When Did You Begin Collecting Stamps, As An Adult, Or As A Child?

Some collect wines, cigars, art, etc. and these were not started as a child.

I started at about age 10-12. I still have my $5- Marshall - Sc 1053 - purchased at the old West Acton, Mass post office on Mass Ave. Paper route money.

Jack Kelley

I was about 9 or 10 years old when I received as a present a small stockbook with this Paraguayan sports set in it. I was astonished. It seemed very luxury to me. I've immediately started dreaming for more and more sets like this. After the school years, during the 90's, I've been inactive for some period of time.

I started at the age of 12.

Chimo

Bujutsu

I started as a kid. My father gave me a nice album and his father's collection. I was active for about 3 yrs, put the album away, and forgot about it. Around sever yrs ago I found myself retired and pretty much disabled due to diabetes. So I dug out the old album and have been at it ever since.

Don

My experience mirrors that of many posters here and probably a fair number of collectors elsewhere. I collected as a child with the caliber of stamps that could be purchased from H. E. Harris, drifted off in high school due to sports and girls, then started more seriously about 5 years ago with more time and resources to start building more interesting collections. However, I am finding out just how long it takes to truly become knowledgeable and I may run out of time before I am there. I envy the folks like some above who have been diligently collecting and learning their whole lives and are now acknowledged experts in their respective specific fields of interest as well as in philately in general.

And by Marshall I think you meant Alexander Hamilton, which I couldn't afford until I was an adult. And I had a paper route also.

Angore said: Some collect wines, cigars, art, etc. and these were not started as a child.

I say you want to bet.

When we went to the families and relatives Polish weddings as kids , about age 10,11 we drank the wine and collected the cigars.
Then went outside and smoked them. Oh my god, those were fun times I believe.

Mike

I would have been about 8 years old when I started. I've kept at it my entire life, with some lulls due to military deployments to areas where stamps weren't available, but got right back to it upon my returns.

I was looking around an area of the house my parents had told me to stay out of (right, like that's not a sure-fired way to peak a kid's curiosity) and in my dad's Army trunk, I found a stock book with old dead presidents, and airmail stamps and stamps with Hitler on them and other stamps I couldn't even identify. Of course I got caught, red-handed with my hand in the proverbial cookie jar, but after enduring the corporal punishment my actions brought about, I got up the nerve to ask my dad about the stamps. He gave me the stockbook and I was off to a lifetime of collecting.

My first collection was when I was 6 or 7 years old but the collection was stolen when we moved from Germany back to the US. I then got interested again when I was 14. you went from a Harris Album to National. I dabbled off and on and thanks to the Internet my interest grew dramatically.

I started sometime between 9 and 12 years old (don't remember exactly). My father gave me some stamps from Burma and India that he brought back from the war. I remember that I used GLUE to put used stamps in the album and LICKED any unused ones. There is a specific large purple stamp with some woman on it from Monaco that I actually still have, that had the most terrible tasting glue ever. This cured me from mounting mint stamps in that way. I then made a friend in junior high that also collected stamps and we bought approvals from Popular Mechanics ads and traded back and forth. I specifically remember having some Buenos Aires stamps from Argentina that are usually reprints but we didn't know it and after looking them up in Scott's, we thought we were rich! Finally graduated to a large burgundy Citation album and learned to mount stamps correctly. The last 20 years or so, I sold off most of what I had and put together a nice Canada collection with basically everything with a catalog of under $200 or so. I'm 70 now.

A school chum got me started after showing me his Ambassador Album at his birthday. He helped me construct a first day issue request from the Post Office and when I received it back I took my paper route funds bought a small beginners album and then a Harris Ambassador. Curtailed my collecting while in college & the service but took it up again in the late 70's and have kept up US collection with US FDC's. My US collection spans from 1847 to present. I do not do WW BUT at one of the Shows I attend there is a 'fish bowl' which has brought me some interesting WW items. I enjoy the HOBBY more today than earlier.

I collected Canada in a Harris and world in a Statesman album for quite for a few years as a kid (while my brother did US, and my dad Berlin/Germany) but then left it until last year. Then my father passed down his collection, and it turned out he kept absolutely everything from our childhoods, plus a large WW classic collection from the grandfathers. So now I'm the proud owner of it all. So still have my original Harris Canada album, and old glassines with my 9-year old scrawls on it. Still trying to sort it out and adding to the Canada/Germany/WW classic areas...

I started around 9 or 10. I had asthma every fall and was home from school for several weeks. Back in that day people used to sent Christmas cards, to the point that in December the mail arrived at the house two times a day. The interesting stamps caught my eye and my collecting began.

From there I bought an occassioanal bag of 1000 stamps from Woolworths, some from H.E Harris and a few trips to brick and mortar stamp shops. I outgrew the asthma and the stamp collection by my teens.

As I approached retirement, I re-discovered the old stamp album. I checked the stamp values in a Scott catalog at the library. I was rich !!!!

Then I found ebay, didn't take too long to discover my stamps only were worth a small fraction of catalog value. But that was enough to re kindle the flame.

I have had a lot of fun the past dozen years or so. I've owned stamps I would never have dreamed possible as an early teenager. I have explored many different collecting areas and have finally focused on a specialty.

I have made a number of discoveries in this area. I also have had the good fortune to have a number of articles published in stamp journals. Been a great ride, never would have happened without the internet.

I sort of inspired this poll with my post so I thought I'd chime in.

I first got a soft cover Harris album when I was 8 years old, along with some packets and a bag of mixture to fill it. 5 years later I got a single volume Statesman, covering up to 1965. I was a part time collector and never accumulated much besides simple mixtures. I let it go because it didn't seem challenging. The way I collected, on a kid's budget, stamps couldn't be too interesting.

About 30 years later I got interested again and discovered the Washington-Franklin Heads, US plate blocks, and the Bureau Issues Association. Stamp collecting became a lot more expensive, a lot more interesting, and a lot more fun. I appreciate the aspects of philately that completely escaped me as a kid.