Stamp collecting

simu

Did anybody else do this as a kid? I still have my albums of stamps.

I'd pester relatives by asking to go through their mail and tearing off any interesting stamps. Later, I used to buy packets of stamps from "Stanley Gibbons" (their motto - philately is the king of hobbies and the hobby of kings) and also from stamp clubs that used to advertise in the Beano - they'd send you stamps every month and you could either pay for them or send them back. Eventually, I got disillusioned with stamp collecting though because it was no longer a question of tracking down news stamps but more getting more and more money to buy better stamps. I still look out for nice stamps though!

So, share your stamp experiences of youth here!

Exit

Yep, used to do this when I was younger.

I think I only ever ordered one set of stamps (from the Isle of Man) though I don't remember where I ordered them from. I also bought a few packets of stamp sets in shops, but for the most part my collection consisted of stamps taken from envelopes. Used to have my uncle who works in UCD keep them for me as he'd get stuff from all over the world.

I could never get those hinges to work though, so stupidly I just used glue which defeats the whole purpose of collecting them I suppose. Still have the books lying around though. My favourite stamp was an Iraqi one featuring Saddam Hussein before I knew exactly who he was (he was just some fella in the news to me, so having a famous person on a stamp was cool)

simu

I had a Third Reich one with Hitler on it. Creepy!

I like Irish stamps best though.

Exit

I was looking through one of my books earlier and I had one of those Hitler ones too.

Had a ****load of Irish ones obviously (along with Great Britain and the US). Those ones were just mundane to me, not because of what they featured but because I had so many from those places. I wanted ones from the lesser known places around the globe.

simu

I remeber those really fancy, glossy colour ones, sometimes shaped like diamonds and triangles that were issued, oddly enough, mostly by 3rd world countries. Maybe they were trying to give foreigners a good impression?

Hecate

I remember buying a load of Penny Reds at one of those fairs in the mansion house years ago, there was a huge amount of publicity around at the time about the Penny Blacks since it was the 150th anniversary of the first stamp or somthing. So in my naivety I thought I'd made the find of the century

Turns out they were pretty worthless and I still find them lying about the place to this day. I quit the stamps soon after that and moved onto callcards

K2

I was a sucker for those big colourful stamps , usually of a flower, from some pacific country, if the stamp was any bigger you could use it as a postcard. I still have the albums in the attic, wonder if they are worth anything now? Oh, and if you think you are over it now and it was only a childs hobby, I reckon you will get back into it again when you become an oap, must have something to do with having too much time on your hands. My father in law has taken it up again (he's 70) - and like Exit I was crap at using those hinges, but they have books these days where you just place them into little pockets, cool.