OK, now that I've got the most important and easiest reason out of the way, let me elaborate.
People collect all sorts of things, for a whole variety of reasons. It really depends on what a person is interested in. Some people collect souvenir memorabilia from their favorite football, baseball, basketball, or soccer team. Some people collect old antique cars and restore them. Still others collect movies and video games. There are antique furniture collectors, and autograph collectors. You name it, and there is probably someone out there who collects it!
I think there has to be a little bit of an obsessive compulsive side to people who collect things. The idea of having the most complete collection of "whatever". Sometimes it's simply the thrill of the "hunt" for that rare, illusive, piece that will complete that "set" of anything. For others, it is the desire to posses something that is so rare that no one else has it. And then, of course, there are those who collect something so they can turn around and sell it for a handsome profit.
OK, so now why collect stamps? And more specifically, why do I collect stamps? Originally, when I was 12 years old, the Pastor Emeritus of the Lutheran church I was raised in, came to visit our family. With him he had a cigar box (why he had a cigar box I will never know) full of postage stamps from all over the world. And it was for me!! That started my collection.
I learned how to remove the stamps from the envelopes they were on by soaking them in a little bowl of water, then drying them by laying them on a clean dry surface. I learned that there were stamp stores where I could buy stamp collecting supplies like stamp tongs, adhesive stamp hinges to gently hold the stamps on album pages, and also albums that had pictures of the stamps arranged by country so I knew where to put the stamps.
As my collection of stamps from that cigar box got sorted by country, organized onto album pages, I learned about the countries where the stamps came from. I learned where they were, people who were leaders or simply famous in those countries. All because of the pictures on the stamps.
But gradually I began noticing that there were black marks across the stamps I had (postal cancellations). Sometimes they were light and didn't obstruct the picture on the stamp, but at other times they really covered the whole front of the stamp. I didn't mind the lighter cancellation marks, but I didn't like the heavy dark ones. I would put the stamps with lighter cancellations in my albums, but left the others in the box. So, I guess you could say I got a little "choosy" about the stamps I wanted to put in my albums and the ones I didn't.
This was all before the days of computers. So to buy stamps I had to go to local stamp stores where I saw stamps that were new and had never been used. They looked a lot nicer than the ones with the black marks. But I also realized very quickly that I could not afford many of them! There were so many stamps that I knew that I couldn't afford them all!
There were a lot of different ways I could have gone at that point. I could have chosen one country, or two or three. But I also noticed that there were a lot of stamps with beautiful pictures on them. There were stamps with birds, flowers, antique cars, horses, dogs, cats, flags, maps, clothes, airplanes, mountains, and any other thing I could imagine! And that is the way it is with stamps. If there is something you're interested in, there are probably stamps that have been issued with that on them.
Collecting stamps with a particular topic on it like birds, cars, Elvis Presley or anything else is called "topical collecting". Topics can be narrowed too. For instance, a person who collects stamps with birds, might narrow their collection to only collect stamps with owls or ducks.
So, I thought about the things I was personally interested in. I knew I wanted to collect one country for sure - the United States. I also wanted to collect stamps with flowers, birds, chess (yes, the game), Olympic Games, space exploration, and medicine. Do you think that narrowed things down for me? It did some, but not nearly enough! So eventually I dropped all of the other topics and focused on Olympic Sports and Space Exploration. I also decided I didn't like the look of the cancellations so limited my stamp purchases to mint never hinged stamps.
For me, I love to look at the stamps. The pictures are like miniature works of art! It's no different than someone who buys a painting and hangs it on their wall, or a rusted out antique car and restores it to a beautiful classic automobile, or a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth. Every stamp issued is different. Each one is created by an artist first, and then turned into a stamp. Some are very realistic like the photograph of an athlete, and some are just whimsical and fun - like the stamps commemorating the Olympic sports but featuring the Disney characters.
None of my stamps are valuable. I can't afford, and I don't want to buy stamps that are expensive. So most of my stamps are very inexpensive, from a few cents in value to three or four dollars. But it isn't the monetary value of the stamps that motivates me to collect them, it is the sheer fun of it! My collection will probably never be valuable monetarily, but its value will lie in the pleasure it gives me to look at the little works of art. The things I learn about the Olympic Games and the athletes who were involved in them, as well as the international achievements in Space Exploration and the scientists, astronauts and cosmonauts who made them happen will be priceless!
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