Internet Philatelic Friends.

A subject that has long had me fascinated since I started using a computer all those years ago.
How one 'meets' someone via the internet and how sometimes, they become friends. In many, even most cases, they never meet. But they get to know so much about each other that they are truly friends.

I guess we have all been in this situation and this thread is for you to talk about your Stamp Collecting buddies you met on the net.
No need for names if you don't want to, but just a story or two about the friends you have made but have never met [or probably never met].

I was prompted to start this thread by a letter I received yesterday from someone I have known for a few years, someone who has helped me build my collection of Mint and used USA flags like no other. We exchange emails and messages often, sometimes not often enough.
In exchange for the Flags, I send him used GB Machins on cover when I am in the UK, along with magazines. I send him all the varieties from Booklets,sheets etc.
But I have always felt that he sends me more than I do in return and after the letter yesterday, I will have to put those feelings to rest.

Yesterday I received the third strip of 10 of the USA state flag series. Those flags that come in a somewhat ridiculous coil of fifty.
Accompanying the stamps, there is always a letter.
He is retired and is at his daughters house helping her out during a difficult time. He is looking after his grandsons. Without going into details, it must be very difficult for him.
It is made more difficult by the fact that he often has to use an electric wheelchair due to a medical problem that causes him to lose his sense of touch in his fingers as well as both legs up to the knee.
In spite of this, he went to the Post Office and purchased a 50 stamp roll in order to send me the strip. He queued in his wheelchair as the Post Office where his daughter lives is most often very busy.
Somewhere between the PO and home and all that using a wheelchair entails, and because he slipped the coil onto his finger, he lost the stamps! He didn't feel the stamps falling off and of course no one handed them in !
So he repeated the task at the earliest opportunity....and now I have my strip of 10 State Flags ready to go into an album.
This time, the stamps will be accomapnied to their 'home' by a letter, which will sit proudly on the adjoining page.

Stamps from an Internet buddy and how they got there.

Thank you Charlie.

Londonbus1.....I owe you one.

That's a beautiful story, Londonbus.
Thanks for sharing it with us all.

I have met heaps of wonderful people in the stamp and coin forums and have traded with many of them. I have never built up a real close relationship with any of them though. I agree with you though, you do get to know them very well and I would certainly call many of them "Friend".

Steve

Wonderful story Londonbus

I also have met some incredible people on line. Mostly on this forum. They are generous both with their knowledge and stamps that they share with others.

I have learned so much in two years. This wouldn't have happed withought the help of this forum and the great people in it.

Dianne

maybe as a token of goodwill I should release kirk?

i have met some nice people here and a couple fo them are very good friends now

I have met many of my stamp collecting friends on the net....and I am fortunate that I have met many of them in person...Bobgggg, David Giles, Ottawamike, David Dennis from Alberta...and others from Stampoffers who do not visit here..i think in the last 5 or 6 years we have missed one trip in the Spring to Ottawa for the Orapex show, its great up there..its no joke that the internet can bring people of similar interests together !! Anyone on the forum is ever in the New York City or New York State area I would be happy to do my best to meet up with...

When I become President of the world, I shall release my abridged manifesto.
All guns will be exchanged with a packet of 4000 mixed worldwide
A Chinese stock book, A seven seas stamp catalogue, and a pair of North Korean stamp tongs.
We shall have peace and harmony in our time.

rod-

I only see one flaw in your plan...if you have to make up 500 million packets of 4,000 stamps, you may eventually start to run low on early Eastern Europe definitives. There will be plenty of Machins to make up the difference, but I don't think they will be sufficient to pacify the populations, since most people think there are only three or four different Machins.

Am I going to get 4,000 stamps, or 4,000 stamps per gun?

Excellent thread Londonbus .

The internet has change philately for the better. Not only do we meet many more good people, but we have access to a much greater amount of information very quickly.

Most of us had philatelic penpals before the internet, and although now we may correspond mostly by email, we still stick stamps on envelopes to exchange stamps with our friends - that part will never change.

guards rod has escaped

again

lol

I have not met any online stamp friends in person, yet. However, I have met other online acquaintences in person from my Route 66 interests. For me personally I have learned more from internet buddies than from the stamp collectors I see regularly. I have also bought, sold, traded, and been gifted more by my friends here at SCF. Thank you all for being a philatelic friend and teacher.

