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Sunday 23 April 2017

My 50th Anniversary columns for Linn's Stamp News


For my last Great Britain columns for Linn's Stamp News, I decided to go out with a bang and summarize the history of the Machins in a format that would be accessible by Linn's readers. The main problem was how to organize it.

I quickly decided that a chronological organization would not work. There would be too many topics that appeared at various times, and it would be very hard for the reader to keep track of what was happening.

Instead, I chose to organize it by topic. I started with an introduction that I hoped would catch the reader's attention enough to want to continue reading. (You can tell me if you think I succeeded in the comments.) Then I continued with various topics: colors, fonts, currency change and non-denominated stamps, etc.

There's still some back-and-forth where I had to reference a topic that I covered previously or one that was covered later. Overall, though, I think it came out pretty well.

Those of you who are reading this blog probably won't learn much if anything new from the column, but I hope you'll take a look at it and at least read part of it. If you have any comments about it, please add them to this blog entry.

The first of the three parts was published a couple of days ago and is available on the Linn's web site. I don't know when the others will be published. It may be as much as month between each part. I'll post a link to the subsequent parts after they appear.

I am pleased that the editor, Donna Houseman, chose to highlight my column. I'm also pleased that Linn's has adopted a new format for their web site that places the illustrations within the text, as well as at the top. This makes it much easier to follow.

Many collectors no doubt have a simplified collection of Machins as part of a general Great Britain collection. I hope that these columns encourage those collectors to look more carefully at their Machins and perhaps expand their Machins beyond what they have so far. And maybe it will stimulate a few readers to start a Machin collection, in spite of the sheer volume of stamps.

--Larry

2 comments:

Machin Man said...

Well done Larry. A1++++

Check out our links section. I have added the both. I will also add part 2 and 3 when they are published

Ian - Norvic said...

Excellent article, Larry. Well done. It is interesting to read a summary like this every so often, and reminds those of us concentrating on the here and now (because there is so much happening here and now!) about the sequence of changes in the past.

I'm sure the others will be equally interesting to read.