Again, in my never ending wanderings around the Internet, I have come across yet another collectible item that I never knew of, let alone knew it was collectible.

International Reply Coupons per Wikipedia:

An International Reply Coupon (IRC) is a coupon that can be exchanged for one or more postage stamps representing the minimum postage for an unregistered priority airmail letter of up to twenty grams sent to another Universal Postal Union (UPU) member country.

So for all practical purposes, they fall into the general category of philately – or “stamp collecting” – at least I would assume so.

The article I read, at Collectors Quest, pointed out that

Throughout the life of the International Reply Coupon, the design of the Coupon has had only a single design at any one time, although the design has changed progressively over the years and languages varied in some versions within the same style. The earliest design had an allegory of international communication, a woman passing an envelope around two stylized globes. Today’s design, newly revised for the centennial of the IRC, returned to an allegorical design using two hands (a detail of the Creation, from the Sistine Chapel) in front of an outline of a postage stamp.

A quick search of eBay found that only 44 IRC’s were currently available and they ranged in price from $120.00 for a 1910 German Coupon to $9.99 for a 1964 Belgium Coupon that had already been used.  In the sold category there were 127 and the highest was a 1942 Japanese Manchukuo IRC that sold for $200.00.  The lowest was a 2008 Nepalese coupon that went for a mere $0.99.

For more on the UPU and IRC, have a look at their website.

I’m wondering if any of our readers are collectors of UPU IRC’s?  If so, we’d love to learn more about these interesting Ephemera collectibles.

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
Click to see my current Bonanzle items

Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, International Reply Coupons, Universal Postal Union

A number of people, myself included, have newspapers dating back to past historical events… such as the assassination of President Kennedy or the death of Babe Ruth. The question is how do you save these items for posterity.. at a reasonable expense.

“Lifehacker – Tips and Downloads for Getting Things Done” had a very good article on Thursday  which included a number of tips, many of which apply to any form of paper document preservation.  Here are a few… but you’ll want to read the entire article to get the full content.

• Don’t leave the paper folded in the middle
• Try to de-acidify the paper or protect it
• Consider laminating front pages, articles or clippings (although this may destroy any potential value for collectors)
• Be sure to store items out of direct sunlight

For those of you who don’t want to go through the effort of preserving paper, there is a website where you can download a PDF of every (?) newspaper front page  in the world – visit the Newseum (www.newseum.org). That may be an option for some… but nothing beats breaking out the actual newspaper to remember a historic event.

Read the Lifehacker article here… and be sure not to at least scan some of the comments left by readers.

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
Click to see my current Bonanzle items

Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, Newspaper, Babe Ruth