Odd Hobbies, Like Stamp Collecting

Our hobby is not highly regarded by an awful lot of folks, including writers for the NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/...yspaper&_r=0

The smoking gun in this article is just past the middle:



'Britain is a nation of eccentrics, and people engage in odd hobbies like train-spotting, stamp collection and collecting butterflies," he said. '

Anyone at the APS who can contact this reporter?

It's not the NY Times, it's simply a quote from one of the people involved in catching Cullen. I don't think I'd demur from his opinion.

Geoff, you're right. I did a quick read through and missed that. Guess it'd be too much to expect the reporter to go on and say 'on the other hand, Stamp Collecting is probably a wonderful avocation engaged in by many intelligent people.'

I think we've all had the experience of telling someone we collected and getting that incredulous look.

Similar to this quote: "We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans."
--George Orwell writing about the English in his essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)

When I think of eccentric Brits, my mind immediately drifts to Python.

I came across a rather more brutal aside in a recent NYRB review of a book about John Aubrey, viz., "The words "antiquary" and "antiquarian" would later undergo a sorry decline in meaning, being typically preceded by the qualifier "mere" and implying an empty-headed stamp collector mentality."

I'm not distressed by any of this. I don't ascribe a higher meaning and purpose to my methods of relaxing and filling in time.

I am not British, but apart from collecting stamps I have been known to go train spotting on occasion, especially if it is an old-fashioned steam locomotive. I do however not collect butterflies.


Peter

I am not British.
But to misquote Ellen Raskin "the poor are called crazy and the rich are called eccentric"
I am crazy and happy.

It is interesting that same thinking does not refer to coin, gun, cars, or any number of other collectible hobbies.

Angore - you refer to the thinking of one or two people. Who happen to have access to the media. But so do we, and there are a lot more of us. So ignore them.

How about a stamp collector who collects butterflies on stamps...

...and trains...

Or you could make arrows as part of another hobby.

Brits must truly be weird, I know what trains are but I never heard of potting them.

I dunno... seems to me non-collectors are the odd ones. They should try it, they may like it and learn something for once.

;-)

OH, and I collect stamps and am also a railfan. I also collect in one form or another ephemera, postcards, railroad lanterns, model cars, model trains, etc... My boyfriend collects locks & keys.

I am also female. Now THAT is odd!

Nells250,

I like my model trains better than my stamps. Well..., most of the time anyway.

Jack Kelley