Why Do You Collect Stamps

Ha! What a good topic!!

I started collecting as a young kid. Thing is, I have a kinda bad case of ADHD. But when I'm working on my stamps, I can stay focused for long periods. I just love doing it.

When I started, I was into worldwide. But I soon realized that there was a dearth of information available to me about world stamps--even stuff as fundamental as basic catalog information that I could use to sort my stamps. I soon decided to limit my collection to the stamps of the United States. It was in my early teens that I discovered revenues. I'd always been interested in them though. South Carolina, where I lived as a kid, had cigarette stamps, soft drink stamps (usually embossed on bottlecaps, but occasionally self-adhesives were used), even "ammunition stamps. But I found out about "Phil-Amer" and discovered that there was an organized collector base for such stamps. I added these to my US collecting interest.

In the early 90s, I was in my 20s (born 1969), and I kinda dropped out of collecting. It was because the US stamps were getting super uninteresting to me. The "F" Flower stamps, the incessant "flag" issues (which persists into the present), and the general lack of "curb appeal" of commemoratives all contributed to my setting aside of collecting. Of course, I was also getting my first taste of being an "adult," such as it was, so that must've been a part of it too, I guess :-} But I always saved my incoming stamps, always looked for good commems to use on mail, stuff like that.

Then, in 2008 or so, I rekindled my interest in collecting. Started with US again, but I realized that the Internet is a great source of information about worldwide stamps, and by 2009 I was getting back into worldwide.

I think for me collecting is a fun way to tap into the whole world, across time (since 1840, of course), and imagine where all these stamps have come from. I like organizing them, looking for the ones I need, and adding them to my albums. Like I said, stamp collecting is about the only thing that can hold my interest and keep me focused for extended periods of time.

I like having "valuable" stamps, but I also lament that expensive items are hard to acquire. So, spaces remain unfilled due to supply and/or cost constraints.

I figure that I'll continue collecting until I'm dead. I really love doing this :-}

Josh

I only started collecting a few months ago.

My collection started one evening while browsing Present & Correct, a place that I've ordered stationery, books on design, and other stuff from. While window-shopping their online store I came across a couple cool-looking sets of stamps: the 1980 Bauhaus architecture set from East Germany, and the 1972 Resorts of the Black Sea set from Bulgaria. I was immediately taken with them. They deeply appealed to my combined interests in graphic design, art history, ephemera, travel. I appreciated them as artwork and I could see myself displaying them in my office or something. I almost bought them right then, even though I knew nothing about stamps.


1972 Resorts of the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Scott #2042–7


1980 Bauhaus architecture, East Germany, Scott #2266–71

After a couple weeks of waffling ($20 for a couple sets of old stamps?) I ordered them. Even though I way overpaid by about 5× their value (as I later learned), and got smacked with huge shipping fees from England on top of that, it was worth it. Since then I've expanded my collection a bit by ordering a few things online and making my first visit to a local stamp show.

So I suppose I collect for a few reasons. It started out for art and aesthetics reasons like I mentioned before, and I have since discovered some new favorite artists like Pierre Gandon and Czeslaw Slania. But now I have also developed a new appreciation for postal history, and found that collecting can be a rush, as well as a way to relax. There's the thrill of digging through an unpicked mix, and then there's the serenity of organizing a stockbook page after everyone else has gone to bed. I've learned a lot in the last few months, and I still see a lot on the horizon to explore.


Edited to fix the captions that were out of order (cheers NSK)

That 3 stotinki "Slantchev Briag" stamp depicts a building in what was a Black Sea resort very popular with the socialist (read: communist) party elite from Comecon countries. As a child, I spent a summer holiday in the resort, in 1980.

After the collapse of the "Iron Curtain," it became a popular resort for teens from Western Europe, because it was very cheap.

In 2016, I travelled around Bulgaria and spent a few days in nearby Nesebur. I had seen some programmes on tv and was curious to see how Slantchev Briag looked after so many years. It had turned into a hell. It was depressing to see the town in that state.

By the way, you either mixed up the captions or the images.

I started collecting for escape. It began when I was about ten years old and was very sick and out of school for the entire year. That is when I received my first album and packet stamps. It soothed me and the process sparked my imagination while taking my mind off of feeling so bad. After that I never stopped although I did take lengthy breaks until I reached my 50's.

While the price of the stamps I chased rose precipitously over time none have ever given me the same entertainment or pleasure as those first packet stamps.

Because, I like stamps and history behind them. That`s all!

They are all small pieces of art and aesthetically very pleasing. I love how a page of definitives looks, especially if there are varieties. Additionally, they have a lot to teach about culture, sensibilities, history, and geography all of which I geek out on.

Because my wife kept insisting I needed a hobby after I retired, so I dug out my old stamp collection from 50 years ago. OF COURSE it needed new, better albums, new mounts, and a boatload of missing issues just to come up to date (2002). She has only the slightest idea of how much I've spent to date since then.

Another reason - gold bars are too expensive and heavy to lift.

For the artistry, the history, the geographic education, the discovery, and for the simple pleasure of trying to bring a tiny bit of order to a small corner of what can sometimes be a disordered world.

