From Ohio: A Big Hello!

Hello all! I'm a former and soon to be current (again) stamp collector. My collecting started when I was a kid; both my dad and his brother started collecting when they were young and passed the interest on to me (and my cousin). My uncle was quite a big collector, my dad not as much especially the last 15 to 20 years. My first stamps came from their extras.

My dad passed away last year, and this winter I plan to merge his collection with mine. There will be many duplicates (those "extras" mentioned above!). I haven't seen what he has in many years, and no longer recall how extensive it was.

I lost interest in stamp collecting quite a few years ago. Before that I kept up with the new releases; my wife was especially good about getting to the post office to get me the latest sheet.

My best memory of stamp collecting was getting mail from my aunt and uncle. He would buy collections at way under face value, and ended up with many duplicate commons. Those commons ended up as postage on the envelopes. Always fun to see what he slapped on.

Welcome to SCF!

Welcome!

Dale

Thank you!

Welcome aboard!
And thank you for sharing your stamp story. It was very interesting.

Sylvain
Thailand

Welcome back to the hobby. At a minimum you will learn a little more about your father's collecting interests as you merge the collections. My immersion in world wide collecting came as a result of inheriting my grandfarhers and uncles' collection some of which was contained in a 1935 Scott international junior album. My grandfather was a travel agent and he would buy stamps from locales he traveled to with my grandmother to check out lodgings etc that he could then recommend to his clients. It turns out that he had a heavy emphasis in central and South America.

Without him, it is doubtful that I would have ever gravitated to El Salvador, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica and the like—-it would have been my loss for classic stamps from those areas and others, usually engraved are truly works of art.

But more importantly—and this is the point of this missive—I learned something about the lives of my grandparents, never spoken about to me nor by my asking as I was too young (or stupid) at the time—but nonetheless inferred by what was left behind for me to enjoy and add to— permitting me to tell this story.

Welcome back to the hobby.
There are quite a few of us in the forum who started long ago and then took a decade or two or three off.
It's quite rewarding to resume and get the old juices flowing again!

-Jonathan

@funcity: that is a very interesting story, thanks for relating it!

@Jonathan: This is surprising, so my case isn't at all unusual. Snow is now on the ground so we are close enough to winter, I need to get to my mom's house and gather up the collection.

SamuelPickwick,

Collecting for the enjoyment of collecting, whatever that might be, is the name of the game. Don't hesitate to ask questions especially if you need basic information and especially more advanced sources of information for any possible topic. You should be able to find folks on this board a little further along on their collecting journey glad to share experiences. Russ

Welcome back, I took 25 years off myself. It's a great hobby and this forum is helpful.