Stamp Collection - A forgotten hobby?

Blog Marathon Post 12

She looked hard. Three dusty hard bound books peered back at her from the bottom shelf of the cupboard. She picked up one of it. It turned out to be a stamp album, with several stamps sorted by countries, arranged alphabetically. She dusted it with a soft cloth

I used to collect stamps during my school days. That was the first hobby I had developed. Me and some of my friends used to collect stamps carefully extracted from the mails that our parents and relatives received and arranged them in a stamp album. We took those albums to school and showed off our collection to each other. Whenever we had duplicate stamps, we exchanged them with others so that our collection will have stamps from all the countries in all the continents. The person who had stamps from a varied number of countries were always looked upon with awe. I also had stamp albums which we were passed on to me from my cousins. I used to go to exhibitions to collect stamps; I used to exhort my relatives coming from far off places to get me stamps of those countries.

A few basic items of equipment are needed to collect stamps. Stamp tongs or tweezers help to handle stamps safely, a magnifying glass helps in viewing fine details and an album is a convenient way to store stamps. The stamps need to be attached to the pages of the album in some way and stamp hinges are a cheap and simple way to do this

I clearly remember the day our teacher taught us a lesson on stamp collection. She told us that this hobby will help us improve our knowledge of far off places and whenever we see a stamp, we should try and ask ourselves several questions about it. Me and my friend had a laugh riot that day looking at the stamp of Mecca Masjid and asking all sort of stupid questions (No offence to Mecca Masjid, it was all innocent fun that we had).



This makes me wonder does anyone collect stamps anymore? I don't know any kid who collect stamps anymore. None of my cousins do that, they are far better off with their PlayStation and XBOX. But, do we have any means of collecting them anymore? In this age of email and internet, how many of us send snail mails? I myself haven't used stamps for a long time now. If less and less people use stamps, would stamp collection be a long forgotten hobby? :(

I would however end this with a few stamp collection trivia.

- Stamp collecting is not the same as philately, which is the study of stamps. A philatelist may, but does not have to, collect stamps.

- The first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued by Britain in 1840 and pictured a young Queen Victoria.

- There are many types of stamps-for example, commemorative, definitive, and special-and formats such as sheets, booklets, or coils. Stamps may be conventional adhesive ("lick-and-stick") or self-adhesive ("no-lick, peel-and-stick").

- The most popular US postage stamp sold over 120 million copies. It was a 1993 stamp of rock singer Elvis Presley.

- The only country to print stamps without its name on them is Great Britain. This is okay because they invented the stamp

Did you use to collect stamps? Any stamp collection stories from childhood?

Info coutesy: ducksters.com, wikipedia, stampcollectingbasics.com