Collectors have adapted accordingly. While some concentrate on older issues, or just one
country, others prefer stamps showing a particular theme such as sport, butterflies,
famous paintings, animals, aircraft and so on. It is easy and cheap way to build up a
collection, with the option of buying more expensive items if one wishes.
Look for design errors
 Stamps with errors, such as missing colours or missing
perforations, have always been popular but often command high prices. A cheaper alternative
are those with errors in the design. There are all sorts, making a happy hunting ground
for sharp-eyed and discriminating philatelists. A 1957 Pitcairn Islands design shows the
schoolteacher’s house hut and is wrongly captioned “Pitcairn School”; a
corrected version was issued a year later. Other stamps from around the world have the
wrong captions for various flora and fauna, makes of bicycles and cars, and works of art.
One stamp shows Columbus wielding a telescope 120 years before it was invented, another
has two flags blowing in opposite directions.
Even more individualistic would be a
collection of stamps from localities now forgotten or absorbed with others, and which
briefly issued stamps a hundred years a more ago. Anjonan, Dcdeagatz, Guancaste, Saseno,
Tolima - not names that roll off the tongue or are instantly recognisable. Some of their issues have a catalogue value
of a few pence (though others are listed at hundreds of pounds), and asking for them would
cause many a dealer’s brow to furrow in perplexity! Where were these places? For how
long did they issues stamps? Of which nation do they form part today? There is plenty of
scope for research and “writing up” -
providing descriptive text that puts the
stamps into context.
Go for elegance
Another option is selecting stamps for
their elegance of design, and it’s easily done by working through dealers’
stocks for those that please the eye. This
could lead to a delightful treasure-hunt as you pore through catalogues for stamps that
merit a place in your collection and then
start searching for them.
 More and more stamps may be being issued, but in contrast
stamp shops are on the decrease. Once any town of any size had at least one, but nowadays
where there is a dealer he is likely to cater for other types of collector as well. The
specialist shop has given way to traders who work from home or at fairs, An Internet
search will yield details of dealers, auctions and individuals all over the world who can
cater for particular interests (though I’ve yet to discover a satisfactory and
economical way of remitting small sums of money overseas, and Customs officials
occasionally open packets and impose VAT on the contents’ value).
Building up an album
Perhaps the simplest and cheapest way of
collecting stamps is the traditonal one. Just hang on to any stamp that comes your
way and put it in an album, A bound one with names of countries printed at the top may be
suitable for children to see if stamp-collecting will interest them, but inevitably some
pages will remain stubbornly empty whereas others overflow. I
would recommend an album with blank pages (albeit printed with a faint grid to help
position the stamps) and use a computer or typewriter to produce printed headings.
One way to fill out the album is to look
in charity shops and car-boot sales or market stalls that sell secondhand books and
discarded stamp albums, though the best choices come from dealers. You’re get some
fun and at very least will end up with something to pass on to a young relative. Inheriting a stamp album has led many a child to
become a serious collector, and the hobby is still educational, especially with all the
confusing changes in countries’ names.
George W Bush is said to have mixed up
Slovenia and Slovakia; perhaps he wouldn’t have done so if he had collected stamps.
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