Has Anyone Besides You Looked At Your Collection?

Has anyone ever really looked at your collection closely because they were interested? Who? How many times has someone expressed interest in seeing at least part of your collection closely?

Have you ever made someone interested in your collection by chaining them to a chair with a head brace, and prying their eyes open to force them to look at it? That's probably illegal, so I expect not.

Have you ever shown your collection, or part of it publicly? What might be some creative ways to show your collection?



-IBFS

I've tried to interest my family, and at best I'll get "uh-huh, that's nice" or "how interesting". so no, not really. I have shown quite a bit of my collections here on this site The stamps and the postal history.

I have taken some of my collection/albums to a few of the very small area Post Offices to show the postmaster/workers there. My intent was not just to simply spread passion for stamps but also to communication some of their history. I also selfishly wanted to build stronger relationships with them.

It seemed to work because they remember me now when I come in and I find them to be very responsive to anything I might need from them.
Don

At a local stamp show, I happened to sit next to a recently retired economist of Jordanian descent who had stopped in spontaneously after seeing a sign for the show while dropping his wife off at work. We struck up a conversation and he revealed that his brother-in-law had recently willed him a large accumulation that he had created while working for years in Southeast Asia. A couple of weeks later I invited him over and we viewed each others' respective collections. Last I heard, he was organizing and valuing parts of the inherited collection for sale, and planning to keep the Middle Eastern stamps for further development of an organized collection.

Chris

LOL, no. I'll have my wife help me try to ID certain stamps if I get stumped and she is bored.

This is true. There are several topics, some may say many, where this is done.

For those who post in those threads I want to offer a personal "thank you", for much of what is posted there I don't collect. Yet I am fascinated by most of the things I see that otherwise I never would have seen.


-IBFS

Look! Look at my stamps!




but seriously, not really to anyone outside of philately. My wife sometimes likes to read the old personal letters that are enclosed, but that's it.

Some years ago, I showed my US collection to the now deceased father of an ex-girl friend. He was a US collector, but primarily 20th century. When he passed away about 5 years ago, I inherited his collection (his daughter and I are still good friends). About three years ago, his widow contacted me as she had found some Russian stamps in the house and didn't know what to do with them. There was a lot of 1930s-1950s mint stuff that ended up netting her $700 at auction. I sent the Russian items along with some of my own higher valued duplicates. As for other friends, a few know I collect, but aren't interested themselves. Closest family that I know of are first cousins 800 miles, and 1,000 miles, away respectively. None of them collect.

More people seen my collection exhibit than most exhibits that go to the stamp shows ---HOW CAN I BE SO BOLD TO SAY THAT . ----Simple if you go to most all the stamp shows , your lucky to see a dozen people looking at the exhibits at any one time .I been to many stamp shows were the exhibit room is so empty that I am the only one in the row .
Now back to my collection , my daughter worked at the local library and needed to fill the display cases by the front door . She asked me show something at she can take credit for on her job . So I made a World War II / Hitler exhibit ,nothing expensive just a lot of 5 cent and 10 cent stamps . It was hit with the staff and people for 30 days ,which is 10 times longer than most shows .
The regional library director like the exhibit and asked my daughter if he could take it on tour of the libraries branches in other local towns . I didn't see it again for 6 months . That means it was viewed hundreds or maybe thousands of times .

Sometimes I drag a volume into work and force them to look at it. Other than that I have yet to see any lines outside my home waiting to view "THE COLLECTION".

The wife doesn't want to see or hear about stamps. I'll probably start sharing some of what I have here over time via scans, assuming there is interest.

I had a fairly extensive collection many many years ago, that I sold, in order to get the wife - grin - in order to get married. A very good move. Prior to that, however, I collected on my own for many years. I was plating stamps, and I got to a point where I realized that I wanted to meet some like-minded people, to exchange information with, and further my enjoyment of collecting. There was a stamp organization which I had recently joined, that was having a meeting at a show, only about 90 minutes from where I lived. I went to that, and almost immediately, it seemed, got introduced to many people, who became wonderful long-term friends. So for me, this was the way to hook up with other people who actually had similar interests to me.

I have never found anyone interested in looking at my collection. That is one reason I like to post some items here on the boards. My wife has no interest at all. Sometimes I try to show her something but I may as well save myself the aggravation. She also has no idea what I spend on them as I do not give her access to the bank book. I do my banking online and she is computer illiterate. I tried getting my nephew interested a long time ago but that just resulted in him stealing some stuff. I have never spoken to him since. He stole a book which had my US #505 block of 9 with the error in the center.

My Estonian Postal History collection, as well as my Baltic Countries one have gone to some shows, both at home and abroad. My Barcelona postmark collection, just to local shows.
Other collections I just keep to myself.

jaxom - ouch. Theft is a real problem. I am always very careful about who I tell that I collect stamps. When I was young, a friend and I both collected. He showed his US stamps to a neighbor kid, who was not a collector. Sometime later, my friends collection was stolen, and stamps from it were all over the display case of the local stamp dealer. My friend got most of them back, but as a result, he completely lost interest in collecting. Sad day.

I've never shown it to anyone as I don't have any other collectors in my circle of friends and there are no stamp clubs where I live. Once in awhile my wife or daughter will come into the office while I'm working on my collection and will notice some stamps and make a comment ("oh, that one is neat"), but that's about the extent of it.

No. Not in 57 years of collecting.