Returning to Publication, Now Twice a Week

Greetings regular readers.  As some of you know, the blog went on hiatus to start the 2026 new year.  I'll restart publication by altering the 4x/week schedule to only twice per week, to provide additional time for the occasional longer post and general creativity, and to provide more time in rest of my schedule.  Expect new posts every Tuesday and Saturday, with the possible ad hoc extra post on occasion.

The 1898 Revenues brand just expanded beyond blogging.  I recently set up a stamp store at Hip Stamp that specializes in US revenue stamps.  You can find it here: Hip Stamp 1898 Revenues.  

I'll restart posting with a familiar theme, cancels and material associated with the Chicago Board of Trade.  See you Tuesday!

1898 Revenues is Back?

As many readers may have noticed, your correspondent has not updated this site or been active for quite awhile.  Due to circumstances, some beyond my control, some having do to do with the weight of other obligations, and some having to do with lost momentum, 1898 Revenues has been dormant.

I'm now in the process of deciding how to handle future publishing targets.  The previous grind of nearly daily posts won't return for awhile.  Outside obligations remain intense, if not as great as in the past year or so.  Look forward to fewer posts than in the past. But there should be at least several posts a month, and when inspired, more than several.

Good to be back.

Hiatus?

It has been a quiet week for this website.  Work and family have kept me very busy.  In the coming week I hope to get back to posting daily, or at least almost daily.  

There has been one major technical glitch.  The desktop crashed.  I hope that in the next few days I can report that I managed to save the data on the hard disk.   

Site Changes

Pardon the interuption in daily postings.  I've been doing a bit of minor reengineering to the site lately and the work is using up all of my time for the site.

The new bar under the header with links to "Home", "About", etc., is a work in progress but should provide casual visitors and regulars alike the ability to understand and use the site better.

Normal postings will resume in the next few days.

1000th Post Milestone for 1898 Revenues

Frank Sente called to my attention the fact that this month, and with this post, 1898 Revenues has now reached the milestone of 1000 published posts. 

1000 Dollar James Madison documentary stamp from the Scarsdale sale.  This stamp is the single 1000 Dollar value of the 1898 series.

This site began in March 2009.  With nearly daily updates or entries to the site, we've managed to get to 1000 posts before the end of 2011.  Few blogs on the web can claim this kind of intensity of new content production. 

I state that "we've managed to get 1000 posts", as I've had help from many contributors.  Special thanks go David Thompson, Frank Sente, and Bob Hohertz, though there have been a host of others that have shared their material, from individual stamps to exhibits.

As part of the experience of publishing this site I've found it relatively easy to identify new ideas and subjects for daily updates and posts.  The blog format fits very well with subject of revenue stamps and their cancels.  Despite 1000 posts to date, I've still got hundreds of post ideas in the cue -- many sent to me by collectors like David Thompson -- and many more written up by veteran collectors like Frank Sente. 

So as this year comes to end and we start a new one, I expect another year of productive blog publishing.  Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

Minnesota Stamp Expo 2011

Co-bloggers Frank Sente and Bob Hohertz are represented at the Minnesota Stamp Expo this year.  Bob is a judge while Frank is an exhibitor.

Frank's 10 frame exhibit of 1898 documents displaying an array of possible usages is most impressive.  Below is a shot of Frank with frames 2 and 3 in the background, the photo below that is of the full ten frame exhibit.

The Slow Days of Summer

Regular readers should note that your editor/publisher is travelling today for 5 weeks of what the State Department calls home leave.  Posts have been a bit thin lately and might be spotty for the next few days. 

BTW, its July 1 and the 113th anniversary of the first use of 1898 revenue stamps. 

Friday the 13th and Blogger Has Gone Down!

This is a short post to test the system, which has apparently returned to nomal after more than 12 hours off line.  The vaunted Google corporation is not perfect!  Here was a message they had posted on their "Status" page earlier today:

Friday, May 13, 2011



To get Blogger back to normal, all posts since 7:37am PDT on Weds, 5/11 have been temporarily removed. We expect everything to be back to normal soon. Sorry for the delay.

Looks like we may now be back to normal.  For 12 hours I couldn't even access the editor.  I'm using it to write you this message, so something is better that it was a few hours ago...

