HI From Southern Ohio, USA

Hi all...I've been collecting (or re-collecting) for about 6 months now. I find this hobby so enjoying and relaxing. I say re-collecting because I recently acquired a joint collection that my sister and I worked on about 25 years ago. I told her in random conversation that I was collecting and was immensely surprised when she told me she still had it. I had thought it was lost after all this time. Anyway, I have been so busy converting the US stamps from the old Liberty(?) album to my newly purchased Mystic's American Heirloom albums. I also do a lot of flea-marketing. Lots of great deals there.

I'm also happy to say I have at least one of my kids interested in the hobby...she's 10 yrs. old, and she loves helping with soaking, mounting, and sorting. We've been trying to come up with a topical subject for her to start her own collection. I already checked out the APA and APS sites, but nothing interested her enough. Any other suggestions?

OK, sorry to go on for so long, but it's nice to finally find a community to share thoughts with and gather ideas, since the closest club is an hour and a half away in Columbus, I can't really regularly get to meetings. Thanks for listening and looking forward to deepening my knowledge of the hobby here.

Peace, Chad

chad! Glad to have you aboard! Don't be shy to ask questions, show pics & scans and check out the search function! -Jeff

Good luck Chad, I restarted my own collection when my son was 10. I took him to a local stamp show, joined the club, and have never turned back. My second son and wife are now collectors. My sons, 26 and 32, have also become members of our local stamp club. Does your ten year old have a collecting interest yet?

Welcome Chad, glad to have you join up with us, and hello to your stamp collecting daughter also. Here are a couple of ideas for her. Collect people with funny hair dos. Collect different colored dresses. Collect people wearing crowns. Collect stamps with smiles. Collect stamps with animals that have more that two legs. Oh we could go on and on, but I think the best one is to collect pretty stamps. I do, and that lets me collect ALL OF THEM. WELCOME aboard. - Jeff

Welcome. Nice to have you here.

Welcome to the forum, and welcome back to collecting!
Well done getting your daughter into the hobby too. Its a topic which comes up in our discussions quite regularily, how to get the kids and grandkids involved.
Try the American Topical Association website. They have a youth section, http://americantopicalassn.org/youth.shtml , including a great online magazine, "Topical Tidbits", which one of our members, Spanishmoss, helps with. (Look out for Spanishmoss on SCF, she has great knowledge and enthusiasm for getting kids into collecting.)
Enjoy SCF!

Thanks for the welcomes everyone. Me and the little one have been busy sorting and soaking for the last couple days. I think she's gonna try a topical in either dogs or cats. I found a couple printables for dogs, with full catalogs and pictures of the stamps, but not really anything on cats. I guess I'll have to do some digging to find a list somewhere and create our own pages.

Anyway thanks again, and I look forward to meeting and chatting with all of the great friendly people here. I'm already blown away by the helpfulness of everyone. What a great hobby to get into!

Peace, Chad

Hello Chadn, welcome!

Here is a link to Cat Stamps dor org which has checklists of different sorts for different types of cats on stamps (wild, domestic, and then prehistoric, mythic and heraldic (coats of arms) but not all lists are complete.
http://www.catstamps.org/

Another idea, Chad, for down the line. There are many many funny pics of cats on the internet. With a little experimentation, you can capture those images and print them on a plain sheet of paper in the proper position, so that when the paper's folded (and glued) to make a standard envelope, the pic appears as a cachet. You then mail it to yourself and you have a unique cover. To avoid copyright issues, don't sell them.

Welcome Chadn

Glad you could join us. It is wonderful that you and your daughter collect together.

Dianne