Revisiting Childhood Philatelic "Gems" As An Adult

This winter, I decided to go through my childhood worldwide collection to see if there was anything of interest. I ultimately decided to share a bunch with the Rocky Mountain Philatelic Library but there were also several pages that I opted to keep. Some I retained to form the basis of a handful of potential country collections but there were others I kept just to memorialize what I found of interest as a child.

There were the inevitable "sand dunes." These Qatari round gold stamps were exotic catnip to my 10- year old self.

Given the era, I had a nice selection of "space junk:"

I also found my many dinosaurs, content that seems to perennially catch kids' eyes.


The last category were "guilty pleasures"—stamps that caught my pre-adolescent eye but I still enjoy many years later, even though they were issued by Herm Island and Bahawalpur (still a sucker for vignettes!).


A fun exercise that I thought I'd share. What reactions have others had going through their childhood collections?

Interesting topic. I began collecting about 60 years ago when I was 6. Got a lot of my worldwide from those orange sacks you'd buy at Woolworths. A lot of my mint U.S. I look at and say to myself, "What were you thinking," but they're like old friends and I don't replace them even though the cost would be minimal.

I like it. I still have some of the first stamps I collected, and some of the very first FDC's I mailed out for cancelling, back in the late 1950s when I was about 9 or 10 years old. It's fun to look at them and recapture a bit of that excitement.

Nice. I like the Herm Island stamps.

I wish I still had my childhood collection, but I broke it up and discarded much of it many years ago. Occasionally I chance upon a stamp I've not seen since, and it reminds me. Sometimes I think I could reconstruct some of my old album pages, from memory!

RK1468: glad to see you're donating to the Rocky Mountain Philatelic Library. The Library has gotten a ton of material from me during the past two years as I downsize from a worldwide collection that also began in childhood.

Love the idea and wish I still had mine. I lost interest for a while and my kept them and added to them over the years. I got interested again a while out from high school which was near when she passed away. I could not find em and when inquired about them got different versions of the same story. Oh well. Now is to get there ones I want.