Two Year Anniversary of 1898 Revenues

Today is the second anniversary of 1898 Revenues.  The first post was published on March 28, 2009. 

When 1898 Revenues first when online, the background was all black, and there was no title art.  The first post included Milwaukee Road printed and handstamp cancels on a 2 cent documentary battleship.  And I knew far less about these stamps than I do now.

screen capture from 1898 Revenues old look -- back when the site was far less complex

In the past two years the site has managed to collect a few loyal readers and some knowledgeable contributors.  Thanks to all for reading and stopping by, and I look forward to continued publishing for at least another two years. 

Big thanks go out to all those that have added so much to this effort, especially Frank Sente, Dave Thompson, and Bob Hohertz. 

I will keep the site's current appearance the same for the next couple of months, but I may do some tinkering  during the summer.  For now I like the look, though I'm always interested in suggestions.  Bob Mustacich is now going for a battleship revenue stamp appearance in his site art.  Hmm...

Advice and comments on the blog are always welcome.  Please write to me at 1898revenues@gmail.com.

John

Ongoing Projects

I have never taken a moment to list some of the open projects on this site.  More than a year ago the posts here began to examine and update sections of the Chappell/Joyce lists of printed cancels on the proprietary battleships.  Then a major development occurred after Frank Sente helped locate the Joyce/Buford data base of an expanded Joyce collection.  For months I've been musing over how to handle this avalanche of data for which we don't have access to the original stamps or scans.  So then a bunch of other projects came up, like posting Hermann Ivester's Scott Specialized St. Louis Provisionals article.  One thing led to another, and well, there are a pile of ongoing and unfinished projects. 

The nice thing about a blog is that subjects can stay open for years -- there is no publication deadline to worry about, and we can keep many projects as works in progress.  A list of those projects includes:

• Updating the Chappell/Joyce lists of printed cancels on the proprietary battleships
• Updating the Fullerton list of printed cancels on the documentary 1898 revenues
• An ongoing discussion and presentation of plate markings and varieties
• An ongoing presentation of on-document uses, especially by Frank Sente
• An ongoing presentation of cancels on documentary stamps, matching the days date: a sort of modern, internet-style calendar
• Ad-hoc online publication of 1898 revenue-related exhibits

There are probably a few more projects out there, but these are the big ones.  All of these are current, and will remain running themes or projects on this site. 

Havana Hits

Interesting milestone for this site today as the first known page view from Havana, Cuba occurred.  There have been a few posts on historical moments in the Spanish American War, and the site's title painting is of a battle that took place in Cuba, so I would expect occasional web traffic from the island.  However, there are there are very few computers that have access to the internet in the country, so internet use per capita is low in Cuba. 

1898 Revenues Greatest Hits

2010 is over and its time to see how we play out there in cyberspace.  Nobody would ever call this highly specialized website viral.  However, despite relatively low numbers that visit 1898 Revenues, the year has shown steady upward progress in the number of people that visit the site.  I was playing with numbers for our web traffic, and produced the chart below:

I've plotted the number of page views by week over the course of the year, omitting January for which I have no data (bad planning on my part).  From a simple visual analysis, I see three phases in page view rates on this chart. 

• Through late May, page views tracked in a band between 200 and 300;
• mid-summer experienced a jump up to the 300-400 band (with a major anomaly for one week of nearly 600);
• and from August there was a strong jump up to +400 page views per week, with jumps above 500 views.

I am a trained statistician, but I don't have it in me to dust off those skills to analyze this limited data set.  However, there are some events that can be plotted against the data that might help explain some of the changes over time:

• February: Dave Thompson starts following the site
• August:  Frank Sente becomes a co-blogger.
• Late August:  BALPEX/ARA Meeting
• December: Bob Hohertz becomes a co-blogger

 ******

With the growing number of page views, there should be changes in the ranking the site receives from Google when conducting specific searches:

1898 series revenue stamps   Google #1

battleship revenues:  Google #2

2 cent documentary   Google #1  (Google #13 in March 2010)

US revenue stamps  Google #17  (Google #76 in March 2010)

revenue cancels   Google #12  (Google #28 in March 2010)

Some improvement here, partially explained by longevity of the site as well as growing numbers of visitors.

