STAMP COLLECTING

 

When I was in Florida a while back I picked up a sales leaflet that had been inserted in a magazine. It was there to sell foreign stamps. On my way to the recycling box with it in my hand I realised that I had not seen anything remotely concerned with the hobby of collecting stamps for a very long time and so I kept it. I’ve put on the blog a scan of the leaflet to accompany this little account of my experience of what was once a very popular schoolboy activity. UK readers, even those completely untouched by a collecting bug that once held me in thrall, will recognise one of those stamps.

 

I started to take an interest in stamps when I was about 8 years old and my parents gave me a stamp album in which to keep those that I had acquired. In those days - you are going to hear that expression a lot, ‘in those days’, these days. So … in those days there were not many distractions for a child who lived in the country with his parents, so stamps were interesting. They were not as interesting as birds eggs, but that’s another story. You could take to school whatever currency of exchange you had, comics, books, medals, foreign coins and stamps, of course, and you would talk to other children who had brought a few ‘swapsies’ to school with them and you did business with them. Stamps were usually bought or swapped when they had been carefully steamed off their envelopes and were stuck into the album by means of ‘hinges’, very small rectangular pieces of paper that had adhesive on one side; they were folded across the middle with the lower side attached to the stamp and the upper side attached to the album page. The medium that made the system work was spit, not much, just enough, usually applied with the tongue. I have since learned that the use of hinges effectively renders stamps worthless – and in those days there was always the thought that one day your stamps would be worth big money. 

What I loved about these miniature pieces of art was their varied interest; there were animals, flowers, aeroplanes, trains and on stamps of the UK and British Colonies  there was always the head of the monarch, King George VI as well. There was even a large Spanish stamp which gave you the thrill of actually owning a picture of a naked lady – it was a reproduction of the Goya painting ‘The Naked Maja’.  

In those days – here I go again – stamps were sold ‘on approval’. Collections were advertised. You wrote and said ‘Please send me some, say, Australian stamps, on approval.’ The trusting seller would send you a selection of stamps, all priced,. You would take the stamps you wanted and send back the others with a postal order to pay for the ones you had decided to keep. The leaflet that I reproduce here sticks to tradition and enables you to order stamps on approval but you first have to pay $2 to get in on the act.  

And what a contrast then from today when children are seen to be constantly at risk from paedophiliac predators. I lived several miles outside Cheltenham and when I was ten I regularly took the ’bus into town, walked to a block of flats near the ‘bus stop, went up to the third floor where a solitary adult male sold stamps. I would tell him my interests and I would sit at a desk, with a reading lamp, and he would bring me sheets from stamp albums with all items priced. I would make my selection, pay the man and leave proudly clutching my new stamps. Impossible today I think.

I don’t collect stamps any more but occasionally I indulge the old habit. When Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 I was moved to buy a complete sheet of the 14p stamp. That’s 100 stamps. You can see the stamp on the leaflet here, top left, second in. There’s my investment sense for you – one of the 300 you can get for $2! Of course, mine are mint, not franked, and, well, they are at least worth £14 and they are still current. You can use them. You would need four for a second class letter weighing less than 100gm. Maybe, if times get ‘ard… 

When in the US some years ago I couldn’t resist the Marilyn Monroe issue that was put out especially for elderly men who still think of her with quiet longing. Couldn’t help myself.

 

After I had returned from a long stay in Italy – it was my delayed gap-two-years – I worked for a company that managed events. Two in particular attracted a lot of overseas mail; the International Dressage Competition at Goodwood and the John Player International Cello Award. I kept all the stamped envelopes thinking that my two sons would find them interesting. No. Not at all. The envelopes now rest in the attic, wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. The label says ‘Overseas stamped envelopes of possible interest to grandchildren’. 

Or maybe great grandchildren.