Why do you collect stamps ? Because the older boys in the neighbor collected stamps , the younger boys {including me } came to watch ,some of the older boys would give away their duplicates to others who came to see what is going on .

After a few years ,the value of the stamps that I have was not important , it is the mental health and enjoyment of those stamps that carried me thru life .

Why do I collect stamps? Great question.

The "original era" was when I was about 12 years old, when my grandmother made the suggestion. In short order, I was escorted to the stamp and coin counter at Woodward & Lothrop in Chevy Chase, MD. The range of fascinating people, places, and topics to be found in a packet of, say, 1,000 stamps is incomparable. That fascination fueled another 3-4 years of approvals, H.E. Harris mail orders, and the like. But by age 16 or so, I was done with it. My Minkus Worldwide and All American albums would collect dust for another 40 years.

Not totally sure why I came back to it, but the Internet made it possible. One COULD pursue philately as an investment opportunity, but success requires interminable hours searching eBay and other sites for "deals." On one hand, there is the thrill of the hunt. But it also means buying heaps of dross in order to pluck out a couple of gems. My time and space have value(!) So for me, philately is not a true investment opportunity. It's a hobby. So is golf, which also costs money. At least with philately, a residual can be recouped; with golf, not so much.

The "reward" for me as a collector of U.S. (two sets: used and mint in parallel) is to discern American history in a way that's similar to archeology. There is a unique story behind each of those 3c commemoratives. But there is also a story in tracking successive issues of definitives. Each issue reveals who was (or was not) held in high regard as American dignitaries at the time of issue. There is satisfaction in completing an album page or a series. City postage cancels are neat. So too are the various back-of-book specimens. I won't bother with stuff issued after about 1993. Will use it for postage, though...

My last frontier will be to disinvest, a pursuit that awaits retirement. It will be a leisurely and methodical process.

p.s. My stamp collection is a storehouse of value which, as I liquidate it, will be a source of funds for charitable contributions.

I started collecting pre-high school - I don't know how or why, but I remember seeing French 50s-60s engraved stamps and thinking they were beautiful. Then seeing other country's stamps was like traveling without leaving home.
Fast forward to senior year in high school when our school sponsored a trip to Europe and I saw stamps come to life - scenes I had only seen on stamps were there in front of me. I was hooked for life.
I am a generalist, I collect everything. Any stamp from anywhere, cut corners with postmarks, perfins, precancels, revenues, stamped envelopes, postal cards, postcards, anything with a stamp. Each one tells a story.

My grandfather started me collecting stamps in about 1969 or 1970. He had been an avid collector, or perhaps rather an avid accumulator of stamps, and he used to send me packets of worldwide stamps, first day covers of the latest GB commemoratives, and his old Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogues whenever he bought new ones. (When he died, aged 93, in 1979, my parents sold his collection. I don't know what price it fetched, but I was allowed to leaf through the thirty or more volumes before they were sold, and I remember that there was a page of about thirty King George V £1 "Seahorses" I wish I had them now!)

So I had an album of stamps and a few old catalogues, but I didn't take very much interest in them until we moved in 1975 to the little town of Kinross, where I met an old lady named Mrs Raisa MacDonald, a refugee from the Russian Revolution and the widow of a stamp dealer, who was continuing his business on a small scale. From her I bought loads of GB Queen Victoria stamps at amazingly low prices. They were mostly of "space filler" quality, but I learned a lot from studying them with the assistance of my 1977 Christmas present: the Stanley Gibbons Specialised Catalogue, Volume 1.

And then I lost interest. When I went to University in 1982, I sold my stamp collection for £20 - the stupidest thing I've ever done.

For years and years I didn't think about stamps, but as I got older and older I grew more and more nostalgic for the hobbies of my childhood, and three years ago I decided to start collecting stamps again. My original plan was to build up a small, simplified album of Queen Elizabeth II definitives and commemoratives, but that collection has now expanded in various different directions, with varying degrees of specialisation. I'm now permanently hooked on stamps.

From 1969 onwards, my principal pleasure in collecting stamps has been the conversion of chaos into order. I can't think of any other hobby that would give me so many opportunities to do that.

Pure enjoyment. It also keeps the brain active.

A question asked by many persons not familiar with philately.

Personally, I started as a kid, then stopped.
in my early twenties, I had a major motorcycle accident that laid me up for 6 months - back in my parents house. Boredom hit me hard so I asked my Mom to bring down my old coin collection - well that took about a week to organize.

So I asked her to bring down my Traveller Stamp Album and all the boxes of stamps we had. I soaked stamps for 2 weeks, then realized that the album was too small. Bless my Dad who purchased me a much larger album. After a couple months, and much more soaking, that album was busting also!

I have collected ever since. Yes, there has been years that I did not do much, however, it never left me.

So to answer your question. Initially it was a solution to boredom, which blossomed over the years into a passion for learning. As someone else said, I am 'at peace' when enjoying my collection!

I don't know, I've said I've got too many stamps. Back when we moved the last time, almost a decade ago, I decided to get rid of the tons and tons of extra stamps I had laying around. I went to a local stamp club and found three young people who were just getting into collecting and bestowed thousands of stamps on them. Of the three, only one is still collecting today and she still gets all of my extras. I just don't see the point of having thousands of stamps sitting around in envelopes that I don't care about.