*******

2011 should be an interesting year for the site.  Given work and family obligations I can't be too sure how soon major projects can be completed, like producing a revised catalog of documentary printed cancels.  But with the launch of a major project and the addition of a few more specialists interested in the site, numbers of page views should continue to grow.  Frank and Bob have added real experience and expertise to the site, and I am certain that the legitimacy they add to the site is a significant source of draw.  What is more, the steady addition of their thoughts and material to this public forum steadily increases the site's status as a source of searchable philatelic information.  Thanks again to them for their help, and for the steady contribution of material and moral support from Dave Thompson.  Happy New Year to all!!

Collectors Weekly

A few days ago 1898 Revenues was added to the Collectors Weekly website as a "Hall of Fame" collector's site.  A little recognition is always nice, and 1898's inclusion puts the site next to those of Bob Hohertz and Richard Frajola. 

Collector's Weekly

While I would hesitate to call 1898 an encyclopedia, I sure hope we can approach that after a few years of posts.

Blog Update

The summer is over for the Langlois family.  School has started and I am back at work.  And its time for me to get back on a regular blogging schedule.  As regulars might have noticed, my presence here has been a bit spotty the last few weeks.  But we've all been in great hands.  Frank Sente (who has a short bio on the right side of this page) agreed to guest blog, and he has provided us with great posts.  I hope you like the different flavor of his work on this site as much as I do.  His on-document material is fabulous.  I am particularly fond of the the cigarette pack with the Porto Rico overprinted battelship.  He will continue to post, as will I, offering the site more variety and a fresh perspective.

One highlight of my summer was my chance to attend, albeit briefly, the Minnesota Stamp Expo.  I met Ron Lesher, an ARA Board Member, and Bob Hohertz, the President of the American Revenue Association.  One day this site will publish a series of posts on Emerson Drug Company private dies, printed cancels, and other material, and I saw of wealth of great material from Ron's collection that will help with this task. 

In the coming week I will be posting material sent to me by Bob Hohertz, the publisher of his own revenue stamp website.  Bob's collecting specializations include stamped paper, and since I have little familiarity with this material, I am gratified and happy to have Bob's contribution of this material to the site. 

Thanks to new contributors this site is changing.  And with the vast collecting experience and knowledge of Frank, Bob, Ron, and others to assist, 1898 Revenues should continue to publish interesting posts for the foreseeable future.  Thanks again to Dave Thompson, the original collector/fan/correspondent of this site. 

Milestone Coverage of 1898 Revenues

OK, it is small I know.  But today an article on a non-philatelic website has been posted about this blog.  You can find it at NJ.com.   On March 18 on this site the stamp and cancel below were featured:

Mr. Webb was a prominent citizen of Madison, New Jersey, and this fact was of interest to NJ.com and the website's specialized coverage of New Jersey.  While this historical association is interesting to me, more interesting are the opportunities apparent in this coverage for advancing people's exposure to revenue stamps. 

Screen capture of NJ.com article

The revenue collector's world is a contracting one, but it doesn't need to stay this way.  About three years ago I joined the American Revenue Association.  I was assigned the number 6978.  In the January-February 2010 issue of the American Revenuer, new member number 7054 was just assigned.  Yikes.  76 new members in 3 years.  I would have to guess attrition is taking its toll.  How might new collectors be attracted to the hobby, and what might make them join the ARA?

Collectors in this field need to be positive, use the latest technology, and highlight what attracts us to the hobby.    How did NJ.com find this site, and why was the author of the piece so upbeat? 

I am absolutely certain of the compelling quality of US revenue stamps, so long as history is a focus and all of us in the hobby are positive diplomats.  Welcome to this site if you are visitor, and think about what you can to do promote the hobby if you are an existing collector.

Blog Update: One Year of 1898 Revenues

 1898 Revenues is one year old today - the first post for
this blog was on March 28, 2009

One year ago this blog started out posting railroad cancels on 2 cent documentary battleships.  There have been many railroad posts in the interim, but there have been forays into all types of cancels and unused stamps as well.  This blog/website is a work in progress and a philatelic experiment:  part exhibit, part recruting and sales tool for the hobby, and part diversion therapy for me.  Initially I was not sure how far this blog could go, maybe several months?  But as the months have progressed I realize that even with the material that I own that I can do this blog for years and not run out of possiblities for posts.   I look forward to months and years of public exploration of these revenue stamps and their cancels.  Today I want to review some of the changes and readership of this site, as well as make a few observations about the hobby.

