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I was a serial philatelist
No, not that. Or that! (I cannot believe that you would even think of that-shame….)
I was a stamp collector. For as long as I can remember I have loved collecting stamps. By the time I entered kindergarten I already had a couple of stamp albums and a stamp collection.
This is back in the days when a three cent stamp paid for a first class letter to be mailed anywhere in the United States. I remember my outrage when the rate went up to four cents. How nostalgic.
My mother used to take me around to office buildings in Des Moines. Back in those days business mail still carried stamps. Postage meters were novelties. I would walk into offices and ask the secretaries if I could rummage around in their waste baskets for discarded envelopes bearing stamps. They never turned me down - cute little kid wants junk out of the waste bin - sure, kid! Help yourself. They thought I was so sweet. I had to stop doing that after a few years.
By the time I was 13 I had quite a collection. I had discovered the pleasures of buying stamps through the mail. This was the biggest scam of the 1960’s. Stamp companies (usually in New Hampshire) would place little ads in comic books. They would offer a selection of neat stamps for just a few cents. In small print they would state that they would also be sending other stamps “on approval”.
This was our parents’ worst nightmare. Little kids reading comic books would send in for the stamps. We never understood that the big envelope filled with stamps was something we had to pay a lot of money to buy.
We would put those stamps in our albums. Then our parents would get nasty letters from the stamp companies demanding payment for the stamps we ordered “on approval”. What a scam. Those stamp companies made millions that way.
And I got some cool stamps. I still have them. I learned a secret about my father when I turned 13. He showed me his stamp collection. I had been collecting stamps for ten years and I never knew about it! It was an excellent collection. When he died it passed on to me.
I stopped actively collecting stamps when the Post Office stopped making stamps the old fashioned way. They used to print stamps like money, from engravings. Those are the stamps I collected.
A few years ago when the Post office came out with self adhesive stamps I almost had a fit. Sure, they are useful, but who would want to collect them?
Don’t get me started. In a former life I worked at the Post Office. And the Post Office wants us to keep buying new stamps. They want us to collect. That’s the cool thing about collecting stamps in the view of the Postal Service because when you pay 42 cents for a stamp and never use it to mail anything then that’s just pure profit.
I just picked up a new copy of THE POSTAL SERVICE GUIDE TO U.S. STAMPS (Collins) with UPDATED STAMP VALUES. I am certainly interested in the values of all these stamps I collected when I was a boy.
And every now and then I come upon a stamp collection that belonged to somebody who has passed away. Some collections were put together by young people back in the 1920’s and 30’s.
Whenever I come across a fine old collection of postage stamps I feel like that little boy again.
I love stamps. (Old stamps).
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: secret passions
Comments
By vick
November 11, 2008 11:36 AM | Link to this
Edo, I have not. Those sound wonderful! I’ll track them down. Thanks, for the tips!!By edo
November 11, 2008 10:11 AM | Link to this
Vic… have you seen “The Quest for Tannu Tuva”, with Richard Feynman ( the famous physicist )and Ralph Leighton. 1987, BBC TV ‘Horizon’ and PBS ‘Nova’ (under the title “Last Journey of a Genius”) (50 mins film) his fasination with stamps led him to this journey… also the book “Tuva or Bust!” (1991) is a book by Ralph Leighton about the author and his friend Richard Feynman’s attempt to travel to Tuva.By vick
November 10, 2008 11:43 AM | Link to this
Good one! Philately will actually get you everywhere, even to places that no longer exist. If you want your kids to learn their geography get them interested in stamp collecting. By the time I was 5 I could locate Iraq on the map. Many Americans of any age cannot locate Iraq even now….after 5 years of war there.By edo
November 10, 2008 10:24 AM | Link to this
A guy walks into a stamp collector’s convention… he approaches a good looking woman and says “Gee, you are almost as beautiful as my 1918 Inverted Jenny.” The woman replies “philately will get you nowhere.”By Mark from St Paul
November 9, 2008 12:10 PM | Link to this
3¢ stamps? Wow Vick — you’re really, really, really old!