Stamp collecting

(from 2015)

I never really got into stamps – apart from the junior pastime of spending pocket money on pretty items that were printed by strangely unknown African or European countries, whose sole national product appeared to be printing stamps so they could take money from unsophisticated collectors. So I cannot quite understand the passion that philately engenders.

Instead I collected cigarette cards. Yup – for a number of years I was a fully fledged cartophilist. Since I came from a background that was severely anti-smoking, that was probably more than a bit weird. But I wrote articles for the two learned cartophilist journals of the day. I pontificated on the minutia of Guinea Golds, and lamented the drop in standards since the original cards in the UK were killed off by the paper shortages of the Second World War – to be replaced, post-hostilities, with trade cards given away with various brands of tea. The original concept was never really reintroduced after the war as attitudes sort of worked out that getting kids to buy cigarettes so they could collect the cards was probably “not a good thing.”

And then I switched to post cards. It was probably something to do with cigarette cards being too small, and the onset of frowning through eye glasses. And of course, the religious history collecting had a vast swathe of postcards attached to it. Still, the box loads of cigarette cards had nicely increased in value over the years. That collection along with two specialist book collections that I hadn’t looked at for decades nicely funded my daughter’s wedding.

But stamps – not for me really. Still, each to his or her own.