of cancels. This interest in cancels is clearly demonstrated on the site, and as compelling cancels on the series are so varied, numerous, and often cheap, there is a seemingly endless source of material to make additions to the site almost everyday.
I use this website as a stamp collecting tool. Daily site updates or posts provide a framework for work on the 1898 series, including stamps in my collection and those of others. For example, avid reader, 1898 collector and contributor David Thompson sends dozens of scans from his collection monthly for potential use on the site. While cancel possibilities on 1898s are not infinite, they sometimes seem so, and I am always grateful for contributors like David that help keep the accumulation of on-line and searchable cancel knowledge growing.
This raises the fact of the great utility of building online philatelic data. While there are many ways to go about it, like digitizing the existing print resources of the American Philatelic Research Library, the regular addition of posts to this blog, and the back-and-forth of active collectors in creating those posts, is creating a new, real-time way to build a portfolio of readily accessible and searchable philatelic information. Hence my labeling of this site as an experiment. 1898 Revenues is in part helping to preserve the knowledge of present specialists in the field, even if this was never the original intent.
I am always looking for new contributors or a new material for the site. If you have something special or unique to contribute, don’t hesitate to contact me at 1898revenues@gmail.com. Further, if you simply have a question about a stamp or document you have that you don’t know much about, you may send an inquiry to the same email address.
Publisher: John Langlois, Maryland, USA
Contact: 1898revenues@gmail.com
Publishing since: March 29, 2009
