Stamp Collecting Is Now 3 Seperate Hobbies

I have come to the conclusion that there are three hobbies in stamp collecting . FIRST --there is the hobby of buying stamps.

SECOND -Is the hobby of actually adding stamps to a collection .

THIRD -Is the hobby of talking about stamps and posting stuff you learn from books and the internet.

Maybe a 4th? I find selling stamps on ebay to be almost like a video game, watching the last minute of one of my auctions is great fun!

As a worldwide collector, it's all too easy to stay stuck in hobby #1.

Wait, maybe I've stumbled on the sub-hobby of buying envelopes full of mixed stamps.

Dale

The 5th for some of us is the sometimes laborious task of designing and printing pages for our albums.

6th is the actual reading and studying the literature so that you can discuss it later.

It is one hobby. All about stamps. You do not break it up into discreet activities in order to define it further. If you collect modern first day covers from nigeria are you a stamp hobbyist or a modern first day nigerian cover collecting hobbyist. You are a stamp collecting hobbyist. When you buy a mixture or print pages you have not left the stamp hobby and entered the mixture hobby or the page printing hobby. Please.

I think the most fun is 2A: TRADING.

The Cambridge Dictionary definition of a hobby is "an activity that someone does for pleasure when they are not working". I believe that stamp collecting in itself is a hobby as are all of the other activities listed here. To say that they all fall under the umbrella of a single definition of "hobby" is too limiting.

Another of my interests is model railroading, but to say that building benchwork for trains using 2x4s and sheets of plywood is railroading would be wrong. The same is true with the electrical wiring, terraforming, and adding building structures. Each of those contribute to the hobby of model railroading but they are mutually exclusive until considered as a whole.

In the same manner, when I design and print a page for my stamp collection I have left the stamp hobby realm and moved into the computer graphic design hobby realm. While it could be argued that buying and adding stamps is "collecting", selling and designing and researching are each independent activities each done in support the activity of actually collecting stamps.

The next time somebody asks you if you are a stamp collector just say no, I am an album page printer. Silly

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Dunno, rogdcam; these days, when someone asks what I collect, I answer "stamp club memberships".

I'm sympathetic to the OP; I've overheard people saying "I am more an accumulator than a collector", which sounds a lot like his first level.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I am in division two of phase five, subsection 13.1.

I'm a stamp tongs holder.

I agree with Rogdcam stamps are a hobby everything concerned with stamps is ancillary. I like railroading but the huge number of aspects of to that hobby don't make numerous other hobbies. we might be able to avoid some aspects of a hobby by buying skills or materials in but all the combine a key aspect or all the aspects and you have a hobby. I will remove a stamp from its paper and perhaps loosen some of the surface dirt, but stamp restoring isn't my hobby, philately is.

Morning all,

"The Cambridge Dictionary definition of a hobby is "an activity that someone does for pleasure when they are not working"."

More and more folks are so focused on working they have forgotten what it is really like to relax and smell the roses. Sad.

Like any area like stamp collecting, the activities involved can be diverse. These are means to an end.