From Dick Weerts of Osprey, FL
Alan: I just got some 1 cent stamps from the PO now that they have raised the rate again and it is a picture of a Tiffany Lamp, Maybe we should see if a picture of Intarsia or Rouge Flambé vase might show up better on a stamp. Project for the Club. Dick Weerts

Well the government is favoring Tiffany with their 1 cent stamp. What can you
do? Make your own stamps, as Gwen Stebbins of Lillaby Creek Antiques points
out.. Take a picture of your favorite piece of glass. Upload it to a stamp making
site, give them your credit card number and they’ll produce and mail you a sheet
or multiple sheets of an authorized stamp featuring your picture of glass or
whatever. Just a bit costly. Scott Hansen of Briar Cliff Manor, NY suggests
you can do this by logging into stamps.com or zazzle.com. That’s all good and
well, but that is just a few stamps v. millions printed by the post office for a
penny. However, Scott notes once we get past the practice of adding a penny
stamp to our 41 cent stamps, this will then end when we go to “forever stamps”.
From personal experience I can tell you these stamps you make yourself work
well, and when mailing things do catch attention of the recipient, particularly if
they are collector types.

Some more follow up from the 1 cent Tiffany Lamp stamp to turn those 41 cent stamps into 42
cents. A little sarcasm.

The only way the government will get past the practice of adding a penny stamp……………..is when they add a dollar stamp. Dick Weerts

From LA marketing guru, and panelist for the upcoming Symposium, comments on creating your own stamps with a picture of Carder Steuben glass.
From a direct response mail perspective, “Live” stamps always get higher response that bulk
stamps, meter strips or indicia (the pre-printed block on the NE corner of an envelope), in that order. Best of all are commemorative stamps, especially if they are on point, subjectwise. Then from American glass curator at CMoG, Jane Shadel Spillman
Just to remind you, there was a set of 4 stamps with American glass in 1999, almost all of the pieces from the CMOG collection. One of the stamps featured the Wheeling peach blow vase, 2 Tiffany flower form pieces and a Carder Steuben vase. Unfortunately, they stopped making the stamps after about a year.
See the attached 1999 stamp and the price of first class postage back then.

Barb Iglewski of Canandaigua, NY(where’s that?–must be near Rochester, NY since she works at the U. of Rochester) ponders inflation:
“Nine year since 1999 and 9 cents increase in postage. Hmm . Wonder what a sheet of those
stamps (99) are going for today?”

Now Barb, I figure over the last nine year’s that’s a total of 27% inflation. I wonder how much appreciation has taken place to the collector’s collections on this e-mail list over the same 9 years. Has stamp collecting inflated those stamps by 27%? Something to ponder. In the meantime, for those who haven’t seen the stamp, one is attached.

David Donaldson of Orlando, FL will be speaking at our September 18-20 Symposium at CMoG in
Corning, NY on Mr. Carder and his contemporary glass makers.
http://daviddonaldsonantiques.com/
Mr. Donaldson’s response to the Tiffany stamp is:
Good evening folks,
I too am not sure what that sheet of stamps is going for, but the new Tiffany stamp is 1 cent. Therefore, I will prefer to have my laburnum lamps 1 cent at a time instead of $425,000.00 each and rising. Mr. Tiffany must think today’s world is very interesting, or very crazy. Curiously, he never included a chapter on the lamps in the 1914 “ghost written” book published by Doubleday.