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Something For Nothing

The Stamp Collecting Report. I'm Lloyd de Vries.

A stamp album can be rather daunting -- all those empty spaces, demanding to be filled. 
The U-S alone has issued more than a thousand of stamps in the last 10 years. So the 
American Philatelic Society, the national stamp club, is publishing smaller 
subject-specific albums -- attractively priced.

"The album's utterly free."
RUNS :01

Fred Baumann, who created the albums for the A-P-S, says the only cost is the ink and 
paper. The stamps to fill them up don't really cost that much either.

"Most of the individual stamps are on the order of 20 to 75 cents. This isn't going to 
break the bank for anybody, I hope."
RUNS :07

Inexpensive beginner-friendly stamp albums used to be sold in 5-and-10's. Now there aren't 
even 5-and-dime stores, much less the albums. So Baumann saw a need.

"If you can come up with an album that has stamps that are readily available, attractively 
printed, and affordably priced, my feeling is you can get a lot more beginners and young 
people and NOT-so-young people, too, to possibly collect modern U.S. Stamps" :18

Most of the albums are for states...although a Lincoln album is coming up soon. It's part 
of the society's educational mandate.

"This is just our 21st Century way of trying to reach out to more people and show more 
people the pleasures and the enjoyment that can be had from stamp collecting."
RUNS :10

The A-P-S albums are P-D-F files, and an improvement on traditional beginner albums.

"In glorious color, by the way, something that was unavailable when you and I were young, 
Lloyd, and the kids really enjoy them, so..." "They barely had printing with movable type 
when you and I were young!" (laughter) "And if you remember, some of the illustrations 
were really horrendously band. You can barely tell what you were looking at." :17

Who's downloading these files?

Most of the e-mail I've gotten has been from adults downloading them for children, frequently 
sons and daughters, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, that sort of thing."  :09

You can find the album pages at stamps-dot-org -- then click on the main Education page.

I'm Lloyd de Vries.

I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting, 
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.

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