A Simple, Visual Introduction To Collecting

Might any of you have ideas for creating a visual introduction to stamp collecting?

My thought is to put together examples of mint, pre-cancelled, hinged, self-adhesive, postage due, revenue, etc., etc. stamps so that I could show the stamps as I explained their purpose.

I suppose I should concentrate of American stamps, though they are not really my first interest.

The few times I've discussed my collecting with people, I see them settle into a mild catatonia. I'd like to avoid that.

I might add that I haven't much time for those who ask, "How much is that one then?" I've never looked at stamps as about money.

I could put together this "travelling collection" pretty easily, but I would much appreciate hearing from those with ideas of how to make a two page collection, say, interesting to a wide age range.

The only idea I have ever come up with for creating value from my collection was to re-fashion it as a one-of-each teaching collection.

I have many oddities from the near-monthly specials offered in Herst's Outbursts (eg, USPOD 'training' stamps), and I have onesy-twosy examples of color-shifts and perf-shifts and printer's waste and official seals and and and.

If I were you, I'd start with a philatelic glossary - any number of which can be found online - and create a checklist of what I've got and what I'd like to add.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

iKey, great suggestions! Thank you!

I think you need to target your age group a little more and rather than concentrate on US do it for all stamps. Another visual might be the beginning Harris album.

Thanks, Tom. You're probably right about focusing more in terms of the audience. And maybe you're right about using worldwide stamps. Sadly, I've generally found my countrymen to be rather ignorant of the wider world, except for maybe Cancun.

KGB: Your countrymen are sometimes familiar with the countries they've have heard about in the news.

So, yeah, Australia, Canada, Seychelles, Cameroun ... fuggedaboudit.

But you might catch their eyes with stamps from Vietnam, Cuba, Iran and, oh yeah, Red China.

Pick a topical - bicycling, AIDS, Olympics, space satellites, whatever - and show one stamp from each of these countries that your countrymen might at least remember hearing about, even they could not find them with a flashlight on a map.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Who is your target audience? Or, should I ask, who are your target audiences?

If I was interested in demonstrating the joys of stamp collecting to armchair historians -- people who read, and enjoy, every one of the 5,915 books about the Civil War that are published every year -- you could assemble a representative collection of stamps with pictures of Abe Lincoln on them. Thinking globally for a minute, I just got a cover (it cost me about $2.50) that has a bunch of stamps from South West Africa coexisting happily with a couple of issues of Namibia. It's a genuine cover, too; went through the mail and everything.

See how many of the Black Heritage series you can get your hands on, and add Richard Wright, John Coltrane, and other such great Americans. Definitely go overseas with this one: the kings of Norway; wartime censorship covers sealed with that discolored tape; Free French issues; "dead countries" like Danzig and Memel; over-the-top socialist heroism from 1950s Albania; International Women's Year; Interpol; map stamps that leave out Israel.

If your potential convert is more into arts: I'm assembling a collection of African musical instruments on stamps; I'm not that much of a topical collector, but I like African music, so why not? My wife likes fiber arts, and judging from her Pinterest page, so does almost everybody else in the world, so you could start with a few American sets like lacemaking, Navajo rugs, Gee's Bend quilts... This is an excellent use for some of those Communist CTOs and that Japan mixture you never got around to parsing :) .

What I've never been able to do is get dinner guests to gaze with stunned amazement at my Honduras album from the first page to the last. Well, they're stunned, all right, then they fall over, then they get up and ask if the Red Sox game is on yet. I like Ikey's (hey, wasn't that a campaign slogan?) idea to do a demo of color shifts and other such oddities. Not everybody's going to respond to that, but somebody's going to think it's goth.

All you have to do is look at the hundreds of posts in the topical threads posted by Nethryk and others. One of those guys or gals could put together really interesting graphical presentations about just about anything. A really interesting web site or blog (hosted by SCF of course) wouldn't be hard to do and all the material you would need is probably already here.

Some good examples have been given so far. If you want to spark someone's interest, another idea might be to show stamps with subjects that would be out of place today, either for historical or cultural reasons. Some examples would be stamps showing famous dictators or other notorious figures, stamps with face values in billions or trillions, old colonies, dead countries, etc.

There a zillion reasons why people collect stamps. If you just want to give a brief introduction to someone, it might not hurt to show a few different ways to collect or illustrate a few things that various collectors find stimulating about their hobby. Just a thought.

What about space exploration? Everyone has some interest in it, and the stamps could be attractive pictorials. You could chart Gagarin on USSR stamps, through the Apollo programs, the moon landing, and space shuttle, with plenty of background to discuss. A double page spread could be made very attractive I think, leading beginners to think they also would like to assemble such a collection.

Explaining philately and 175 years of stamp production on two pages is a daunting task. I don't think that I could do it, it would take at least 10 pages (and of course if the person is not interested in stamp collecting, he/she will loose interest quickly). My best advice on this would be to keep it basic and do not try to overwhelm the reader with too much information. Perhaps show a few images of the first stamps, the 'penny black' and the Franklin-Washington, and images of interesting stamps, such as the Inverted Jenny. Then I would show some modern stamps. Many people only know the booklet stamps that they buy at the grocery store and are unaware how many stamps are issued each year. A few days ago a co-worker told me that she thought that the USPS only released about 10 to 12 different stamps annually. She called them the "Forever Stamps" and the "Christmas Stamps".

I don't do any of the above ........I show people MY story thru my collection .....they are more interested in who I am . I show them the first 25 cent stamp album my mother purchased for me at age 7 . Then show them stamps I "lifted" from the dime store as a kid . Then show them a bigger Discover Album ,I had thru high school and it was that album that I took to my first stamp club meeting and was told it was filled with WORTHLESS stamps ,that's when I tell them that collection in front of you on those bookcases is worth more than the house your standing in . That gets everybody interested to heard more .
Tell them about your life and the part stamps have played, your joys and discoveries .

All great ideas! Thank you! And keep them coming!

For shock value, I thought about including the 'infamous' Tom of Finland stamp from 2014 Finland. That stamp, however, would give my album an 'R' rating! (I still feel the stamp is inappropriate, to tell the truth.)

I'm going to begin a introduction to stamps for younger people (9, 10, 11, 12) so I'm paying close attention to what is being said.

Lots of interesting inputs here!


Let's face it, most 'outsiders' understand nothing about our hobby. In the 80's and 90's the hobby got some attention in media and movies from sales of iconic high-cost items. So unfortunately most 'outsiders' think of value and money when they think of collecting stamps.

So why not make a display of this 'value' aspect - because they all understand $. Make the 'value' presentation simple, surprising and amusing. Let's e.g. say you display only 3 stamps side by side: the Penny black next to two samples of the seemingly identical and worthless 2c Washingtons 554 - but one of them actually being the rare variant 554d (or a facsimile thereof would do the same job). Probably it would raise some amusement that one of the almost identical Washingtons are worthless, whilst the other is far more valuable than the well-known Penny black. Most of them would not even be able to see the perforation variety when told. They can relate to moneys worth, but would probably not be able to understand how that seemingly worthless thing is more valuable than the iconic Victoria. That might make someone curious what they could potentially have stowed away in a basement or wherever, waiting to be discovered. Just a tought.

Edit: Best of luck with your work KGB, I am sure it will do good!

KGB - Tom of Finland is a real stamp? I thought that it was a joke.