Changing Styles:  Six months ago this site had a black background.  I thought it made the stamps standout.  But it looked sort of goth.  So I changed the site to a white background for a couple of months.  That seemed sort of dull.  But now this site is yellow with a Spanish-American War battle painting in its title.  My wife likes this scheme.  It will stay for awhile.

Observation on Computers and Stamp Collecting:  Over the past few weeks this site has explored transfer errors for the first time.  As I've corresponded with a veteran collector during this time I've been advised to avoid "fly-specking", and that my usual blog subjects are more interesting.  I do agree with that advice, and you won't see too much on double-transfers and the like on this site, even if battleships are rife with these errors.  But the subject led me to think a bit about technology and the habits and practices of collectors.  This blog has come together because of my reasonably large cancel collection and the power of internet, especially the research capability of the Google search engine.  I can enter an unknown company name from a cancel fragment and usually confirm a company's name and much about its business using Google and the information available on the web.  And I live in east Africa!  If this was 30 years ago and I had my collection with me here in Kenya I would have had few available resources to research the cancels that appear on 1898s.  And as a collector staring at a pile of stamps I might have been inclined to spend time fly-specking and looking for small signs of transfer errors on my stamps. 

But I don't spend any time looking for fly-specks.  Instead I can research history, which I very much enjoy.  But the same technology I use to produce this site, especially my high resolution scanner that can scan up to 1200 dots per inch, is perfect for producing extremely fine closeups of potential transfer errors for examination without a magnifying glass.   Some of the same tools I use for my cancel work are also great fly-specker's tools.  Times change and few people look for transfer errors anymore.  But I find very few if anybody doing their collecting online these days.  By this I mean folks that use the web to enhance their collecting experience, beyond making purchases.  I hope this blog might be an inspiration for some.  This process has really made my collection come alive for me.

Invitation to comment:  Hello!  Anybody out there?  I know I'm not completely alone.  Gentleman and member of the ARA David Thompson has confirmed that for me lately.  But I don't hear from many ARA sorts, whether by email or by comments.  In the next few months I plan to make greater efforts to publicize the existence of this site, and this should increase my hit rate and 1898 collector contact rate. 

***********

1898 Revenues Stats Sheet:
As I did six months ago, I ran some web searches this past week using Google.  Entering the search string listed below into Google, this blog ranked as follows:

1898 Revenues                           #1
Battleship Revenues                    #2
2 Cent Documentary                   #13
1898 Series Revenues                 #1
US Revenue Stamps                   #76
Revenue Cancels                         #28
Proprietary Cancels                     #1
Documentary Cancels                  #1

Translation:  These numbers mean that if you used Google to search the term "documentary cancels" last week, the site 1898 Revenues was at the top of the list of sites, and the term "revenue cancels" was the 28th site on the list produced by Google. 

The site uses a counter to record numbers of page views.  This blog is not a popular site in the grand scheme of things.  Over the past month there have been an average of 40 page views per day, though the average figure has been climbing steadily each month since the counter was first installed over six months ago.  I've never expected this site to be a page view magnet.  After all, the subject is revenue stamps, and only the 1898 series, hardly a subject for a best seller.    But there are some interesting stats that can be pulled from these page view numbers. 

6 months ago this blog didn't even show up in the top 100 for US Revenue Stamps on Google.  This stat has improved, mostly since I blogged about the Castenholz' Christopher West reprint that draws a fair number of hits.

Using internet-speak this site is reasonable "sticky".  Many who come to this site tend to stay.  The below pie-chart illustrates this:

Visit Length

Of the last 500 page views:
73 were by visitors that spent less than 5 seconds on the site (green pie slice)

6 were by visitors that spend from 5 secs to 30 secs on the site (blue pie slice) 

32 were by visitors that spent from 30 secs to 5 mins on the site (lt brown pie slice)

15 were by visitors that spent from 5 mins to 20 mins on the site (yellow brown pie slice)

1 visitor spent from 20 mins to an hour at the site (red pie slice) 

11 visitors spent longer than an hour at the site (yellow pie slice)

The majority of visitors, 73 or 52.9% of the last 500 visitors, spent less than 5 seconds at the site.  This is an interesting category of visitor.  Many are drive bys that quickly realize they are in the wrong place.  But some are site rippers that show up to copy the site as an automated process.  This seems to happen when I post about a big corporation.  For example, hours after I posted the McKesson cancels in the past couple of weeks an automated site ripper paid a visit that was tagged to a McKesson server.  These visits never show up as lasting very long.  I guess they copy what they want so that the humans responsible can later review the comments on a blog like this to make sure we aren't doing anyting that might offend them.

