Stamp Collectors Celebrate Classic TV

I'm no philatelist... that was more my father's thing. I've always thought that collecting postage stamps might be a conspiracy going back to Ben Franklin (okay, just so you don't have to look it up, he was the first Postmaster General...). It's a brilliant idea to get people to convert their money into postage stamps that they'll never use. Coin collecting is sort of the same (another thing my old man was into...) idea. Use your legal tender to buy legal tender that you would never dare use. Great!

I'm not actually trying to run those hobbies down. Each has a fascinating history, and there is much of interest in what most people handle everyday as incidental ephemera. To their credit the Post Office has issued some stamps that have curried even my interest, and I must confess to having bought some stamps over the years just for lookin' and not for mailin'.

I just found a set at my local branch that had been issued in August celebrating classic TVshows. Each TV show's image is represented in pleasing monotone, bordered by a golden TV-shaped frame, and they've even got the TV tube glare and scanlines there! Very cute, and as an aficionado of old TV I couldn't resist. The selection of 20 shows from TV's early days is a pretty good one. Nearly every show in the collection has been syndicated endlessly since the 50's, so you can still feel nostalgic even if you weren't there the first time around.

If you're looking for a $10 holiday gift for the TV fan in your life, you may still find a set if you trot down to your local Post Office. The best thing is that if anyone hates your gift, they can just use it as postage! I'll probably put my set in a nice frame, and feeling rather self-conscious about it.  I'll also bet that my father is laughing at me right about now.