Have You Returned Back To Stamp Collecting?

Like many of you, I collected stamos for a year or two when I was 11, I got back to it recently (13 years later) after having a dream about collecting stamps. It feels a lot different now, even though I still sometimes get excited as a kid when I get new stamps.

I started around 1956 because the older boys in the neighborhood sat on the front porch and traded stamps with each other . We younger boys just watched and I wanted to collect also.
My mother purchased me a 25 cent album at Woolworths. It was fun my 8 brothers and sisters had no interest in what I did ,it was mine all mine and the first thing I called mine ,not clothes ,not toys it was mine ,it was a world that nobody cared about in the house .
I never quit and never lost interest ,because it was my world .So when I was going to retire I purchased a brand new Ford 150 to move my collection to Florida ,took three trips to get it from Chicago to Florida . When I got to Florida it took a year to get my rooms set up and continue working on my collection ,I will never quit buying and building a decent collection .

floortrader,

You are the modern Philipp von Ferrary!

filkata, I started in 1974 at age 10 while recovering from a surgery and staying with my grandparents. My grandmother brought home 2 Harris paper albums, a large grab bag of worldwide stamps on paper, and we proceeded to soak, dry, and mount stamps for 2 weeks. Throughout my teenage years and early adult years, I didn't really pay a lot of attention to stamps. I started collecting again in 1988, but would spend a few years collecting then sell the entire collection. I did this a few times before getting serious about collecting again about 5 years ago. Now I'm buying on a regular basis and building what I think is an amazing collection.

I still feel that kid-like excitement when I get stamps in the mail, any stamps. I love feeling all giddy when I get to open each envelope to see what I'll be adding to my collection. I don't think that feeling ever goes away, at least I hope not.

filkata,

You are so lucky to be in your mid twenties. Its a great time to be a philatelist.

Jack Kelley

I started as a kid after my dad introduced me to collecting, turns out that he restarted collecting when I was born to have at least something to pass on to me when he eventually left this short space we call life.
I did the usual kid thing and was interested for a while but my interest in rugby, girls and beer took over and I gradually helped out less and less. He passed in 2009 and true to form the collection was left to me (since my brother admitted that he had no idea what to do and no interest in his half of the collection that was left to him).
Since then I have been in and out of collecting, mainly buying bags of stamps from my local charity shop, but never really getting to grips with putting it all together. My dad being the lover of practical jokes left a note inside the cover of the top album for me that read "I spent years putting this together, but I never could get round to sorting it all out" so I was left with that task.
A recent injury in rugby made me start to look through the collection again and I finally decided that I needed to bring some order to the chaos, so here I am, starting from the beginning (well not the beginning, I have thousands of stamps to go through, sort, identify and get into albums) but with having no ideas where to start I am trawling through this site in order to pick up any ideas and tips on how to and where to start :)

Here is my short list: stamp tongs, lighted magnifying glass, hinges and/or mounts, perforation gauge, watermark fluid and tray.

You will need a catalog. Which one depends how you are trying to collect. If you are going to use the albums left to you, pick the corresponding catalog(s). If you are unsure what you have, post up pictures here and someone will help you figure it out. New catalogs can be spendy. I suggest trying your local library or purchasing older versions from Amazon (which will be heavily discounted).

Best of luck!

I collected as a kid as many people did - however my family collected too. My grandmother and my mother. I stopped in my 20s and then picked it up again in my 30s when Mum was active in the local philatelic club and ran the circuit books. I became really hooked in those years. Then life got very busy - I had a business, was a wife and mother. Too little time meant I could not indulge. Recently now retired in my early 60s one day I dug out what was left of the old collections from Mum and one thing led to another as I then ordered some kiloware for a good soaking and sorting session. It was not long before the old interest was well and truly alight. Now with the internet I can see research being fun and I have started to hang around ebay like a bad smell. I am just playing at the moment and I know eventually something will catch my eye and that will become my main collecting interest. I am not sure I will collect a country as such - but maybe along a thematic line - just waiting for a topic to hit me I hope when it does it is not too painful.

I started in the early 1960s, and while the levels of purchases have waxed and waned over the years, I've never fully left off collecting stamps.

Now, it's one thing I really look forward to every day...

This thread has been fascinating to me. So interesting. :) What I have noticed here is that almost every poster either inherited a collection from a relative, or was given some stamp packets and an album from some relative in their childhood. Seems like most had some exposure as a child. Good training I think for youngsters.

I did not have any exposure to stamp collecting when I was young, there were no philatelist's in my family that I am aware of. I have never thought much about stamps, envelopes or the mail (although I am the widow of a retired USPS letter carrier). Have had other hobbies that have fallen by the wayside, years ago, spinning, weaving, Japanese silk flower making, etc. a lot of fluff.

I call my large box of jewelry a collection as it consists of very particularly picked out items of jewelry - someday I must label it all so my children will know what I have left them when I am no longer here on this planet - that will be a large effort in itself. For some reason, since finding the stamps I have not given my jewelry a second thought, I feel like I am just about done with what I wanted to do there.

My son, who will be 40 years old this February, brought me his grandmother's stamp collection (his father's mother, my ex-mother-in-law ) - my son asked me to either sell it for him or find out what it was worth. Long story short, my son is going to hang on to his grandmothers very nice (maybe 6-7 albums) US collection and decide what to do with it at a future date (which makes me happy). On the other hand, trying to find out information for my son led me to this forum in a very round about way, and this hobby.

I am new to stamp collecting, but feel a very strong pull to the stamps. As of yet I do not have an album, I have stamps organized by country in plastic file folders and a bunch of old post cards to sell.

I would like to be a worldwide collector, and I would like a computerized album. I understand that with that choice I will still need a physical album of some sort, I have to think some more about it - will work it out when the time is right.

I am older and disabled, I find stamp collecting to be very soothing and relaxing, I do not watch TV so it fills in the time nicely. I also think it is good for the mind, I am terrified of coming down with alzheimers or dementia, I am already afraid I might have it (my grandmother died of it, my older daughter has the genetic marker for it - don't know my own dna markers though) I am thinking and hoping that keeping my mind going while working on the stamps has to be helping in keeping my mind young.

Thank you for reading about how I found stamp collecting, I have come back to it for the first (and probably last) go around. Julie

Julie,

I think the common thread is that the hobby reminds us of our youth and our happy remembrances.

Jack Kelley

Jack said:


That is very nice Jack Kelley, very nice indeed. I was wishing I hadn't posted in this thread earlier, thank you for being tolerant and for speaking to me, I appreciate it. I think that is why Christmas makes me so sad each year, it reminds me of years gone by and happy remembrances which will never manifest again. As I mentioned in my post above, I have spent most of my life not thinking about stamps and stamp collecting - I do feel an odd sort of comfort at having stumbled upon it in later life.

I collected into my teens with my brother, myself, and my father wisely taking different topics so not to compete. My father passed away last year and I not only got my Canadian collection but his Zeppelin collection as well. The zeps brought back fond memories and I have nearly doubled the collection through auctions and ebay.

i started collect arround 1988 when I was 7. then I stopped until I collected again for about a years in 2004 and now just return in the hobby with my son last month ago after more than 10 years in brake.