Stamp Collecting, The Lost Hobby

There was a time when there was No Email, No Facebook, No Skype, No SMS or MMS so how people communicate with each other, how they greet their friends on Birthdays or tell their parents about the experience of their 1^st day in college far away from home, That was time when people use to send letter greeting cards to their loved ones and friends through mail service. Write a letter on a piece of paper or a greeting card, place it in an envelope, write the address, paste the stamp on the envelop and drop it in a post box and the letter received at the address after two or three days.

So what was the Stamp that was pasted on an envelope, it is a printed piece of custom-made paper that shows a national designation and a denomination (value) on its front and a gum adhesive on the back for pasting. There is a sample picture from my collection.

US 20 cents introduced during 1984 Olympics

At that time stamp collecting was a popular hobby by the people how are interested in history, geography, art and world culture. It was more documented that a first postage stamp was introduced in United Kingdom on 1^st May, 1840 by the name “Penny Black”, with profile of Queen Victoria printed on it. And from then starts the hobby of stamp collecting.

Stamp collecting was a simple hobby at that time you just have to gab all the envelopes that comes with a letter, every envelope has one or more stamps pasted on it, carefully removing the stamp from the envelope since it is pasted with gum on the back you just have damp with a litter water from the back and remove the stamp then put it in an album. At that time there were stamp collecting albums available at many book shops. Even at the beginning one can keep the stamps in a paper bag too. I started my collection by keeping the stamps in the envelopes and then when I have collect a big bunch of stamp I bought an album and put all the stamps in them.

And if you have more than one piece of the same stamp you can exchange it with your friend or a person how has the same hobby. In this way it also becomes the source of increasing your friend ship circle. Even there was stamp collector’s community at that time.

At that time stamp was a great source of providing knowledge about that country from where it is issued. You can learn about the currency of the country since every stamp contains a value a price printed on it. For example if it an stamp from United Kingdom its value will be in penny or pound, if it’s from United State it in cent or dollar, from Saudi Arabia it’s in Halala or Riyal. In this way one can lean which currency is used in which country and what is its symbol. May different methods were used by countries to represent the issuing country’s identification for example the stamp of United Kingdom is identified by the picture of Queen on printed at the corner of the stamp, United States of America by US, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia identified by KSA and Russia (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) by CCCP (Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик) printed on it. Even the languages of the country can also be identified by the printed matter on the stamp.

Countries used to issue some special stamps on different occasions like their Independence Day, Birthdays of their Leaders, at the time of anniversaries and even during Olympics. Hence stamp collecting was also one of the ways to learn about occasions and history of many countries. Some stamps have special marks or miss printed and for collectors they are like treasures, those who knows the value of these type of stamps may pay a big amount of money to buy them.

I started collecting stamps when I was twelve years of age, many of my friend and relatives helped me a lot and have a good collection at this time, some old and some new. Thanks to everyone who helped me.

I think stamp collecting is a good hobby and those who love to learn about different countries, history, art and culture should adopt it.

You can see some of my collections below and more on my Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Postage-Stamps/307256486117184

• Issued by Federal Republic of Germany with the denomination of 60 Pfennig

• Issued by Pakistan Post on the Anniversary of Lahore Islamic Summit with the denomination of 20 Paisa

Issued by Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the denomination of 150 Halala