Most interestingly for me is that 8% of my visitors have stayed longer than an hour in total.  A further 10% have stayed between 5 and 20 minutes.  These people tend to come to the site and browse for awhile, and so if you are one of those, welcome and thank you. 

Upcoming:  Over the course of the next six months this site will continue to focus on cancels by date and will begin to examine proprietary printed cancels.  I will review the work of Clarence Chapelle and Morton Joyce and feature companies that issued the cancels.  The Joyce lists will provide organization, and stamps I possess from that list will be posted.  I will then ask for those that have stamps on these lists I don't have to send me images of those stamps, and I will post those images.  See you in the next year!

BTW:  Those of you who follow this blog regularly know that I currently live in Kenya in East Africa.  Today I am in Amboselli National Park with a view of Mount Kilimanjaro out my back window.  There were elephants everywhere on the drive into the park.  Fabulous!

Blogging 1898 Revenues

As of today I've been blogging here for 6 months.  I started the blog so that I could keep active with parts of my collection, even though I have it all packed in safe keeping in the US while I live and work in Nairobi, Kenya for several years.  Instead of travelling with the stamps I travelled with scanned images of the stamps.  And the scanned images have proved to be a great collecting tool, enabling close examination without actually handling the stamps themselves and allowing for the creation of this "virtual collectors blog".

The daily readership of the blog has taught me a few things.  I'm not sure this blog has ever had a visit by a serious collector of US revenue stamps.  I can't be sure because nobody of this description has ever sent an email or made a comment in the comment sections of the blog.  Through tracking software I know that occasionally I do get a visitor that lingers on the blog and explores the different feature areas, but mostly I get people interested in valuing battleship stamps that they found in a relative's collection.  In six months less than a dozen people have ever viewed the blog in more than just a passing way and then returned at a later date.  I'm not really sure yet what this says about US revenue and 1898 revenue collecting, but I figure some combination of the following factors are present:

• Few people collect 1898 Series revenue stamps anymore;
• Of the few that do collect them, few use the web or search engines like Google as a collecting tool;
• I am absolutely certain that nobody that could be considered "young" (<40) has much interest in these stamps.  Otherwise there would be many more stopping by.  Especially with the relative lack of this kind of material and information available on the web;
• The blog just hasn't been around long enough to pick up any sort of momentum. 
• This blog stinks!

The last bullet shouldn't effect first time viewers.  However, I do realize that this blog is a work in progress and might in fact not be so good.  But I like doing it, and it helps me stay in touch with a collection of mine that with the way I have been busy with work and family over the years has been more of an accumulation than a collection.  It is now on its way to becoming a collection.

With regard to the second bullet above, as of September 26 a google search of the following search strings yields interesting results:

     Search Phrase                                            Google Rank
     1898 Revenues                                           #1
     Battleship Revenues                                   #4
     2 Cent Documentary                                   #1
     1898 Series Revenue                                 #4
     US Revenue Stamps                                  >100

I searched 1898 Revenues since that is the title of the blog.  The blog comes up number one in a google search.  Battleship Revenues comes up number 4, behind a website with that name.  2 cent Documentary was searched because I feature so many of them.  It came up number 1 in the search.  1898 Series Revenue was searched because the battleship stamps I feature right now have the words on the stamp.  Lastly, a search for the general term US Revenue Stamps yielded no result for this blog.  All in all, this blog is showing up high in these searches for the specific terms.  What this shows me, despite the fact that I am getting few hits on this blog, is that collectors in the specific field (if there are any) don't really use the web for their collecting interests.  Time to modernize this hobby, bring it to the web, and make it more virtual!

Thanks for your interest if you are reading this.  I have some plans for the coming months and years that involve several general areas of work and posts:

• An exploration of the Chapelle/Joyce proprietary printed cancel lists
• An exploration of the available literature and research on these stamps
• Continued posting of cancels by date