When I first returned to collecting (U.S.), I met a "Mike" in the R.C.S.D. newsgroup. He barely knew but he sent me a mint set of Overrun Countries. Not an expensive gift, but a real treasure for a new collector.

Later I met "Murph" who insists he's not a dealer, but a collector who sells his extra stamps. Over the course of a couple years, he sold me about 60 years (1930-1990) of stamps at face value or a few cents over.

Great people. And great people here -- Dianne, Londonbus, Swabbie, others of you have sent me stuff.

Good idea for a thread. Thanks to all of you for welcoming me to SCF.

Kirk

that is a beautiful story about your collecting friend with the disability, Londonbus. Your concerns whether you are holding up your end of the bargain in that relationship are probably unfounded. I am certain from your friends perspective that you are providing something very important to him as he suffers with his limitations, and that is relevancy and human contact, which we could all use more of. There are many relationships in history that were a little lopsided that worked. The most prominent of which would probably be John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. When both men were aged and out of office, two of the few remaining lions of the Revolutionary era, the correspondence between the two of them, now legendary was anything but equal in terms of output. Adams probably wrote 10:1 more letters than Jefferson, the latter apparently having more interests to occupy his time than Adams. And yet one can almost see Adams waiting for the post to receive that occasional letter from Jefferson---that would literally make his day. So I would say that you and your friend are providing well for each other which is why he is willing to put out the effort for you and why you appreciate it as you do.

fwiw I have some mails that I look forward to sigh

are you listening friends ?

I have not met in person any of all you wonderful friends here on SCF. I am much richer as a result and hope that I have been a help and friend to some of you. Please allow me to say: "May God bless each and every one of you."

I would like to tell of one internet stamp collecting friend that I did eventually meet. I had purchased some hard to obtain Guatemala stamps from him. We developed a friendship over stamps and life in Guatemala. One day, he asked why I was in Guatemala. His interest in Guatemala stems from his having been born here many years ago. He also said he was returning to Guatemala to work at the US Embassy and invited me to come see him after he arrived. When the day came to visit him, I was ushered into a private entrance and taken to the top floor. It turned out that he was the second highest embassy officer, with only the ambassador being above him. His courtesy and humbleness did not match the image I would have expected from a man in his position. Plus, as a gift, he gave me a page full of Guatemala MNH. He is no longer in Guatemala but we keep in contact now and then via the internet, of course.

Marty

I answered an advertisement to trade stamps in Linn's Stamp News in 1990, when I got back into stamp collecting. I traded with Bob Walsh for 19 years, until he died suddenly, last year. I never met him, but I spoke with him on the telephone. Bob was a Viet Nam veteran who was drafted in the late 1960s and stayed with the U.S.A.F. for a full career. I loved his letters. They would have stickers on them about "Hanoi Jane". He had a few topics he collected, and we traded all kinds of stamps.

Around the same time, I met a fellow through the Linn's trade advertisements. He was in Calgary, Alta., then he retired from the Calgary Hereald and moved to Fredericton, N.B. We traded stamps until he died in 2002. His letters were most interesting. He was a fireman with the London (England) Fire Brigade during World War II. He emigrated to Canada in the mid-1950s. I never met him.

After he died, the next year I went to New York City with a buddy. We had never been. Anyhoot, I had been trading with Phil Bruno off StampOffers, for about a year, and I wrote him and said I was going to be in his neck of the wood and I may never get there again. Might be an idea we get together. So we did. We've been good friends ever since.

He and Jopi come up to Ottawa for ORAPEX, I go down to NYC for the big show. If I ever meet any of you that I've not yet met... ask me about King Tott, a box of beer that wasn't beer, and 11th Avenue in New York City.

David

My Internet story is not exactly related to philately, but it's an important one never the less.

I met my wife on the Internet. I was newly divorced and my wife had been divorced a number of years. To make a long story short, we had both signed up for a free one week trial membership in one of those dating sites. Neither of us can remember which one, and neither of us planned on paying to keep our membership active. On the last day of the trial we exchanged emails several times, then our memberships ran out.

I liked what I had seen in the emails so the next week I tracked her down by knowing her name and the city where she lived (about 60 miles away from me). I was able to call her and we met for lunch about halfway in between. I quit my job, moved closer to her, found a new job and we've now been married over nine years.

Oh, and I've also met a lot of great I-friends on the SCF although I've not met any in person yet.