Generally Speaking Quotes

“Right there! See the blue on its head? See the long tail?” “Oh, there he is,” I said, just to bring this little farce to an end. I couldn’t see the bird, and I knew I wasn’t going to see the bird, and I was rapidly tiring of the whole enterprise. “Beautiful, isn’t he?” “Gorgeous,” I agreed. “I’d have hated to miss him.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“When I was a kid, buying packets and penny approvals and filling spaces in my Modern Stamp Album, nothing was easier to find and to afford than those German issues. Think of it, a stamp that cost fifty billion marks! And it was mine for a penny!”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“When I have a look at my own albums, it strikes me how thin they’d be but for war and rebellion.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“Some are errors. There’s Malta 20a, for example, the 2-1/2p dull blue; it’s supposed to be surcharged “One Penny,” but this variety has it “One Pnney.” It’s affordable, and visually remarkable, and I picked up my copy when it was offered in a block of four, with three non-erroneous companions.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“Now I can’t say I approve of counterfeit stamps. But it’s hard for me to work up a lot of indignation at a forger who’s been dead for the better part of a century. I wouldn’t want to buy a fake sold as a genuine stamp, or an official reprint under the illusion that it’s an original, but in certain cases and at the right price any of these oddities might find a welcome in my collection. They all make the philatelic universe even more interesting.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“The House at Sugar Beach, New York Times reporter Helene Cooper’s memoir of her girlhood as a member of the Liberian upper crust.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“The accumulator, with his acquisitions stuffed into boxes in no apparent order, is every bit as acceptable a philatelist as the collector trying slowly and painstakingly to fill, with flawlessly centered, post office-fresh examples, all the spaces in a single hingeless album. We’re all in this together, and I figure whatever system we devise for ourselves is just fine.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“I was delighted to see them, and wondered at the bargain I’d landed, until I learned enough about them to realize that what I had were Seebecks. One N. F. Seebeck had a contract with the government of Nicaragua to supply the country with stamps, and retained the right to reprint them for the collector market. He apparently did so in great profusion, and one result a century later was that my own personal interest in the stamps of Nicaragua (and other Seebeck countries, like El Salvador and Ecuador) dwindled.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“I found the various plebiscite regions of considerable interest before I owned any of their stamps. In the course of remaking the map of Europe after the World War—we wouldn’t come to call it World War I until its sequel was upon us—plebiscite elections were held in various disputed regions, to determine the wishes of the inhabitants and settle the matter accordingly. An extraordinary Wilsonian notion, that; the citizenry was to decide for itself of which nation it wished to be a part.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“After all, doesn’t part of philately’s attraction lie in the grip it holds on us? It is our eagerness to locate and acquire and add to our albums that testifies to our commitment to the hobby. If we weren’t obsessed with stamps, we’d limit our engagement with them to the mailing of an occasional letter, and find other uses for our time and money. We praise a book by stating that we couldn’t put it down. So what sort of endorsement is it to say of our stamp albums that we can put them down whenever we wish, and indeed stay away from them for days or weeks on end? I would contend that it’s a great virtue. And I’d bolster the argument by pointing to some other activities that can’t be so easily neglected.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“Perhaps I’ve just mounted the initial stamp on a page that used to be blank. Perhaps I’ve filled the final space on that page. Or, as is more often the case, perhaps I’ve added a fifteenth stamp to a page, thus reducing its number of blank spaces from nineteen to eighteen. In any event, I’m looking at progress—and I take a moment to enjoy it.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“Wait a minute. Can a general worldwide collector care more about some countries than others? Is there a Most-Favored Nation clause in his contract with philately? Ah. Wouldn’t you know it? Now I’ve got a topic for next month’s column. . .”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“regummed. A regummed stamp is one which has lost its original gum somewhere along the way, only to have it replaced with new gum. When the equivalent is performed on, say, a Rembrandt oil painting, we call it restoration; when such restoration is performed on a postage stamp, we’re more apt to regard it as a crime against nature, and a clear-cut example of philatelic fraud.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“philately is far and away the area of my life where I spend the most time and effort making genuinely inconsequential decisions.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“36.80. So all I have to do is wait and acquire each stamp as it becomes available, right? Well, yes, at least in theory. But what happens, more often than not, is that a stamp I need is grouped in a single lot with one or more other stamps that I don’t need. I need French India #39, cataloging 90¢, and it might well be offered in tandem with #38 ($2.40) or #40 ($1.40). Or both of them. Or the lot on offer might consist of #74 ($1.10), #75 ($3.50), and #76 ($7.00). Say the dealer priced the group of three at $7.50, approximately two-thirds of Scott value. Reasonable enough, but how good a deal is it for me, if I only need #76? Do I wait another five years in the hope that the stamp will come my way with no baggage attached? Or do I buy the three stamps and toss two of them in the box?”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“So where does the human error come in? Well, sometimes I buy a stamp and mount it in my album without troubling to log it in my catalog. And later I find it offered on somebody else’s list, and see that it’s one I don’t have, and buy it again. And then when I go to mount the new copy in my album, there’s one already there.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“Keller sat in his hotel room with his purchases on the desk in front of him, pleased with what he’d acquired and the bargain prices he’d paid, but a little bit anxious at having spent so much money. He had dinner again that night with McEwell, and confided some of what he was feeling. “I know what you mean,” McEwell said, “and I’ve been there myself. I remember the first time I paid over a thousand dollars for a single stamp.” “It’s a milestone.” “Well, it was for me. And I said to the dealer, ‘You know, that’s a lot of money.’ And he said, “Well, it is, but you’re only going to buy that stamp once.’” “I never thought of it that way,” Keller said. —HIT MAN”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“One begins a journey with an eye on one’s destination. Somewhere along the way, one learns (if one’s lucky) that it’s the journey itself that’s important. One buys a stamp album with the intention of filling it—but it is in moving toward this goal that satisfaction lies, not in attaining it.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking

“When I decided in my mid-fifties to return to a hobby I’d abandoned twenty years earlier, I didn’t know what sort of a collector I’d be. As a boy I’d started out collecting everything, then narrowed my focus to British Empire—specifically, to the Scott Specialty Album for Great Britain, British Europe, and British Oceania. In my mid-twenties I’d begun collecting Benelux as well, and in my mid-thirties, when my first marriage ended, I sold everything.”
― Lawrence Block, Generally Speaking